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

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

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

Can I drink myself sober?

Here are your answers:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We know we have huge problems with alcoholism in society.

I do not thing abstinence is the answer.

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

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

It's all about harm reduction.

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

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

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

In this way you can drink yourself sober.

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

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

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

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

Tags: #alcohol #addiction #sober

This is a story about being trapped in a nightmare...

Theoretically, I've now earned enough money to pay back my guardian angel. My debts have been rapidly repaid and the total sum outstanding, which started at about £54,000 in January, has now been reduced to an amount closer to £14,000 worth of credit card debt, which is a staggering amount of money to pay back in the space of 10 months.

I have my VAT to pay every quarter, my personal taxes at the end of January and my corporation tax in July. Those are not small sums of money.

I have my expenses to cover: rent, bills, car insurance, car tax, petrol, tyres, oil, servicing, roadworthiness testing, hotels and food while working away from home. My business incurs expenses, such as my accountant and various costs associated with running a business.

I can't just sit in a dark room eating dry bread and drinking tapwater.

That's the optimistic viewpoint.

The pessimist in me realises that I can't actually get at my own money which I generated through my labour, without incurring even more tax than the fuckloads that I pay. My money is tied up in my business.

If I leave my money in bank accounts controlled by me, there's a chance I could get sick and not be able to repay my creditors. In that eventuality, my hard-earned cash will be hoovered up by circling vultures who are keen to plunge me back into the nightmare of being trapped by mountainous debts. One slip up and it'll be right back to square one.

It's happened before.

Getting through the whole of October without a disaster is a big deal. Getting through this year without any hospitalisations or months and months of destructive madness is a big deal. However, I had a pretty good shot at escaping the nightmare in both 2014 and 2016, but everything still went to hell.

It terrifies me that I have to work the whole of November - without a break - to well and truly settle my important debts and cement the gains I've made. It seems like an impossible amount of time to carry on working in circumstances which are thoroughly incompatible with my mental health.

Single, in a town where I only have two or three friends - who I almost never see - and living out of a suitcase in a hotel, would be toxic to even the happiest and most stable person's sense of wellbeing. I do it because I have no other choice. I do it because it's the only escape route from the never-ending nightmare.

Once my debts are repaid, sure, I can take any job I want. Of course I'm not going to struggle to find lots of people who'd love to underpay and exploit me. Of course I could easily shackle myself to some dreadful job which pays peanuts, but not until my debts are repaid.

It seems like I'm making progress when I consider that I started this year homeless and without a car, but those things are also liabilities. I need to pay rent for the duration of my fixed term tenancy contract and I'm liable for any damage. I need to keep my car insured, taxed and certified as roadworthy, or else I will get big fines. Sure, I have the money to make these problems go away, while I'm working, but what if I get sick?

The longer I'm forced to continue my toxic living and working arrangements, the more problems I'm storing up for the future. There's a price to be paid for the stress, the misery, the boredom and the dreadful circumstances of a life that's devoid of any job satisfaction, security, intimacy, companionship, face-to-face friendship and conversation. My life has a tiny fraction of the human interaction which would be considered normal and healthy. I'm a recluse who lives in isolation, fearful of doing anything or getting excited about anything, because I need to focus all my energies on pretending to be a boring wage slave, for the sake of my debts.

I'm not short of ideas of what I could do if I had my freedom. It's not a lack of imagination. It's a simple lack of capital problem. All my money is spoken for.

I don't even want to think about how long it's going to be until I've well and truly paid off 100% of my debts and taxes and I'm a free man. I don't want to torment myself.

When I'm feeling anxious, I get pessimistic. When I'm feeling anxious, I see my progress through very pessimistic eyes and it feels like I've made no progress at all.

Of course, my progress could be sabotaged and any hope of recovery could be completely destroyed, by circumstances beyond my control, like somebody deciding to screw me over at work. That's my biggest fear: that my contract will be prematurely cut short, because somebody decides they're not happy with me getting back on my feet.

Perhaps you think it's right and proper that I should be living this never-ending nightmare life. Perhaps you think that I should be put through this ordeal. I certainly don't expect any special treatment. I work ridiculously hard to uphold my end of the bargain and honour my commitments. Perhaps you want bad stuff to happen to me, and for me to fail.

So long as I can pay my guardian angel back everything I owe, I don't care what happens to me. My conscience is clean once I've paid back my guardian angel. My moral obligations have been fulfilled once I've paid my guardian angel back.

I know I have the rare and enviable opportunity to be very rich if I keep working as hard as I do, but I'd honestly rather go and live in a cabin in the woods at the moment, and have some relief from the relentless pressure, anxiety and misery.

Tags: #debt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whaddya want to know about me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's a ridiculous thing to do.

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

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

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

Do your worst. I'm not afraid.

Tags: #debt #police #drugs #addiction #alcohol #debt #divorce #parents #relationships #sex #bipolar #depression #suicide #mentalhealth #hospital

This is a story about sonder...

Is it useful to have a realistic appreciation of your own insignificance? Is it useful to correctly perceive that you're not significantly different from any of the 7.6 billion other people on the planet, or the 108 billion humans who lived and died since homo sapiens first appeared as a new species? Is it useful to be conscious of your cosmological insignificance, where the entire human race will be obliterated so completely that it will be as if we never existed? Is it useful to understand the fundmental laws of physics well enough to know that there isn't going to be a technological breakthrough which might allow us to travel to another star when our sun dies? Is it good to know that in the long run, nothing matters, because we live in a godless universe with no afterlife, and we are destined to be forgotten?

Just as we might become aware that every other person has a rich and complex life of their own, we can equally become aware of humanity's wider insignificance.

Warp drives, wormholes, time travel, cryogenics and hypersleep are all lovely sci-fi fantasies, but we can't even solve the basics, such as the fair distribution of wealth so that we can all have clean drinking water and enough to eat. There isn't going to be a colony on Mars. We're as likely to kill ourselves in nuclear armageddon as we are to die because of runaway man-made climate change. Yes, we've made great strides in science and technology in recent years. All those advancements are being used for killing each other in increasingly nasty ways.

The population growth trends are easy to extrapolate, along with predictions about our ability to use the available land to produce food, leading to the unavoidably obvious conclusion that we're going to have mass-starvation of billions of people, in barely a couple of decades. If you like to trot out the tired old lines about what a monster Stalin was, you ain't seen nothing until you've seen what capitalism can do to billions. It's already easy to see what industrial capitalist society has done to the environment, causing all manner of extreme weather events and natural disasters, which are anything but natural, because things are exacerbated by man-made climate change.

It's easy for me to write about the need to show some restraint and forego some luxuries, because I've been lucky enough to have enjoyed those luxuries for quite a long time. What about all those people who haven't yet had a taste of Western imperialist decadence? Isn't it unfair that those who've only ever known poverty and deprivation will never get to live a decadent lifestyle?

Many in the guardian class would prefer it if you just damn well knew your place, and stopped trying to improve your standard of living. How else are the guardian class going to snobbily believe they're a cut above the rest of the society, if every man and his dog is able to have a nice lifestyle? Get back in your place, you proletariat scum.

Thus, we arrive at the new class warfare. We ALL think that we should be at the front of the queue, and we ALL know how to get there, thanks to the internet.

The internet is a humbling place. Where else can you face such an enormous deluge of individual people who all think they're special, unique and different? Everybody's going what they think is an important opinion to share; that they have a voice that needs to be heard. Everybody thinks they're good looking, talented, intelligent. Everybody thinks they're capable of original thoughts and ideas; that they're creative.

It's hard to maintain your own sanity when you see all those social media accounts controlled by all those individuals, who've carefully chosen their name, bio, profile picture, and then carefully creates and curates their own content, according to their personality and the image they wish to project. It's hard to be a homo sapiens with the same hardware that evolved 350,000 years ago, when the population was 99.999% smaller and we didn't have any technology except fire and pointy sticks. Our brains really aren't built to cope with constant reminders that we're an insignificant speck.

We might hope to build up our social media following - our celebrity status - and begin to broadcast ourselves to big audiences, hoping to make ourselves feel somewhat less insignificant, but it's delusional. A judge and jury might convict a person of a serious crime, locking them up for life, but all 14 of those people will die at more-or-less the same time, be cremated or buried. In 4 or 5 generations, those 14 people will be completely forgotten - the criminal will be indistinguishable from those who sat in judgement. For a psychiatrist to diagnose a patient as having delusions of grandeur, is also a delusion of grandeur - both are suffering from the delusion that they have any importance at all, when clearly they are both equally insignificant.

Significance is an invention of the human mind, as a coping mechanism for the increasingly inescapable realisation that nobody matters, nothing matters, we're all dead in the long-run and every piece of evidence that we ever existed is destined to be obliterated some completely, that even alien archeologists with futuristic gadgetry, would never know anything about our entire race; our whole history.

It's pure vanity to think that you're important; that you'll be remembered.

Tags: #depression #religion #physics #capitalism #politics #climate #economics

This is a story about drug smuggling...

I never intended on becoming a narcotics trafficker. It happened by accident. To say that I'm a helpless puppet with my strings being pulled by the unseen hand of addiction, is not the whole truth. My executive brain functions and rational mind are still present, but there's quite a battle that rages within me. I'm mostly unaware of powerful subconscious thoughts which are often driving my behaviour, with my superego unable to perceive that I'm being steered towards addiction-sustaining acts, or indeed omissions.

Travelling from a rich country to a poorer one, customs might not expect illegal narcotics to flow in that direction, and as such might be caught off-guard by anything smuggled across the border by a wealthy Brit. My rational conscious brain says it's not worth taking the chance. Each country has their own drug laws and their own attitude towards those who flout them, with some countries being very punitive indeed, in an attempt to make an example of those who are part of the narcotics trade.

I've carried controlled substances across international borders a few times, quite by accident. Obviously I'm not talking about kilos of cocaine. I'm talking about the occasional tablet which escaped my notice when I was packing my bags.

I tried to buy some zopiclone - sleeping tablets - on the day I arrived here in Turkey. I hadn't planned to, but I saw a sign for a pharmacy and I thought I would enquire if it could be bought over the counter. It turns out you can't buy it without a prescription from a Turkish doctor.

Then, predictably, I had a sleepless night.

The last few weeks at work have been quite bearable, but perhaps only because I've been drinking heavily, taking sleeping tablets and also taking tranquillisers. I knew I was creating a problem for myself with the impending holiday, but I also needed to get through the seemingly unending and almost intolerable working weeks, without having a nervous breakdown.

After hardly sleeping all night, I then had very vivid nightmares. A lot of my nightmares revolved around drug addiction.

Feelings of overwhelming depression and anxiety have kept me in bed all day.

I expected this.

I'm paying the price for having made my working day more bearable using addictive sleeping pills and tranquillisers, because now I'm going cold turkey in Turkey. Lolz.

I knew this would happen. I was prepared to accept some panic attacks and sleepless nights; some horrible anxiety and gnawing dread; feeling like the world's about to end. This the deal with the devil that I struck: to be able to keep working my full-time job and able to cope, but to pay the price later.

I could have sworn I searched my bag thoroughly, to ensure I wasn't carrying anything through the airports that I shouldn't have been. In fact I did search my bag thoroughly, but my subconscious prompted me to be not quite thorough enough. I genuinely believed that I was travelling with not even a single solitary tablet to salve my anxiety and insomnia, my my subconscious was much more alert - as anxiety reached its peak, it told me to search more thoroughly and it knew I would find something. One lonely blue tablet, nestled in the stitching of the fabric, which could only be located with an obsessive search.

Of course, one blue tablet does not an addiction make.

Lots and lots of 'accidents' do however add up to an addiction.

It's unavoidable that I'm going to have to suffer some cold turkey withdrawal from sleeping pills and tranquillisers this week. It's unavoidable that I'll return to the UK far less addicted - dependent - on medications than when I left. That's one of the reasons why I chose to spend my holiday in a foreign country, where I'd be less likely to be tempted to fall back into old habits, although of course addictions follow you everywhere.

I would argue forcefully that the worst of my addiction is dealt with, and I'm using medications to help me keep working and earning money, in order to pay off mountainous crippling debts. I would argue that I'm using medications reasonably responsibly, and not in an abusive or recreational manner. I would argue that I'm hyper-aware of the risks of becoming physically dependent on benzodiazepines, and would not risk that happening again now I've managed to escape the clutches of that dreadful class of drugs.

It does however somewhat surprise me that I've managed to do it again - to smuggle drugs by accident - although mercifully this one tablet has therapeutic, not abusive potential. It's a bona fide medicine. It's not the dreaded slippery slope; the thin end of the wedge.

I need to be aware of the risk that I could back-slide gradually into an increasingly abusive and regular pattern of drug abuse. I need to be careful. I'm well aware that the worst of my addiction was prolonged for a very long time, because I thought I was able to get away with casual, occasional or so-called recreational use, which lulled me into a false sense of security; I was deluding myself.

Not the happiest story ever told, having spent the day in bed with the curtains drawn, but I often have days like this on holiday, where the accumulated stress and anxiety of the preceding months suddenly swamps me. I've hardly taken a day off sick, so it should be expected that I'd get sick as soon as I relaxed.

It'll soon be Monday morning, but at least I don't have to go to work this week.

Tags: #drugs #addiction #medication #holiday

This is a story about body dysmorphia...

It's strange to look at a photo of myself with an old friend from not-too-many-Christmasses ago - at least according to my faulty memory - and not really recognise the face looking back at me as my own. It's not that I'm younger. It's that I can clearly see in many features of my face that I'd failed to escape from an abusive relationship and an acrimonious divorce unscathed. My life reboot had been sabotaged and it seems as plain as day to me that I was very sick.

My eyes appear at first glance to be bright and alert, but in a stimulant-induced way, so I wear a glassy stare into the distance, not looking at anything in particular. On closer examination, there are tell-tale signs around my eyes that I've been sleeping both too much and too little.

It surprises me how easily I can see from my face that I have hardly any body fat. In 2013 I had my body fat very precisely measured at circa 2%.

The body I'm in today feels very alien to me.

But the face in the picture above is also a different person, I feel.

Every couple of weeks I start skipping breakfast, having light lunches and smaller, healthier evening meals. Every couple of weeks I take a break from drinking alcohol. It doesn't make any difference.

For more years than I care to remember, I've woken up and I've dreaded going to work, and I've felt oppressively burdened by debt. My life is very simple, and in many ways very enviable, but it's also thoroughly awful. Theoretically the awfulness is only a temporary situation, but somehow it's turned out to be a nonstop nightmare lasting half a fucking decade.

The nightmare could be lazily attributed to drug addiction, but you might be surprised to learn that the truth is far less conveniently simple.

Having spent more than two decades trapped in the rat race, being a very stoic, quiet, boring, obedient and subservient tiny cog in a massive machine, and suffering the incredible boredom of going to bland beige offices, attending endless interminable meetings about nothing, shuffling paper around a desk and pretending to look busy, it was fucking exciting to go insane and embark upon a drug-fuelled rampage.

You might think that police, paddy wagons, Accident & Emergency, high-dependency wards, psychiatric hospitals, police cells, intensive care, sleeping rough and hostel dorms would be the worst thing imaginable - and those things probably were terrible at the time - but you need to understand the psychology of a person who wants to jump out of a perfectly good airplane and plummet towards the ground at terminal velocity. If you think that only stupid people get addicted to drugs, it's you who is stupid, because you haven't appreciated the value in calculated risks.

I would thoroughly advise every person on the planet to avoid supercrack like the plague, but it would be remiss of me to not acknowledge some attributes of my experiences of the last 5 years, which might be considered surprisingly beneficial.

Weight. Loss.

We'd all like to be a bit skinnier, wouldn't we? We'd all like to lose a bit of that hard-to-shift belly-fat.

I look in the mirror at the slight gut which has appeared in the ten months which I've been working, without the interruption of a drug-fuelled rampage, and I think "where the fuck did that gut come from?"

It depresses me that I've put on weight.

It depresses me that my appearance has changed.

I'm not fat. I'm not overweight. I'm just kinda 'normal' for a 39-year-old bloke, but that fucking sucks, because I took for granted the fact that I was as skinny as a racing snake on a diet. There's something attractive about an 'athletic' body, and that's not the body I have anymore... or rather, that's not the body I have at the moment.

One of the reasons I kept ending up in hospital, is because my body ran out of fat to break down to keep itself alive, so it started breaking down my muscle. When my muscle was broken down to provide energy to keep my cells fuelled and save my life, there were a lot of toxins released too, which totally fucked my kidneys. Basically, I was starving to death but dying of kidney failure faster than I was dying from lack of glucose, because I was so unnaturally lacking in body fat. My body made a very tough decision at a certain do-or-die moment, to destroy muscle allowing my heart to keep pumping for a little while longer, at the expense of my kidneys.

I eat.

I eat a lot.

I drink.

I drink a lot.

I eat and drink whatever the fuck I want and however much I want. I have juicy fatty steaks with butter sauce, washed down with lashings of red wine, every single night of the week.

I'm a disgusting old man.

I've been so depressed and oppressed by my awful circumstances, that I've barely been outside all summer. My skin is pale. One of my arms is covered with ribbons of self-harm and suicide attempt scars. One of my wrists has a big lump where a bone was broken by police who were kindly assisting me in getting to hospital. I've got this gut. This fucking gut. Where the fuck did it come from?

Have you heard of DNP?

It's a fat burner.

I'm highly tempted to take a week or two off work and just burn off the fat using this drug which increases your metabolic rate. Of course, a side-effect is malignant hyperthermia, but that's nothing I haven't already experienced a great deal of, as a supercrack addict. Also, insomnia, anxiety, panic attacks, tachycardia, organ damage and death... all risks I'm prepared to accept in order to be skinny and gorgeous again.

Although I'm crippled by mountainous debts, I drive a wreck of a car which is worth less than my phone, I live in rented accommodation and my body is covered with scars from drug-fuelled insanity, self-harm and suicide attempts, the most damaging thing to my self-esteem is what I've done to myself during this period of so-called health and wealth. While I've been earning megabucks for massive organisations and being mostly abstinent from supercrack, my life has materially improved massively - I've earned an absolute fortune - but psychologically it's been awful, and my body has suffered far more than even the very worst days of my supercrack addiction insanity.

I don't think supercrack is a solution, although the weight-loss is arguably a very desirable side-effect, in much the same way as a bout of explosive diarrhoea or a tapeworm infestation might be. Unfortunately, society worships the skinny, just as much as it worships the bipolar, even though those people might not be very healthy people at all.

As a single man - and rapidly approaching 40 years old - of course I want to feel sexually attractive. While girlfriends have always said "I like a bit of meat on your bones" fnarr fnarr, they have had a vested interest in my health and robustness as opposed to my raw attractiveness, in terms of a skinny athletic body.

The temptation to restore my athletic figure with a week or two of unpleasant suffering, taking a fat-burning drug and feeling like shit, seems like a small price to pay for the prize of being more sexually attractive. With the insecurity of feeling like I'm a washed-up has-been loser, dirty old man filthy pervert, useless debt-riddled, asset-less waste-of-space, with nothing to offer womankind, it's sorely tempting to take some short cuts. What happened to my house, sports-car, yacht, speedboat, cash pile and other desirable material things, which would be highly coveted? What value is there in a 39-year-old who's pale and average build? I'm ten a penny.

This is the calculated gamble. Presently, my gamble is to get rich quick, or more precisely, to pay off my debts incredibly quickly at the expense of my health, social life and mental wellbeing. The price I pay is my appearance: I eat and drink too much; don't exercise.

Of course, I have no plans to resume my supercrack-fuelled insanity, but to not acknowledge the rewards and unexpectedly positive benefits of better living through chemistry would be disingenuous.

Tags: #supercrack #fat #diet #food #sex #dating #addiction #homeless #police #hospital

This is a story about self-experimentation...

It's very difficult to conduct a scientific study involving human beings. Our innate ability and inclination to adapt to our ever-changing environment means that we can't control the variables as we would be able to in vitro.

Sample sizes are always tiny - statistically impossible to gain any insight from - because of the difficulty of recruiting so-called ideal study candidates and being able to follow them for long enough to gather any meaningful data. Each individual will have wildly varying personal circumstances, which render any studies of hundreds or thousands of participants, complete and utter pseudoscience hogwash; nonsense; garbage.

Aggregating data from all the antidepressant controlled trials, as well as thousands of other studies into the efficacy of those medications, concludes to a high degree of statistical significance, that in more than 80% of cases the person's depression would have 'cured' itself on its own - medication makes no difference at all.

Clearly, psychoactive medications do have perceptible effects, just as you're able to tell if you've drunk 4 pints of beer or 4 pints of water. Thus, a double-blind placebo trial is not a placebo trial at all, because those who are in the placebo group know that they're unmedicated.

The question then arises: can we prove that some medications have positive effects?

Problematically, we are as superstitious as an animal with a bird-brain, quite literally. If a food pellet is randomly released to feed a pigeon kept in a cage, the pigeon begins to believe that whatever it was doing when the food pellet was released caused the food pellet to be released. If the pigeon was - for example - turning 360 degrees clockwise when the pellet was randomly released, it will continue to spin in circles, believing that its actions are causing the food pellets to be released. This is called magical thinking and humans are just as prone to it as a bird-brained pigeon.

Extrapolating, if we take up yoga, start eating kale, listen to whale music, start believing in imaginary sky monsters, wear lucky underwear, read self-help books, use homeopathic remedies or start doing any one of the many billions of similarly stupid and futile superstitious rituals, these are at least 80% likely to co-incide with a natural improvement in our mood which would have happened anyway. However, we will falsely attribute our better mood and more hopeful future, to something which actually had absolutely no effect whatsoever so far as good empirical evidence-based repeatable science is concerned.

To control the variables is extremely hard, in complex modern life.

I had a very good night's sleep last night, woke up early, ate a healthy breakfast, got to work early, had a productive day, and I felt like I had the energy and enthusiasm to do some exercise. My quality of life was manyfold better today than it has been for a very long time. My hope and optimism were sky high today.

Let us deconstruct the reason for my good day.

Last night I swallowed two 7.5mg zopiclone tablets, which are a sleeping pill. Perhaps it's high quality sleep, delivered with some help from medicine, that's the reason I had such a good day - I was well rested and refreshed.

No.

Earlier in the year - and in fact quite recently - I had completely quit all sleep aids and I was sleeping very well without them. I have no problems initiating sleep and remaining asleep. This variable is eliminated.

Last night I swallowed one 2mg Xanax tablet, which is a short-acting benzodiazepine hypnotic-sedative muscle relaxant, generically known as alprazolam. Perhaps it's relief from anxiety delivered with the help of medicine that is the reason why I had such a good day - my anxiety was subdued.

No.

Earlier in the year - and in fact quite recently - I had completely quit all sedatives, tranquillisers and tranquillising painkillers and I was coping very well with my anxiety without those medications. I am fully functional despite my very high-stress and demanding life. This variable is eliminated.

Last night was my 5th consecutive night without alcohol. Perhaps it's the healthy decision to quit booze and become teetotal which is the reason why I slept better, woke up refreshed, had improved concentration and felt more full of energy and enthusiasm for other healthy activities than I have done for a long time. I thought about catching up with a friend. I thought about doing some exercise.

Ah. We have a problem.

On the face of it, we have 3 significant changes, and those changes all concern mind-altering substances.

I can be fairly certain that I'm able to sleep and I'm able to cope with my anxiety without medication, but I combined two medications which should have helped with both, which is already complicating the clinical picture, but then I also quit heavy drinking quite abruptly and managed to get through 5 consecutive sober days. 3 changes is far too many changes to attribute my improved mood to any one of them, or even all 3 in combination.

But.

Oh no.

There are other changes too.

I got paid on Monday. Getting paid is always a good day. Sure, Monday I was off work sick, but it wasn't until yesterday that I started doing some sums and I realised that I can pay off half my debts at the end of the month. It's something worth considering.

I went back to work on Tuesday. Not losing my job is always a big relief when I get sick. Sure, it'd be pretty bad luck to lose my job after just one day off sick, but it's always a relief somehow to go back to work and find everything's fine and people are cool with me. It's something worth considering.

I have 8 working days - less than two weeks - until I go away on holiday. I haven't had a week-long holiday since July 2016, over two years ago, so that's a massive relief to know that I'm going to get a relaxing break soon. It's something worth considering.

I spent the weekend in the company of old friends. I took a flight to Prague. Socialising and travel are exciting and stimulating. I played with my friends' children. We did activities, like sightseeing and mushroom picking in the woods. All of those things are very nice and normal and pleasant. Sure, it was exhausting, but now that I've gotten over the travel I have some really nice memories of that trip. It's something worth considering.

At work I'm starting to feel like I'm really making a difference and I'm a valued member of the team. My colleagues were glad to have me back and people are keen to work with me. I feel cherished and a little bit more secure every day. I feel increasingly confident in my own skills, knowledge and experience. It's something worth considering.

My sister picked up my mountain bike from my parents, so that I can collect it from her. I'm looking forward to seeing her and maybe my niece too. I'm looking forward to having my bike back. I'm looking forward to getting my bike repaired, upgraded, and being able to use it to get a bit more fit and active. It's something worth considering.

Lives are complicated.

Life is complicated.

It's impossible to control the variables.

If you were looking for the perfect test subject - a guinea pig - you would fail to find a better one than me, because so many things in my life are constant. I stay in the same hotel, I eat in the same gastropub, I do the same job I've done for 21+ years. I'm a creature of habit and I'm not destabilised by anybody else, such as family, a partner or children. I've cut every variable out of my life that's possible to do, short of locking myself in a laboratory cage. I'm the perfect test specimen.

I can't tell you why I had a good day today, but I have very good reason to believe that it was a combination of a multitude of factors, including the sleeping tablets to help me get back into a good sleep pattern, the anxiety tablets to help me cope with intolerable stress levels, the sobriety, the travel, the socialising, the money, the job satisfaction and a million and one other little things, all of which are very positive. For example, my Apple Macbook was repaired under warranty, saving me the cost of a £1,500 replacement or a hefty repair bill, which is a big relief. Who could have predicted any of this and why would we attribute my life improvements to any one particular thing, such as the favourable mood of an imaginary sky monster? Stuff was just going to get better on its own.

As you can tell, I'm not the superstitious type.

I will, however, be taking a zopiclone and a Xanax again tonight.

Tags: #medication #depression #anxiety

This is a story about having a miniature nervous breakdown...

I know it's offensive to say "I'm a bit OCD" just like you can't be "a bit in a wheelchair". However, I'm a bit of an authority on life implosions. It's not hyperbole to describe myself as on the brink of a breakdown and/or a suicide attempt. If anybody could know just how close I am to breaking point, I would be me, given that I've lived far too much of my life on the limit; I've had far too many breakdowns and brushes with death.

What do I mean by a breakdown?

There's the fairly tame stuff, like not going to work, not answering the phone, not answering the door, not opening the curtains, not getting out of bed, not washing, not eating, not socialising, not paying the bills, not opening the mail, not doing any kind of activities, sleeping all the time, unpredictable random bouts of uncontrollable crying, suicidal thoughts and plans... that kind of stuff. That's your common-or-garden depression tame breakdown stuff, which destroys your job, your finances and your relationships with friends and family.

I can pretty much manage to stay functional and not lose my job, even when I'm spending 40 hours a week at my desk plotting to kill myself. I can quite literally spend a whole day in the office thinking about what poison I'm going to buy, where I'm going to get it from, how I'm going to use it, which tall buildings I can access the balconies of, what pavement or other area there is beneath the balcony, how I would gain access, how I would get there... all the little details.

Nowadays, I plod along like it's ordinary to have those thoughts and feelings. That sort of stuff is just ordinary background noise to me.

There's other tame stuff like spending vast sums of money on expensive consumer electronics and plane tickets. Casual sex, alcohol and drug abuse; extreme sports, bad driving and other excessive risk taking. All of that stuff is part of my day-to-day existence.

I'm able to quell both my impulse to stay in bed and my impulse to run away, to such a great extent that I've given an excellent false impression of a highly functional adult human being, for 10 or more consecutive months. A large number of people have been fooled.

I've dragged myself to work after drinking 3 bottles of wine. I've dragged myself to work after a multiple-day drug binge without any sleep. I've kept the receipts for thousands of pounds worth of consumer electronics and mostly resisted the urge to walk out of the office and jet off to an exotic location with a fat wad of £50 notes in my pocket, yelling "SEE YOU IN HELL" and flicking V-signs at my colleagues as I exit.

It's the last part that's been my biggest success.

My brain mostly tells me I'm brilliant and other people are slow and dimwitted. I work with very smart people, and the less I say about my colleagues the better. Let's just focus on the me part, because it's a confusing issue. My thinking goes a little bit like this...

"I was a drug addict sleeping rough in a bush in a park, nearly bankrupt, and now I'm putting together this massive software system for a gigantic organisation, even though I'm as mad as a box of frogs, and yet everybody seems to respect my opinion, trust me and follow my leadership; they pay me an obscene amount of money"

So then I start thinking...

"Who else in my organisation is a nearly-bankrupt severely mentally ill person who was sleeping rough in a bush in a park and physically addicted to multiple dangerous drugs?"

When I arrive at the conclusion that my colleagues have not faced the same adversity, it fuels delusions of grandeur. Why would it not? It seems only logical that the reason I'm not destitute or dead and instead I'm earning big bucks and doing important work, must be because I'm special and different. I write this paragraph dripping with sarcasm, the reader should note.

On the matter of the success part: turns out that it's a good idea to keep your mouth shut most of the time, if you want to get along well with the literally hundreds of thousands of employees who work with you in some of the world's biggest organisations. It turns out that it's an even better idea to keep your mouth shut and not say what you think, if you're plagued with delusions of grandeur, brought on by the sheer ridiculousness of seemingly being able to drag yourself out of the gutter and reach the stars at the drop of a hat.

It's quite mind-fracturing to believe at the same time that you're worthless and that the world would be better off without you, while also believing the hard evidence that no matter how hard you try to destroy your life, you still remain eminently employable and in-demand; no matter how many times you walk out the office shouting "GO TO HELL FUCKTARDS" somebody somewhere still will offer you a great big suitcase filled with £50 notes to sit at a desk and think about killing yourself.

It should be noted that I like my colleagues and I think they're very smart people.

It should be noted that there hasn't been a "GO TO HELL..." moment for quite a while.

Like, there probably hasn't ever been a "GO TO HELL..." moment.

Not ever.

I get very worked up about the systems, the organisations, the politics, the structural problems, the inherent unfairness and absurdity of it all. I get very worked up about perfection, utopia and engineering elegance. I get very worked up about management incompetency. I get very worked up about the speed with which things get done, which feels painfully slow.

These opposing forces within me - the depression and the mania - seem to express themselves quite suddenly as an exhaustion which confines me to bed for many weeks, jetting off around the world or getting very angry with one particular situation. The anger one is probably the most destructive; the other two are recoverably destructive.

I'm particularly fearful of waking up one day and being unable to go to work, which is strange because that would probably be the least damaging of all outcomes. Yes, it doesn't look great to disappear and not answer your phone for weeks, but understood within the context of a major episode of depression, most people's reaction is sympathetic.

Past experience has taught me that becoming arrogant, cocky and full of myself leads to saying and doing stupid things in the office, which is far more damaging than being off work sick. As hypomania boils over into all-out mania, I know that I can be prone to say the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time; patience and tolerance wear thin.

Somehow, I manage to navigate a path through both extremes, so long as I'm not too depressed or too manic. I build up some goodwill which carries me through difficult periods. I prove my worth and make myself useful, such that I get second and third chances.

Knowing myself very well, I feel like I've been skating on thin ice for far too long. I feel like I'm well overdue a meltdown; a major catastrophe.

I don't have any spare energy left to maintain my mask of sanity; I can no longer keep up my "game face".

The mask is slipping.

My main preoccupation should be remaining civil.

So long as I can remain civil, I'll probably be forgiven for having a breakdown.

I'm too outspoken, as usual. People are getting to know me. I'm super exposed.

Some poor bastard usually feels the sharp end of my tongue and I desperately attempt to apologise and take back the things I said in the heat of the moment. My regret and remorse are heartfelt, but it's usually too late. Gotta keep things civil, no matter how much pressure and stress I feel I'm under.

Perhaps worst of all are the lies and the boasts, which come at the very end of a long period of fake it until you make it when I actually no longer need to fake it anymore. Lolz. Irony.

The fear of being exposed as an imposter - having my secrets revealed - has followed me around for an incredibly long time, but now I'm almost-but-not-quite back on my feet. This is the very worst period.

I need to consolidate my gains.

But.

I'm so close to having a breakdown.

Tags: #depression #bipolar #mania #hypomania #career #debt #homeless #addiction

This is a story about when the alarm clock goes off...

I'm routinely late for work but I think I've figured out why. I was very tired when my alarm went off this morning, but I think I could've gotten out of bed and gone to work. I was tired but I felt OK. I needed more sleep but I'd have been alright if I immediately got out of bed.

Unfortunately I let the dread set in.

My thoughts and feelings changed from "I need more sleep" to "I'm going to be late" to "I don't want to go to work at all". From initially planning to get up, iron a shirt, iron a jumper, take a shower, get dressed and drive to work, I then started planning how best to tell my team that I wasn't going to make it to our morning meeting. As lunchtime approached I dreaded having to finally get up and the ridiculousness of "I'm going to be late" meaning not turning up until the afternoon.

I did not get up.

As the afternoon wore on I was dreading having to tell my team that I was actually going to be a no-show. I dreaded the loss of earnings. I dreaded the damaging impression that I'm unreliable. I dread the day that I'm finally unable to keep going any longer, and I stop turning up for work altogether. I dread the day that I hit the wall.

I did not tell my team that I was going to take the day off sick.

It might seem like I'm my own worst enemy. It might seem like I'm making things harder for myself. It might seem like there's a long string of decisions here, and I'm making bad choices, but it doesn't feel like it at all. The whole process is quite agonising.

A couple of times in the past fortnight I've woken up at around the time when my alarm goes off. I've gotten up, dressed, had breakfast, driven to work and arrived on time or even early. "This must be what life's like for a normal person" I've thought to myself. It's been blissful on those days. Life has felt sustainable and pleasant and I've even envisaged being able to keep working for the foreseeable future, on those good days.

Most days are not good days.

I've only found a few solutions for the dread.

Short-acting hypnotic-sedatives work very well in the short term. Xanax and zopiclone last just long enough to get a good night's sleep a bit more tranquillising effect in the morning, when the dread would normally set in. Without a sleep aid, the dread sets in the night before: "I'm never going to get enough sleep and I'll be exhausted in the morning" I think as I lie awake until the wee hours of the morning.

Alcohol works a little bit as a sleep initiator but the liver metabolises alcohol so efficiently that it's mostly eliminated from your bloodstream after 4 or 5 hours. Alcohol-induced sleep is not high quality and it's followed by dehydration and a full bladder, which I usually try to ignore because I'm warm and comfortable in bed. By the time the alarm goes off alcohol withdrawal and bad sleep combine to make the dread doubly bad.

Getting absolutely smashed drunk works surprisingly well as a mechanism for getting me to the office more-or-less on time. Waking up half-pissed from the night before does offer an intoxicated tranquillisation which allows me to overcome the dread.

Driving to work drunk and/or tranquillised and being in the office while reeking of alcohol and/or slurring due to tablets, is a pretty undesirable state of affairs. Public transport, heavy lunchtime and after-work drinking were the norm in the City, so my heavy alcohol dependency was not conspicuous until I was banished to the provinces.

Everything's catching up with me now.

The heavy boozing has led to sudden weight gain this year, which depresses me. Drinking heavily no longer seems like a sustainable strategy to get through the working weeks.

The solution is a total detox, exercise, sensible bedtime, healthy breakfast and good sleep hygiene; routine. The solution is to live the most boring life imaginable, dedicating myself purely to the pursuit of being able to get up in the morning. The solution is to completely change the way I live - the way I act - in order to fit in with early-bird culture.

In many ways I am still going through an extended benzodiazepine withdrawal, neuropathic painkiller withdrawal and sleeping tablet withdrawal. My alcohol use has prolonged and worsened the excruciating withdrawal from the physically addictive medications. My body and brain's instinctive reaction to drink more and eat more to compensate, has been a very poor coping mechanism and has instead lengthened and exacerbated the negative symptoms, instead of providing the mild relief I so desperately crave.

Having used Xanax a couple of times in the last fortnight, it was remarkable how my brain responded: "THIS is the stuff which I've been screaming for" it seemed to say, as I gained some long-overdue respite from round-the-clock anxiety and the dread.

Obviously it's not desirable to use pills or booze long-term. Obviously, it'd be good to suffer the short-term pain and get healthy, before things get any worse. I've done a substantial part of the hard work, in breaking my physical dependence to a multitude of addictive medications.

I desperately craved alcohol all weekend but remained sober because my friends who I was visiting are not big drinkers. I was really craving alcohol tonight, but I managed to resist, although I'm comfort-eating to compensate for the craving.

I hate the situation, where I'm not where I want to be with anything. I'm not teetotal. I'm not medication-free. I'm not doing the healthy stuff. I'm gaining weight not losing it.

To eat less, eat healthy, go to the gym, be teetotal, stop taking sleeping pills and stop taking the occasional tranquilliser, but yet maintain my miserable single hotel-dwelling living-out-of-a-suitcase life, seems completely ridiculous. However, using my misery as a justification for drinking as much as I want, whenever I want, is also ridiculous and has led to appearance change and health degradation, which I don't find acceptable.

Tonight I've comfort-eaten and not done any exercise. Tonight I will take one or maybe even two sleeping pills. However, I won't have any alcohol or tranquillisers. I'll try to go to sleep at a sensible time. I'll try to get up early, have a healthy breakfast and get to work on time. If I can do all that, it's still a reasonable achievement considering the circumstances.

I'm not reliable. I am struggling. Hopefully nobody will hold it against me though.

Tags: #career #depression #sleep #medication

This is a story about maintaining equilibrium...

I started the year £52,000 in debt, with no home and no car. I started the year addicted to painkillers and sleeping pills. I started the year in a very dire situation. The odds were stacked against me.

I managed to quit those addictive medications. I managed to avoid bankruptcy. I managed to rent a place to live. I managed to buy a car. I managed to earn and save enough money to repay half my debt.

That's right. I'm halfway there.

In actual fact, I'm being a bit premature. My total outstanding debt is £43,250 and I've managed to save up £23,400, which is more than 50% but I haven't actually made a substantial repayment yet, because I'm terribly afraid that I'm going to get sick. I'm on the brink of having a nervous breakdown. It's been unbelievably stressful and exhausting to get to this point.

Did I mention that I quit addictive painkillers and sleeping pills?

A little over a year ago I was physically addicted to vast quantities of Valium and Xanax, as well as everything else.

How the hell does a homeless, bankrupt, drug addict, with mountainous debts, go from being sectioned in a secure psych ward, to being able to repay nearly £25k of debts as well as renting a house, buying a car and holding down a good job?

Compensation.

To compensate for the horrific withdrawal of all those medications, which caused massive problems with anxiety and insomnia, it has been necessary for me to compensate. To compensate for the stress and the misery of being flat broke and having the threat of bankruptcy, homelessness and destitution hanging over me; the stress of having to work really hard to service debts and save up money to get back in the black - that's required me to compensate.

I've been compensating for the horrendous things going on in my personal life; the incredible stress.

I've compensated by over-eating and drinking too much.

The stress has been off the fucking charts.

My drinking has been out of control.

I've put on weight.

If you think I should eat less, eat healthy, exercise more and generally look after myself, I ask you to re-consider what I just told you. Somehow I've managed to quit 5 physically addictive medications, move house twice, service debts of over £50k, save up £24k, work 3 jobs, please my clients, zoom all over the fucking country and generally live a miserable austere life with no reward for my efforts.

My mealtimes and my alcoholism are all I've got to live for at the moment. Getting fat, unfit and destroying my health with alcohol isn't my idea of a great way to live - it's a reaction to my extreme circumstances, and the horrible suffering associated with the stress of being massively indebted, skint, insecure and withdrawing from very addictive medications.

A lot of people aren't able to tolerate the horribleness of the anxiety, the insomnia and generally feeling like you're going to die, when you stop taking medications like Valium and Xanax. A lot of people will be hooked for life on their antidepressants, sleeping pills, tranquillisers, sedatives, painkillers and other such medications, because they can't stand the withdrawal.

A lot of people are destroyed by their debts. So many suicides are precipitated by financial problems. When you're deep in a debt hole and bankruptcy seems to be like the only option, that's a life-ruining thing to happen, because a bankruptcy is a black mark against your name for the rest of your life. Try renting a place to live as a bankrupt. Try getting a good job as a bankrupt. Try living any kind of life in this modern debt-driven society as a bankrupt.

My way of compensating for the difficulties in my life has been to comfort eat and get drunk.

I hate it.

I'm getting fat and unfit. I'm destroying my health.

It's a race against time.

I need to clear my debts before my unhealthy eating and abusive drinking kills me.

Don't tell me to eat healthy, eat less, drink less, exercise and otherwise make my life any more fucking miserable than it already is. I know what I'm doing to myself and I know what I'd do if I wasn't under such extreme pressure and stress; so distressed and living a life of such abject misery. I'm taking a very calculated but extreme risk, to escape from the trap - the trap of debt, the trap of addiction, the trap of homelessness, the trap of poverty, the trap of mental health problems, the trap of misery and hopelessness.

That I've managed to almost escape so much that threatened to destroy me, is remarkable. The only way I've managed to achieve it is by compensating with over-eating and drinking too much. My health is getting fucked up. My appearance is getting fucked up. I hate everything about my life, but I'm halfway to freedom.

I did intend on writing this once I've finally managed to make a great big £24,000 downpayment on my debts, bringing things down to an amount I can pay back in 3 or 4 months, which seems much more achievable.

I've achieved the fucking impossible.

I had to write this now, because I can't hold on much longer. Every week is unbearable, but every week inches me a little closer to freedom.

Getting to the end of September will be a huge milestone.

October I need to take some well-earned and very overdue rest.

November and December I need to make sure I stay sane and healthy and keep my job.

2019 is potentially the year I turn my whole life around.

Still so far to go.

It fucking sucks.

But there is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

Tags: #debt #homeless #capitalism #banking #suicide #addiction #medication