This is a story about twisting my mellow...

Here I am, in bed, wearing my convict pyjamas. I just woke up. Not looking too bad for 127 year old man. Mad for it.

Actually, I was woken up before 8am by the kerfuffle outside my bedroom door. On the opposite side of the corridor is the dispensary hatch, where the medications are dished out to everybody. It's quite lively at certain times of the day on this psych ward, which has some of the very sickest people in the North of England, receiving treatment for their mental health problems.

Have you ever thought to yourself "I can't go on" or maybe even "I wish I was dead"? Have you ever thought that you're going to have a breakdown and you need to be in hospital? In actual fact, you're tougher than you think. Very few of us will have an acute mental health crisis that is severe enough to require inpatient hospital treatment.

Am I admitting that I had a "nervous breakdown"? Don't be so ridiculous. I left the city where I have spent most of my working life and relocated to this Northern city, where I have no friends or family; I took on a very stressful new job; I tried to build a new group of friends and get a girlfriend... when that all came crashing down around my ears, doesn't it seem understandable that it would have destabilised my already fragile little life? I'm just an animal - like you - and I respond to the stimuli of my environment: if I'm being stressed by external things, then of course I'm going to have a reaction. Action -> reaction. Is that so hard to understand?

Of course, it might look like madness to have taken on so much stress all at once, but I did need to shake things up. I never quite reached the point where I was safe and stable, so it was sadly necessary to do something drastic. You might liken what I did to Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT) which is also known as "shock treatment". In fact, I had multiple seizures on Saturday and Sunday, and maybe even Monday. To be honest, I'm struggling to remember much about the time that I was unconscious for some reason.

It's pretty terrifying that there's this big hole in my life, where I was having fits and was in a medically induced coma. The memories around those 12+ hours that I was under a general anaesthetic and having a machine breathe for me, are pretty hazy. When I came out of the coma, there was an intensive care team there to greet me, who explained what was going on and knew all the right things to say to put my mind at rest. The team - every member of the huge NHS organisation - at the hospital was amazing. From arriving in A&E resus, starting to have seizures and being taken to intensive care, being moved to a high dependency ward to look after my struggling organs - which were being destroyed by the massive overdose of tramadol I had ingested - to finally being moved to a general ward... the whole journey through a National Health Service hospital is incredible and I'm crying as I write this, because it's the most amazing example of the advancement of our civilisation, that I can possibly think of.

Of course, I feel a great deal of guilt for the huge burden that I have placed on the NHS, which is UK taxpayer funded. I wonder to myself how much I must have cost, versus how much I have paid in. We can't all take out as much as we pay in. Obviously, we can't all take out more than we pay in either, but to spell that out is a bit patronising, no? Those who work in the NHS certainly wouldn't want me to feel guilty, but I do. I also feel grateful. Grateful to be a British citizen and resident of the United Kingdom, where world-class medical care is free at the point of use. Grateful, but indebted... guilty.

Another analysis might reveal that perhaps a stitch in time might have saved nine. I first approached a doctor about my mental health in 2008, and I was fobbed off within seconds of opening my mouth. Our general practitioners have very little time to understand their patients' problems and offer a diagnosis and treatment. Most of us would be unhappy to walk away from the doctor without a prescription for some pills. It has always been my stance, that I would decline any treatment that I didn't understand; couldn't see good evidence for the efficacy of;  I needed to see proof that the long-term outcomes were positive.

I remember writing passionately online, as early as 1998, about the analogy of putting a sticking plaster over a gaping wound. I wondered aloud, whether the psychiatric medications that are dispensed for mental health problems, are merely masking the symptoms and not treating any underlying problem. To this end, I applied to university to study psychology, and was granted unconditional offers for some of the best degree courses available in the United Kingdom. I decided not to go to university. I could see that clinical psychology was desperately underfunded. It's a helluva lot cheaper to give somebody some patent-expired pills, than it is to let somebody talk to a therapist.

Now, nearly 20 years later, I've seen enough evidence; I've done a meta-study of the literature. It's quite clear that long-term outcomes for the mentally ill are not at all improved by the medications that are commonly prescribed. It's also quite clear that we are in the midst of an epidemic of mental health issues. I use that word epidemic in its most precise sense - we are literally seeing explosive growth in the number of people suffering from mental health issues, and a dreadful decline in the prognosis for those unfortunate enough to be affected.

It's my firmly held belief that mental wellbeing is a function of our environment. In a world of Donald Trump, global warming, the threat of nuclear armageddon and a Conservative government who are determined to pass legislation that will allow them to hunt poor people, on horseback, doesn't it seem quite natural that we should all feel rather threatened and afraid?

One of my early childhood memories is of chatting to a U.S. Air Force base worker called Wayne, who drunkenly boasted that America could destroy all life on Earth with bombs that exploded with enough heat to vaporise a human being. Please, when you tuck your children into bed tonight, don't share this charming tale with them. I can almost remember the very moment that an 'irrational' fear of death sprang into existence in my head. If I had been born 30 years later, I might have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder - I became afraid of everything, from horses to fairground rides, to electric sockets. I don't really agree with the 'irrational' part of the fear though - it does seem rather rational to fear things that can kill you.

Doing extreme 'adrenalin' sports and training to be an electrician is actually very logical - one needs to face one's fears, if we are ever going to conquer our anxieties. Children who have allergies so bad that they face deadly anaphylactic shock if they come into contact with things like peanuts or dogs, have had their allergies cured by simply introducing their body to tiny trace amounts of the allergens that could kill them. If there's one amazing thing about the human body, it's the ability to adapt itself - the plasticity, if you like.

Now, I've taken the 'trick' of putting myself in hostile and extreme environments, to a ridiculous level. Most people would be psychologically disturbed by having their liberty removed and being detained on a psychiatric ward with some very unwell people. Most people would crumble to dust under the kind of pressure that I've been under. This sounds very boastful and big-headed, perhaps even grandiose and delusional. Well, yes, if the facts were not in my favour then I would agree with you.

Here I am, writing to you quite calmly and happily from a psych ward. Do you think you would be doing the same, trapped inside an insane asylum with people who are too dangerous to be allowed out into the community? There's the constant sound of shouting, screaming, slamming doors and alarms going off. Staff members - perhaps as many as two or three per patient at a minimum - run from crisis to crisis. One itinerant patient can have their entourage of mental health professionals, trailing in their wake all day and all night long, as they make their "obvs" (observations). Sometimes a patient must be cornered, captured, and dragged off to solitary confinement, where they are thrown into a soundproof padded booth. "STRAP ME DOWN LIKE THEY DO IN PRISON" screams one particularly unwell patient. Is this treatment or is this punishment?

My working hypothesis is that we used to be able to remove the 'bad apples' in order to have a functioning society for the rest of us, but that was never the truth - basically, we've been leading up to the mother of all crises, because the vast majority of people are stressed as fuck and eventually the masses were always going to stumble to their knees, under such immense pressures. Society is very sick, but it's only just coming to light, now that we can no longer sweep the most conspicuous problems under the carpet.

I'm the eccentric mad uncle, carted off to the insane asylum to keep me out of sight and out of mind. However, it doesn't work so well when I'm able to continue to be connected to the world, through the internet and social media. Perhaps one might argue that mental health problems are contagious, and are spread through words - written or spoken. There's certainly good evidence that a suicide will spark a whole bunch of copycats.

So, I'm struggling to wrap my head around the fact that I nearly died, but I'm finally in a safe place in which to recover, where I don't need to worry about paying rent, buying food or even cooking and cleaning. All of the chores of daily existence have been removed from my long list of responsibilities. I pretty much just need to make sure I remember to take my next breath, while I'm in hospital.

Jeepers creepers, it's been a long hard road to get "sectioned". What a relief!

Tags: #mentalhealth #suicide

This is a story about the straw that broke the camel's back...

You'd think that the closest I ever came to finishing this suicide note - and ending my life - would have been the time both my kidneys failed and an old ankle injury made it almost impossible to work. I also lost one of the best IT contracts I've ever had and became hooked on legally prescribed pain medication, which pretty much scuppered my ability to get another contract. I was running out of money fast, but struck down with physical and psychological problems - depression - I could barely function.

My girlfriend at the time was exhausted after spending weeks in hospital with me, while the survival of my kidneys was in doubt. She came to all my outpatient appointments. She helped me hobble around and get my prescriptions for my pain. Then, I dumped her. She was exhausted and she'd just been to Cornwall - Land's End - to meet her new nephew. I had a crisis while she was away and in her state of tiredness, she couldn't think straight. In the state I was in, I needed her help, but to me she didn't seem to care - that was my warped perception, at least. I immediately broke up with her, because what seemed like life or death to me didn't seem to matter to her due to compassion fatigue and physical tiredness. To my messed up mind it seemed as if she didn't care about me, when I desperately needed her help.

Having no girlfriend, no job, no money, bad health and a ridiculously expensive riverside apartment to keep up the rent & bills payments on, losing a loan that had been promised to me by my girlfriend, further compounded a dreadful situation.

I sold a lot of my most precious things, even though I knew that the money would barely cover a month's rent. Being a high earner, most welfare benefits were inaccesible to me and to have a black mark on my credit score would preclude me from ever working in banking again.

I became hopeless, resigned to a fate of eviction, bailiffs, debt collection agencies and destitution. The best option was to spend 28 days in hospital, said my psychiatrist - at least I would be safer there.

My trigger finger was itchy, but I knew that if I could beg a sofa or spare bed to sleep on, I would at least avoid another period of homelessness. One of my Twitter followers offered her spare bedroom and things briefly looked up, but then she changed her mind. One old friend offered to put me up in a bed & breakfast for 2 weeks, which would have been welcome respite. An old schoolfriend said if I was desperate I could couch-surf in his 1-bedroom apartment, where he has a 4-year-old daughter. Three offers, which gave me a momentary boost, but at the same time, it's somewhat depressing that of all the people I know on Facebook and Twitter who have generously proportioned houses, nobody else even offered to let me pitch my tent in their back garden... my experience of dealing with the local council and government benefits system means that you're just plain wrong if you think all those taxes you pay mean you won't end up sleeping rough, if life doesn't treat you well.

I always had a plan - 336 tramadol tablets - that would virtually assure me a swift and painless death, but I always felt a few steps removed from actually following through with it.

I'm so exhausted and unwell at the moment, in a stressful (but rewarding) job that it took hardly anything to push me over the edge to the most suicidal I've ever been. Losing my new local girlfriend and the accompanying social group, would be too much to bear, when I haven't the energy to grieve the loss and to pick myself up again.

There was no doubt in my mind about what the plan was. I could visualise the steps. It took every ounce of effort and willpower to overcome the urge to simply empty the 336 capsules into a small glass, add some other opiates that would cause respiratory arrest, and them simply get drunk until I passed out... probably less than 60 minutes, and I'd have departed from this world.

It might seem rash; an overreaction, but the rollercoaster ride I've been on has left me without a single percent of spare capacity. Even something minorly inconvenient or unexpectedly going wrong, can cause a seemingly disproportionate reaction.

I wasn't scared. I wasn't hesitant. It would have been done, and that would have been that. Call it a strength if you like - I can take bold fearless actions, even if they would certainly cause my life to be ended.

The scary thing is just how quickly I would have acted, having started the process. Less than an hour, to be a cold white corpse with purple lips and rigor mortis setting in. "Will I feel differently in an hour?" I asked myself, hypothetically supposing that I delay my deadly potion in order to see if my mood changed.

Luckily, I acted positively and pursued a more favourable resolution to what was almost certainly going to be a breakup. She said she wasn't going to pick up the phone or reply to my messages, which would perversely have only accelerated the commencement of my death ritual.

While it looks like a sudden thing to do over a very trivial trigger, things have to be seen in the wider context. I know how depressed and lonely I was before I met this girl and her friends. I know that the effort involved in courting her almost cost me my sanity, stability and job. I know how hard things have been at times during the umpteen years I've been diagnosed with clinical depression. At some point, you're so sick of a miserable life, that you'll gladly welcome the end of the suffering.

I felt a little bad about leaving the project I was working on unfinished, but I'd done the hardest bits, so most of it that was left to do was copy & paste.

I didn't feel any sadness or guilt, for depriving friends and family of the living version of me. Less than 1% of the people I'm in contact with, offered any kind of assistance when I was in a crisis. Basically, I mean fuck all to anybody, no matter what they say.

I'm sleep deprived and my brain chemistry just isn't right at the moment, but still, I know when it's time to go - you get sick of all the bullshit of living, Being alive is over-rated. It's been mostly suffering for me (boo hoo! get the violins out).

So, that was the time I nearly killed myself, deliberately... a close shave.

Tags: #suicide #depression

This is a story about the gutter press...

It was some time in 2009 or 2010... I forget exactly when. My life consisted of a mortgage, a house, a cat and an Apple Macbook laptop computer. Thanks to an alarmist sensationalistic tabloid newspaper, my attention was drawn to what were commonly referred to at the time as "legal highs".

In a game of cat & mouse, the government attempted to legislate against clever chemists, who could cook up concoctions that would evade the laws more quickly than they could be passed. "Meow meow" became an iconic drug of choice, for grown adults who have a right to choose what they put into their own bodies. We don't have policemen at the bottom of mountains and cliff faces, telling climbers that it's "too dangerous" for them to scale the treacherous heights.

The irony is, that I was a posterboy for a life of conformity that we are all supposed to aspire towards - I had the millstone of debt around my neck and a life of indentured servitude to look forward to. Despite my hefty income, I was destined to spend over 20 years - the prime of my life - servicing the unreasonable debts that I had been forced to incur, simply to have a secure place to live.

A decade earlier, there had been a nightclub - The Chunnel Club - which ran an event every Friday called Trinity which had two railway arches in London's Vauxhall. Under each arch, DJs played very distinctly different dance music. A drug dealer stood by the toilets and for £10 per tablet, one could purchase a 'Turbo Mitsubishi' which packed a powerful punch of 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)... more commonly known as ecstasy.

Had it not been for the tabloid newspaper printing articles about the legal drugs accessible for sale online, I would have been blissfully unaware of what treasures there were to be bought on internet. I quickly discovered that an analogue - a chemical cousin - of MDMA was readily available for next-day delivery via the Royal Mail.

By 2012, the long arm of the law had abolished the purchase and sale of most of the chemicals that posed little significant risk to my health and wellbeing. Thankfully, Gawker (a website) had published an article that pretty much provided a step-by-step guide on how to access the dark web, and the Silk Road drugs marketplace. I was in a position that no wealthy middle-class person would expect to find themselves: with an unlimited choice of illegal drugs available at my fingertips.

It should be noted at this point that I've never had a drug dealer. This should be re-iterated: although I purchased drugs off one reliable dealer in a club in London, I never knew his name nor have I ever scored drugs from a dealer in the conventional sense. For the uninitiated, this means having a bunch of phone numbers stored in your contact list, and ringing round to see if the narcotics that you desire can be supplied - to 'score' in the colloquial vernacular.

When one 'joins the club' of middle class guffawing overpaid twats, very often one is insulated from the seedy world of illegal narcotics the scruffy shitholes where drugs are sold from, by the most enterprising individuals who can't quite escape the life of poverty that seeks to forever keep them in their tracksuits and council estates.

God bless the internet - provider of drugs to people who would otherwise not have a fucking clue where to get them from.

It cannot be understated, the role that the media helpfully played, in drawing my attention to matters that I would otherwise have been blissfully unware of. I had no idea what "meow meow" was or that it could be bought online just like a product that one might purchase from Amazon dot com. I had no idea what Tor and the Silk Road were. I was familiar with Bitcoin, but only as a digital currency that happened to tickle my geek gland in around 2010. These terms might be gobbldegook to you and I applaud your ignorance, for it has protected you from an underworld that you never want to plumb the depths of.

From Tor and the Silk Road, arose the Black Market Road, Agora, Alphabay, Hansa and Dream Market, plus a million other wannabe imitators. Silk Road 2 - the sequel - was briefly the best place to purchase narcotics online.

Ronald Reagan - an actor - and his wife Nancy, started a completely insane moral crusade against human nature that spawned technological innovation, making it easier than ever before to access high-purity drugs at rock-bottom prices. I had no idea what "just say no" meant as a child, growing up, but by the time I reached adulthood I owed a great debt of gratitude to the Regans' legacy, of ensuring an unending supply of easily accessible powerful narcotics.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and many of the things that we take for granted today in our advanced industrialised society, were born as a result of the arms race and the space race. It seems so hilariously ironic that the attempts by the FBI, CIA, DEA and other US law-enforcement agencies, to destroy the drugs business, has resulted in a far more efficient system that can reliably deliver whatever I want, next day. God bless America, and her moral crusade to turn us all into debt-laden consuming automatons, who do not question authority and the need to relentlessly replace the shit we buy - designed to become obsolete within a year or so.

For every dark web marketplace that is shut down, another 10 will spring up in their place. The authorities' efforts should be applauded, because they are pushing the innovators to invent solutions and technologies that far outpace governments and their systems of societal control.

The founder of the Silk Road was a naïve young man who knew very little about technology - the ease with which he set up a site selling the best part of a quarter of a billion dollars of drugs per annum, is truly astounding. I mean, the guy was a fucking amateur - the trail he left is still all there for all to see, all over the internet... just Google "frosty" and "Dread Pirate Roberts".

God bless the gutter press, for keeping me informed of developments in the narcotics supply chain.

Tags: #drugs

This is a story about indoctrination...

I wrote a lengthy Facebook post on Sunday morning, condemning jingoistic rhetoric, especially in light of the emboldenment of closet racists by Brexit & Donald Trump. As our fathers and grandfathers who served in the armed forces during World War II die, I am angry that we seem to be left with a bunch of deluded nationalist wankers who think that warfare is a glorious thing. There are no winners in war - only one group getting to impose terms on another.

As children disengage from education and unjustly inherit a hopeless future of minimum wage zero-hours contract McJobs, we have witnessed the rise & rise of the Call of Duty series of computer games. The aggregate profits from Call of Duty, vastly eclipse all the money taken at the cinema box office & DVD sales, for war movies.

If you learn about warfare from computer games, not from history lessons, then you gain the false impression that wars are won by individual soldiers' heroic actions. The story told by computer games is that war is exciting entertainment and one man can be victorious against insurmountable numbers of enemy forces. When playing a computer game, you don't have the visceral fear that you are going to be wounded or killed. There's no risk to your life or health and you don't hear the screams of people, as they bleed to death in agony. When you kill a 'virtual' soldier you know they're not real - they're not human like you are. All humans have a family; you and the 'enemy' bleed red; everybody is equally shit scared of death and injury.

When we learn about history at school in the UK, it's all about World War I and World War II. We're taught about the USA sending cannon fodder for the D-Day beach landings. The Brits talk about 'winning the war'. The Yanks talk about 'helping the Brits win the war'. Due to Cold War propaganda, it's now no longer acknowledged that it was the Russians who conquered Berlin and cornered Hitler in his bunker, where he committed suicide. The fact is that Nazi Germany fought on too many fronts and over-stretched itself.

It's hard to conceptualise a war of attrition - trench warfare - like World War I, when ground troops would be sent 'over the top' only to be shot to pieces by machine guns. Through the genocide of the Native Americans and happy geographic accident, the USA has been able to pour trillions of dollars into the development of weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear bombs were dropped by the USA, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians - men, women & children. The USA has a romanticised a kind of warfare that's cowardly, clean and clinical - dropping bombs on a defenceless 'enemy' thousands of feet below.

Every decisive weapon that has ever been developed in history - from the pointy stick to the suicide bomber - has conferred not only a military advantage but also a psychological one. If you've ever been prodded with a pointy stick, it's not very nice and it makes you wish you had a pointy stick, with which to at least defend yourself, if not to get revenge on the person who prodded you. If you have ever prodded an unarmed person with a pointy stick, then you are joining the ranks of every man who ever carried a spear, slingshot, bow & arrow, dagger, sword, musket, rifle, pistol, rocket launcher or machine gun. Weapons turn an ordinary animal that can only fight with teeth & claws, into an increasingly powerful combination of man & machine, capable of mass murder. The arms race is a natural reaction to armed oppression.

I like to think of myself as a cosmopolitan Citizen of the World, as opposed to a nationalist. Racists with the St. George's flag draped around their shoulders make me want to vomit. However, the educated middle-classes who work well-paid professional jobs, have many things of value - houses, cars, cash in the bank, stocks & shares, holiday homes and a bunch of other stuff too - but English white trash have nothing: no hope of a better life, and their life is dog shit anyway. The most valuable thing that an English 'chav/pleb/prole' has is their British citizenship, which entitles them to welfare benefits, free healthcare and social housing. I can somewhat understand why the Brexit brigade wouldn't want to share the only thing they've got in their life that's got any value: their UK government handouts.

I watched the Christopher Nolan film Dunkirk yesterday. I saw it at an IMAX cinema, shot on 70mm film (well, the digital equivalent anyway) which made it an immersive experience. I didn't expect it to affect me emotionally. I honestly could not have given a fuck whether Private Ryan was Saved or not.

I've been a keen sailor/yachtsman, since childhood. There's something inescapably British about living on a small island. I've spent lots of time at sea, and I have no illusions about what a formidable impasse any stretch of open seawater presents, even in the absence of man-eating sharks. The English Channel - where I've sailed and kitesurfed more than anywhere in the world - is one of the windiest places on Earth and has some of the biggest tides, which create dangerous fast-flowing currents that exceed the maximum speed of many boats.

In the film Dunkirk, when the flotilla of British fishermen and amateur pleasure boaters, appeared on the horizon - to evacuate the beach packed with 400,000 troops, surrounded on all sides by advancing Nazi troops - I was crying like a baby. This is a true story. 326,000 troops were evacuated by a hastily assembled hotchpotch of any vessel that was capable of making the channel crossing and getting close enough to the beach for soldiers to clamber aboard these motorboats, fishing trawlers, sailing yachts and every other kind of boat you could imagine.

Land of Hope and Glory or God Save the King did not play as the soundtrack, nor did Rule Britannia or any other overtly patriotic clichéd music. Dunkirk wasn't plastered with Union Jacks or other national symbols. However, when the film is about to end, the soundtrack finishes with a subtle reboot of Edward Elgar's Variation IX "Nimrod" which is played grave. The orchestral piece is played so slowly, that few would be able to immediately identify the chords, name the work and its original composer.

I don't wear a poppy on Remembrance Sunday and I don't watch any of the television coverage, let alone attend the ceremony.

The British Legion has metamorphosed into something that's got an unpleasant association with racists, and is on the same spectrum as the British National Party (BNP), the English Defence League (EDL) and Britain First. I have a knee-jerk reaction that causes me to reject the flag-waving nationalism that inversely correlates with the economic prosperity of our once-great nation and empire. Nationalism breeds bigotry and xenophobia, which leads to hate crimes and racially motivated atrocities.

Of course, to feel guilty about slavery, the conquest of nations, genocidal massacres, imperial aggression and oppression of whole nations - hundreds of millions of people - is not something I can take any rational personal responsibility for. I wasn't alive when the British gunned down over 1,000 unarmed Sikh men, women & children, who were peacefully gathered in Jallianwalla Bagh public gardens. I protested against the invasion of Iraq. I've protested against every war that Britain has fought, since reaching voting age - when in theory, all wars became fought in my name, as a member of the UK electorate. In a democracy, the blood of the innocent is spilled on every citizen's hands.

However, something about my upbringing in Britain has clearly indoctrinated me, as I was so deeply emotionally moved by Dunkirk. Perhaps living by the sea and being a keen dinghy sailor, yachtsman and kitesurfer, has given me an appreciation for the treachery of the oceans and the difficulty of evacuating 326,000 soldiers, trapped on a beach, to a place of safety. I can directly relate to feelings of every yacht skipper towards the safety of their crew and the duty of care that is morally owed to anybody who is in need of assistance - the sea is a cruel and deadly place, and to return crew, passengers and shipwreck victims to safe dry land is a responsibility felt amongst all captains and skippers.

Watching a very British war movie, doesn't make me want to build a wall and turn the United Kingdom into a fortress; I don't want to deport every Muslim and Eastern European; I don't want to racially abuse people who weren't born in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland; I don't want to EVER say that "national security" is a justification for the infringement of the sovereign rights of another nation state, through war, invasion, dropping bombs, drone strikes and UN economic sanctions that cause disproportionate suffering to innocent civilians. I didn't rush out of the cinema, and immediately want to punch the first foreign-looking person that I saw.

I'm obviously conflicted. It was a wake-up call, that I've been so subtly indoctrinated, that I'm not even aware of my own Britishness. I hope that doesn't mean that I'm more of a closet racist than I care to admit to myself or others. Am I really just as bad as Trump supporters and neo-Nazis, beneath my cultured & educated, compassionate liberal metropolitan tolerant & inclusive veneer?

It's a dichotomy, but I feel like I can watch a historically accurate dramatisation of true events, and be emotionally moved, but yet also stay true to my values: condemnation of nationalism and Donald Trump's undiplomatic rhetoric; and peacefully protesting against war and opposing racism, wherever I see it.

Tags: #politics

This is a story about winos...

If you've ever spent a night in a cheap sleeping bag, you'll know what it's like in the small hours of the morning, when the temperature plummets and you can't get warm - you're frozen to the bone and your body shakes to move your muscles, burning energy to heat your blood, which keeps you awake. All you can think about is how nice it would be to be snug and warm and cosy. A rough night will teach you to appreciate your duvet, blankets, heating boiler or furnace, roaring fire and other sources of warmth, like spooning with your sweetheart.

I've slept on a glacier, and it's horrible how quickly the ice leeches away the heat from any body part that strays off your sleeping mat. Concrete is just the same - without some insulating barrier between you and the floor, the cold seems to rise up and enter you... your lips turn blue and your teeth chatter.

In this city of concrete, brick & cement, limestone and granite, there are far more homeless people than I'm ever used to seeing. I've been homeless and slept rough in London. The UK's capital city is a magnet for those seeking to improve their fortunes, through employment opportunities, begging from rich tourists or simply the high quality narcotics.

"Have you scored?" yells a man behind me, to a man at the other end of the road. It's 9:30am on a Wednesday, and these two beggars look familiar to me. My ten minute walk to the office takes me past almost 15 men, who all congregate along the route between the city's two main railway stations - each with their own 'patch'. Some sit quietly with a paper cup on the pavement in front of them; eyes downcast but intently watching the world go by in their peripheral vision. Some look me square in the eye from several hundred metres away - well aware that I am pretending to not notice them - before timing a polite and muted "spare some change please?" request to perfection... all I can say is "sorry mate". Some linger at an intersection, where they step into my path... "excuse me" they say, and my eyes flick up to meet theirs... they know immediately that the element of surprise has not worked - I saw them before they saw me - and I continue my walk undiverted.

How do I know that it's a man who slept rough in that doorway, and he was probably an alcoholic and/or a heroin addict? If one wishes to be pedantic, I don't.

Speaking frankly, a woman who sleeps rough is is at risk of becoming a rape victim at some point. Another unspeakable and unpalatable truth is that a woman in the grips of addiction is not going to spend her nights having her body illegally violently sexually violated against her will, when she could spend that time turning tricks - there are an insatiable number of punters for blowjobs and sex - to pay for just enough heroin and crack to numb the pain of another shitty day of human existence.

What I say is not sexism, prejudiced or anything other than the situation as it stands in the UK - sadly, there are enough rapists out there to make sleeping on the streets a dangerous thing for a woman to do, so our local government will ensure that they are not complicit in any acts of rape or sexual assault that get perpetrated on the streets, though their negligent inaction.

A single man with an alcohol and/or drug problem is not considered to be vulnerable enough to be housed by the local government. In fact, the alcoholics and addicts who line the busy thoroughfares of this bustling city, are viewed as a liability with regards to giving them money and a place to live. "They'll only spend it on drink and drugs" completely misses the point about cause and effect, but statistically it's proven to be mostly correct. Council houses (a.k.a. social housing) and apartments have been turned into absolute shitholes by so many men in the past, that the local authority treats their homeless adult single male population like a plague of modern-day lepers.

Thus, I can make an educated guess that this almost entirely unused fire exit doorway, was where a man laid his head to rest last night. He was probably a heroin addict, but this means nothing - whether it's a symptom or the cause of his destitution is a non sequitur, because homelessness and addiction are intractable. It is as if we ask "which came first? the eggshell or the egg yolk?" without considering the ridiculous notion of having one without the other, and completely ignoring the chicken.

The United Kingdom was flooded with cheap alcohol during the boom years of the 1980s, when the British pound sterling was strong versus the French franc, and enterprising men and women set off across the English Channel to bring back vast quantities of wine. France grew grapes and fermented them in a country that was predominantly rural and agricultural. England, by comparison with our nearest neighbour, has dense areas of population clustering around factories, coal mines, steel mills, dockyards and other organs that were necessitated for the functioning of an empire, as well as the defence of the realm.

Heroin's quality and availability once fluctuated wildly in the UK. The fields of opium-yielding poppies flourish in Afghanistan and Thailand, but the trade routes - the Silk Road - were at the mercy of incredible geopolitical forces. Now, thanks to the intervention of the USA and the UK in illegal foreign wars and 'regime' toppling, the supply of high-quality cheap narcotics has never been in more rude health.

If you think a homeless heroin addict single man is a fool and a failure, you are wrong; completely wrong. If you think in terms of 'bang for your buck' a £10 bag of heroin is going to get you a lot more fucked up than £10 of alcohol. If you think that injecting drugs is insane, you haven't considered the insanity of putting something you've paid your hard-earned money for, into your acidic stomach, where nearly 1/3rd of it will be destroyed. The rational thing to do is to put 100% of your intoxicant directly into your bloodstream.

If we followed the logic of the homeless man, we would all have a canula in one of our veins, and we would pay £1 for pure ethanol to be squirted into our bodies from a syringe, whereupon we would be immediately intoxicated to the point of near-blackout.

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Before we go any further, I should make it clear that I am not advocating injecting drugs - or drug abuse of any kind - nor have I ever injected any drugs, or had another person inject me with narcotics.

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If one wishes to consider the desperate plight of an addict or alcoholic, one only needs to think about the period when many homeless men would drink methylated spirits. Methanol differs from ethanol chemically, but methylated spirits - known colloquially as meths - has been deliberately poisoned by manufacturers, in an effort to discourage human consumption, without success. I can buy 5 litres of meths - roughly the same volume as 7 bottles of wine - for around £10, but to drink it would kill me. Out of desperation to avoid delirium tremens, which can cause seizures and death, alcoholics will drink small amounts of meths to self-medicate for their physical dependence on alcohol, despite the fact that it will cause them to go blind.

The war on drugs and the war on terror have now created a reliable supply chain, whereby the most powerful narcotics on the planet are available at unsurpassed purity and at rock-bottom prices, as never before witnessed in human history.

Competitive free-market economics has given rise to a swathe of pharmaceutical giants, vying to innovate with new medications that are 'better' than anything seen before, in a race for profits. Fentanyl and carfentanil were born into this world in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively. Carfentanil is so potent, that an aerosol mist of it could be used as a weapon of mass destruction. Although the Russian government does not officially acknowledge it, carfentanil has been used in a terrorist hostage situation - pumped into a building as a gas - resulting in the deaths of 125 innocent civilians in a single incident, from opiate overdose.

The rise and rise of the zero-hours contract McJob and a hopeless future for unskilled labourers, in the face of global capitalism, has created insecurity and the total destruction of the prospect of happy and contented family life for a scandalous number of men. While pram-faced mothers, with gold hoop earrings and their hair held back tightly in a scrunchie, will be prioritised for social housing, our entire welfare system discourages work and parental bonds. Economically, a single mother is better off than one who stays with the father of her children. Dads have been made redundant by cheap Far-Eastern labour. People respond to incentives, and so we have created a generation of children from broken homes. We have created an unacknowledged mountainous scrap-heap of homeless single male drug addicts, in a society that has no better use for them, other than to let them rot.

We are all familiar with the concept of supply and demand, but there is also something intrinsic in our genetic programming that makes us seek out value for money. It seems obvious that given the choice of intoxicants, I would select 1 gram of carfentanil instead of 1 gram of morphine. An amount of carfentanil the same size as a grain of salt is enough to kill me by overdose - carfentanil is better value for money, being about 10,000 times more potent than morphine.

The opium smokers became morphine addicts, then diacetylmorphine (heroin) addicts, then fentanyl addicts and now carfentanil addicts. The subsection of the population who have abandoned hope are always driven to seek the strongest mind-altering substance that they can obtain, for the money which they beg (panhandle), borrow or steal in order to support their 'habit' each day.

1 kilogram of carfentanil could kill the entire population of the United Kingdom. Carfentanil is produced in bulk quantities in the Far-East, where - ironically - all the manufacturing and mining jobs have gone, leaving vast numbers of men economically redundant.

In this city where I now live, the capitalists drove the cloth-making industry into a race to the bottom, negatively affecting the prosperity of nations such as India, which has over a billion inhabitants. It seems apt that the 'payback' for this global suicide pact should be so publicly conspicuous. Homelessness and addiction are openly on display, as symptoms of a world that is sick with an illness that's called capitalism; vulgar greed and hoarding of wealth.

I am full of sorrow that so many of my fellow citizens are left bewildered as to what happened to their once-great nation, and seek solace in all the wrong places. To help even one man (#frank) exhausted my economic reserves. All I have left is the power to spread word to more people than I could ever manage to speak to individually, using the power and freedom of the Internet. I preach to the converted, so often, but to stop and speak to the abandoned men - each in their 'patch' - is impossible in the face of a capitalists waving a fistfuls of dollars in front of a sea of hungry people.

All I can say to my readers who own computers, smartphones and Internet connections - you have a golden ticket that the man who slept on the cardboard in the doorway last night, does not have. He's viewed as trash, just the same as the remnants of his existence left behind when he awoke and moved elsewhere this morning.

Tags: #homeless #frank #addiction #drugs #alcohol

This is a story about succession planning...

The British have always liked hot drinks.

Coffee shops were terribly trendy in the late 1600s, having been launched in Oxford before springing up across London, where ships that brought the crop of beans to English shores found many willing patrons for the roasted, ground and brewed end product.

Tea symbolises imperial Great Britain. The Indian town of Darjeeling - formerly part of the British Empire - is synonymous with the tender leaves that citizens of the United Kingdom douse with boiling water, infusing bitter plant alkaloids into the hot liquid. "Put the kettle on" are four words that will be said in millions of homes this evening, despite the stimulating effects of caffeine.

Cocoa beans have given rise to hot chocolate, also known as drinking chocolate. Even a small UK food & drink shop will offer all manner of flavourings for hot water. Nestled in amongst the other things that my fellow Brits would categorise as 'hot drinks' I found something that I think of as a powerfully concentrated and flavoured spread, ideally enjoyed on toasted slices of bread - a jar of Bovril beef extract.

The flavour of Bovril is closer to Marmite and Vegemite - or any other brand of yeast extract - than it is to beef, in my opinion. How exactly they "extract" Bovril from a cow is something that I don't really want to think about. I suppose it's a macroscopic version of what they do with microscopic yeast - microorganisms are just the same as cattle really... eating, shitting, reproducing and not doing much else.

In this Bovril-drinking Northern city, conspicuous by their absence are people with skin tones darker than my own and women wearing headscarves. I formerly lived in a region where the population is 46% Muslim. Surprisingly, the Bengali shopkeepers have no issue with selling pork and alcohol to those who are not forbidden - for religious reasons - from eating swine flesh and imbibing the intoxicating liquor created from fermented fruits and grains.

In this unfamiliar part of Northern England, there are innumerable drinking establishments in my local vicinity, as well a vast number of hot food outlets where a bacon or sausage "bap" can be procured as a traditional breakfast snack.

India - before she was partitioned in 1947 - was a nation where Muslims would respect the holiness of cows in the Hindu culture, and reciprocally the Hindus would respect the Muslim rejection of pigs as unclean animals, and alcohol as an addictive intoxicant that places a heavy burden on any society that permits its consumption.

Modern global society still holds strong religious views on the treatment of domesticated animals and the brewing and consumption of alcohol. When we examine the historical evidence using the scientific method, we can see that cows and pigs would not exist today as we know them, without human intervention spanning many more thousands of years than even the oldest religion. Furthermore, we can see that humanity has been intent on its own intoxication throughout the history of civilisation. The Mayans were chewing coca leaves at least 3,400 years before Islam had its golden age, and vastly predates Hinduism and Judaism. Ergo, we must conclude that excluding beef, pork, alcohol and other things from our diet and habits of consumption is a relatively recent 'fad'.

The Chinese are the biggest per capita consumers of pork, while America and the developed nations hoover up vast quantities of refined coca leaves in the form of white powder cocaine and rocks of freebase cocaine, known as crack. Opium, morphine and diamorphine (heroin) are endemic worldwide. Caffeinated beverages - hot or cold - are guzzled by the globe. Alcohol is cheaper than bottled mineral water from desirable brands like Evian or Perrier. Yet, only in the North of England - so far as I know - do people consume a hot drink made from Bovril.

I hate being spread thin. I'm adaptable and I can be sent all over the globe to work with people who observe different cultural traditions. I am relatively worldly-wise enough to not commit a faux-pas, such as eating food before sundown in front of those observing the Ramadan period of fasting. I can pretty much figure out whatever you want me to do, if you're paying me enough and you're not open to persuasion that your ideas are probably terrible in their original unmodified form.

Why have a dog and bark yourself?

Now I find myself juggling the essential task of finding a doctor who will keep me supplied with the medications that I have become physically dependent on, while also settling in a new home in an unfamiliar city. I must also meet the demands placed upon me in the pursuit of enough money to eat, service my debts and give myself more security and freedom of choice.

I'm withdrawing from Xanax (alprazolam), Valium (diazepam), Ambien (zolpidem), zopiclone and Lyrica (pregablin). All of these drugs work in a very similar way - mimicking the brain's own 'brakes' and calming neural activity. These medications cause a chemical called GABA to be released in the brain, block the brain from recycling any unused GABA, or imitate the 'signature' of GABA itself. The overall effect is tranquillising, stress relieving and aids sleep, but the withdrawal is quite the opposite. In fact, the abrupt withdrawal from any or all of the medications listed can cause life-threatening seizures.

I must juggle social drinking - alcohol is a mandatory social lubricant in most UK culture - with the need to use alcohol as a form of self-medication for the stress I'm under. I also use alcohol as a substitute for the powerful psychotropic medications that my body has become dependent on, like heroin addicts kick their habit using methadone. Alcoholics can break free from physical dependence using benzodiazepines such as Librium (chlordiazepoxide). I'm doing it the other way round, because I know I can stop drinking - I plan on doing so in October, when I will use the excuse that I'm going teetotal to raise money for charity (a.k.a. Stoptober) - as I have done successfully before.

How I ended up with so much on my plate is not really my intended subject of this lengthy diatribe, but in my dark and difficult moments, I am facing a clusterfuck of competing demands on my time and energy, while also dealing with panic attacks and a general feeling of uneasiness and discontent; a false perception of threat, danger and imminent disaster.

My perceptions are not completely warped. Earlier this year, both my kidneys completely failed. Very recently I narrowly escaped homelessness, bankruptcy, destitution and destruction. Unpleasant feelings are a harbinger of a genuine medical emergency - I am detoxing myself without the supervision of a doctor or nurse, while also working full time.

I've skippered yachts and kept my crew safe in stormy weather; I've led groups safely up and down dangerous mountains covered with snow and ice; I've become blasé about near-death experiences, because I've now had so many. I don't think I'm exaggerating or being hyperbolic when I say that I'm facing my life's toughest challenge so far.

The demands placed upon me in my day job seem unreasonable at the moment, but I was desperate for fast cash. I was drowning and I was thrown a lifeline - beggars can't be choosers.

Friends who have submitted themselves to the mercy of the state seem to have suffered greatly from the trials and tribulations of dealing with compassion fatigued bureaucrats. A great many nurses and doctors have told me that I'm 'entitled' to live at the expense of the government - i.e. my fellow citizens - because of the taxes I have paid in my life, and because my mental illness disqualifies me from being 'fit for work'. To put work as my priority, ahead of treatment is something that none of my doctors want, but equally there's a long queue of people who would prefer to sit at home smoking cannabis and playing on their Playstations, rather than flipping burgers or scrubbing toilets for the minimum wage.

Like concentrated beef extract, I'm intense; I'm focussed; I can achieve a lot very quickly. The terrifying truth is that the world applauds anybody who exhibits bipolar behaviours... what happened to all those 'overnight successes' and 'one-hit wonders'? They spent all their money on fast cars, beautiful women, drugs & alcohol, and the rest they just wasted, is the oft-repeated quote.

Once you've figured out a winning formula, all you can do is teach others to follow in your footsteps. If you can train an army of mini-mes to do the grunt work - the heavy lifting - then life becomes more sustainable. Only a fool repeats the same behaviour, expecting different results.

And so, I desperately need to find my successor - somebody to fill my shoes and shoulder some of the burden, allowing me to recover and stabilise, rather than being trapped in a cycle of just repeating things that I've done before a thousand times.

It's hard to find somebody who's willing to do a shitty job, and it's hard to find somebody who's able to navigate their way through the piles of shit and find the better way of doing things. I might be that diamond in the rough, but that doesn't mean it's a great idea to get me scrubbing toilets or flipping burgers, even though I will do if you ask me, pay me and I'm desperate enough.

Having a desperation-driven economy, with most of us spread thinly - stressed out and always on the brink of breakdown and ruin - is a terrible, terrible thing to do to people.

Hunger will drive ingenuity and industriousness, but it's not a sustainable strategy, no matter how much Bovril you have to eat and/or drink.

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

This is a story about hypocrisy...

I wasn't born into a wealthy family. I don't have trust fund income. I'm practically disinherited. My relationship with my parents was causing me far more harm than good. I don't have lottery winnings, bonds, gilts, shares, Swiss bank accounts, briefcases full of banknotes or any other assets; securities; cash; collateral. I don't even have youth and toned physique on my side any more, so men aren't going to pay for the pleasure of my company, which was always plan "Z" in the event that plans "A" through to "Y" had failed.

I've got 61% of my kidney function left, I can't feel my left foot, although - irritatingly - I do feel pain if I stand on something. I also get something akin to phantom limb pain. As far as my brain is concerned, most of the time my foot doesn't seem to exist anymore, but at night it aches all over parts of my foot, ankle and calf. It aches so much I can't sleep without pain relief and/or sleeping tablets. I drink too much. I put all the weight I lost back on. To top it all off, I'm going to be closer to 40 than 35 soon.

I'm in a precarious position.

I couldn't work doing a job that required me to stand for any length of time. I couldn't work a job that required me to do much walking at all. That rules out McDonalds, stacking shelves and being a security guard. Even the homeless people who sell The Big Issue do so standing up.

So, why would I risk my professional reputation by blogging and tweeting so candidly about every innermost thought and private detail of my life? Don't I care about my job? Being able to find gainful employment is pretty important for me, as I don't own a home and I don't have the fallback option of living with any family member. Loss of income means I can't pay rent or even afford a hostel bed. Putting my private life out into the public sphere looks like I'm jeopardising my career - my reputation - and therefore my job - my income - and my housing. Doesn't it seem like I brought my recent crisis, where I was almost homeless, on myself?

What does homeless even mean, anyway? Well, if you're not receiving social security benefits - job seekers' allowance (JSA) or employment support allowance (ESA) - then you don't get any other benefits either, which includes housing benefits. If I go to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets council offices and find their housing department, and tell them that I have been paying over £2,000 a year in council tax, but I've become homeless, they will just tell me to f**k off, in no uncertain terms.

That's what homeless means: it means that every single safety net has failed you, and you will be sleeping on the streets. It's happened to me. I've been homeless.

You would think that this would make me dash to the Job Centre to sign on for JSA as soon as I lost a job, or phone the government telephone line to apply for ESA as soon as I got sick, but there are rules. Strictly speaking, I've got a job - I'm a company director - and strictly speaking I've already got a salary... it's just that my company hasn't been able to afford to pay me for several months. My company only sells one thing: me. If I'm broken, my company doesn't have anything to sell, so it doesn't make any money.

Here's how the government process goes:

Q. Have you lost your job?

A. No, I have a job

--- I'm not eligible for JSA --

Q. Are you able to work?

A. Yes, I do unpaid work every day, without too many problems

--- I'm not eligible for ESA ---

Q. Are you receiving JSA or ESA?

A. No. I'm not eligible for either

--- I'm not eligible for housing benefit ---

So, I get shunted out of the welfare benefits system and into the hands of the NHS, who view me as a vulnerable person in crisis. Therefore I could be hospitalised for 24 hours, 28 days or 6 months, purely because otherwise it's pretty clear that I'd be fucked. I could be housed in a crisis house for a couple of weeks. However, until I tell the government a white lie - that I'm so disabled by mental illness that I can't work - then none of that income tax, national insurance and council tax that I paid over the years, is going to be used to give me some assistance with housing and income, until I'm recovered enough to go back to working full-time. Equally, I'm not going to get any paid employment until I omit to tell a prospective employer that I have had some health issues and need to work part-time, until I'm well enough to work full-time.

Do I kowtow to the government for less than £100 a week of ESA money? When you lose your ESA, you lose your housing benefit too. Where's that going to get me? Back to square one.

Do I start a full-time job earlier than I'd like to? I pretty much have to. I don't have any other options, given that the other options lead back to the same place: homelessness.

There are a lot of things that make my situation very unique and hard for the 'one-size fits all' government systems to cope with. Nothing is left to the discretion of the people who have to deal with the unemployed, the sick and the homeless.

As Joseph Heller described wonderfully in Catch 22, there are situations where to act rationally leads to the least desirable outcome. Most men don't want to fight in wars, because they'll probably be killed. Therefore if you're driven insane, that's actually the most sane response - through your madness, you also proved your sanity, ergo, you're fit for battle. Quod erat demonstrandum.

I've made my choice to use my professional reputation to get work, but I also have every detail of my private life and my psyche fully on display in the public sphere. I have no security. I have no job. I'm soon to have no home.

I would be a hypocrite to take down this blog and delete my Twitter account, because I've lived for 2 years in the public sphere, documenting very private and personal matters, which might seem to contradict my professional reputation that a person may glean from my CV, LinkedIn, meeting me, talking to me and talking to the people I've worked for and otherwise know me in a professional capacity.

It seems cowardly, having taken the brave step of being honest with 7,000+ Twitter followers, that I would hide these 750,000 words from a handful of people, because I'm afraid of damaging my professional reputation and career. We're all human and we're all fallible. To err is human. However, to document one's own mistakes and shortcomings is not at all common. To put more of yourself into the public sphere than is hidden away in any other dark recess of the world, including your own brain, is exceptional. I read things I've written less than a year ago, and I don't remember writing them, but I did. I wrote it all; every word.

It seems stupid, having an excellent professional reputation and a successful career spanning 20 years, and having made a great deal of effort to secure vital income and housing, to risk losing it by having my private life and confidential matters, publicly available. My job security depends on my employer's confidence in me to do the work that I'm highly qualified and experienced to do. Most people hide their weaknesses and their struggles. To project a false image - to be vain - to protect your ego and appear impressively faultless, is the normal thing to do.

Do I stand by my labour of love, and defend it, despite the vulnerable position it puts me in? Do I capitulate under the pressure to conform to social norms, and hide this other part of myself away in some private recess?

What's going to happen? Is it true that putting unflattering things into the public sphere is automatically damaging to your professional reputation? Who's been brave or stupid enough to try the irrational and risky thing that I've done? Who would be brave or stupid enough not to pull the plug, to de-risk the situation and limit any damage that might be done?

I can't pull the plug. I need this blog. I need this identity. I need to be brave, even if it feels stupid, because otherwise I'm a hypocrite.

In the world I want to build, we don't need alter-egos; we don't have a professional persona; we don't maintain flawless CVs with no gaps between employers; we don't make a distinction between who we are privately and who we are publicly: we are just ourselves, all the time; warts and all.

I am guilty of imagining utopian ideals, but this is different. The lines between work & home life; public & private life; speakable & unspeakable; stigmatised & unstigmatised... those lines are being blurred and people are becoming proud of identities that 50 years ago were literally illegal under UK law.

We have laws that prevent discrimination on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, religion and a host of other things, but a woman may still choose to publish a book under a male pseudonym, when gender bias shows that she will sell more books if she does so.

I would be vain and egotistical if I painted myself as some brave campaigner for ending the tyranny that a 'career' and the painstaking care we take over our professional reputation, wreaks on our lives. However, this blog has helped me to overcome career-ending obstacles. What can you say your spotless CV brought you, when you eventually crumbled under the pressure to maintain an unsustainably perfect façade?

I recently said "vanity and ego: I hope they keep you warm at night". I said it slightly maliciously, with my words dripping with sarcasm. I felt regretful for saying that to somebody.

Perhaps therein lies the truth of it all: is this a vanity project, or is it the very definition of a deflated ego to publicly display the side of your character that you always kept hidden?

I'm going to decide, because I assume nobody is going to read this. To assume I have interested readers would be vain.

It feels like a pretty brave thing for a stupid person to do.

Tags: #career

This is a story about not pleasing all the people all the time...

The gutter press and Tory rags have done a staggeringly good job of convincing ordinary people that their security is under threat from the invisible spectre of international terrorism. Despite the complete lack of evidence of any communication with ISIS - commanding and controlling "sleeper cells" and suchlike - the newspapers have managed to convince a worrying number of people that there's an Islamic plot to kill and maim the people of the UK, even somehow dovetailing with immigration, asylum and - by loose association - our membership of the European Union.

Our very worst off members of society live in the most fear. They fear the loss of their low-skilled jobs to migrant workers who are prepared to accept terrible working conditions. They also fear for their security, having been turned into Islamophobes by an unrelenting media narrative about terrorism, radicalisation and Muslim extremism. A disappointing number of our fellow Brits would vote in favour of policies that deported Muslims, closed our borders to immigration and asylum and expanded our police state; even arming every police officer with a gun. These working class people should be staunch Labour voters, but the 'security' (jobs and terrorism) issue swung them into the Conservatives' open arms.

Meanwhile, the surprise success of Jeremy Corbyn - to political pundits, journalists and even his own party members - is easily attributable to the number of liberal lefties who were politically 'homeless' until Corbyn re-ignited those forgotten dreams of a socialist utopia. Many who voted Labour might not have been pro-Corbyn, but what educated humanist could ignore the simplistically appealing ideology of taking from the rich to give to the poor? At last, a left wing party to vote for again! Many who had been politically dormant were re-activated by the chance to make a vote to oppose the right-wing, and their cruel cuts and austerity.

To some, it seems obvious that if Labour were to adopt a policy of blocking and derailing Brexit, they would surely have voters turning to them in their droves. Sadly, this is where Labour is caught in a terrible paradox.

By opposing Brexit, Labour would seem soft on immigration, and therefore soft on national security, which are the paramount issues in the minds of the working class, who are Labour's core voting bloc. Conversely, the Islington champagne-socialist who reads the Observer or the Guardian is appalled that Labour offer no strong opposition to leaving the EU. Even to the most rabid Corbyn supporter, they are somewhat baffled as to why he's sitting on the fence when it comes to Brexit. The reason is simple: Brexit is bound up with fears of international terrorism as well as job insecurity. To oppose Brexit would be spectacularly unpopular with the working class. To oppose Brexit would make the Labour party into a party for the wealthy educated London leftie liberals, who are a substantial proportion of the much-resented gentrifiers - seen as no different from any of the other metropolitan elites, who are out of touch with the reality of life's daily struggles in an austere Britain.

After years of politics where people and politicians believed in nothing; where policies were chosen based on focus groups and surveys; where political ideologies had been abandoned... Jeremy Corbyn represents the antidote to politics dominated by unprincipled men and women who only want to wield power. Every policy; every position on the Corbynite agenda, is driven by his conscience and his desire to do the best for ordinary people. This is a radical sea-change, from the rush to the centre and the boom of the populists. We had the era where Tory and New Labour were indistinguishable. We are in an era where a populist party can capitalise upon the pain and fears of a nation reeling from an invisible recession and security threats that have been exaggerated beyond all reasonable proportions. Corbyn represents a return to an ideological politics and strong opinions on what's best for the ordinary people of Britain, instead of the weak insipid crap shaped by polls and focus groups, which pointed to vote-winning policies.

Now that Labour, led by Jeremy Corbyn, has proven itself to be a credible opposition and stands every chance of being in government, the next move is extremely unpalatable. As a party that ideologically stands for the working class, Labour must address that group's primary concerns, even if they're unfounded. It would be impossible to undo the damage of the Brexit campaign, UKIP, BNP, EDL and a nonstop media narrative that tells us that Islamic fundamentalist terror threatens to kill or maim us and our families, anytime, anywhere. The ongoing invisible recession caused by the financial crisis of 2007/8 and Tory cuts - austerity - has been blamed on econonic migrants, but the broad brush has tarred all immigrants, including those seeking asylum. As a principled man Corbyn has been able to do little more than sit on the fence.

Tax avoidance by the rich and large corporations costs the UK vast sums of money, wheras economic migrants actually bring a net benefit to the economy. Suicides caused by job losses and welfare cuts far outnumber deaths caused by terrorism.

It is as if, having been stressed and depressed for a long time, we discovered that we could function perfectly well with just two fingers and a thumb, and so we have decided to cut off four of our digits in the mistaken belief that it will solve our malaise.

To try to reason with those who are hell-bent on Brexit, would only be to further antagonise and patronise them; similarly with those who believe we might need to nuke Iran or North Korea before they nuke us. Those who have decided that all Muslims are potential terrorists are not open to persuasion that their beliefs are complete bullshit. Unfortunately, many traditional Labour voters hold these abhorrant views, and have a warped set of priorities, when it comes to politics, citing immigration - and national security, implicitly - as their number one issue.

The Tory party ties itself in knots, being led by a woman whose opinions can do a U-turn in the blink of an eye; a woman who believes in nothing; a woman who is the toothless, powerless figurehead of a party hell bent on creating a huge insecure labour pool, to be exploited by ruthless capitalists for obscene profits.

The best we can hope for is an awakening of class consciousness: where people realise that the Tory government does not seek to protect its people, but seeks to exploit them; where people realise that the Labour party of today bears no resemblence to New Labour or the Labour party of the 1970s; where people wake up to the injustice of the fact that the burden of Tory cuts and austerity has fallen disproportionately on the least wealthy.

Labour and Corbyn are trapped between a rock and a hard place, and can only patiently continue to stand by their manifesto and the underlying ideology - that the richest and the largest corporations should pay their fair share in society - until the electorate is finally sick and tired of Tory lies and hypocrisy.

As a champagne-sipping North London socialist, I obviously want to scream with frustration at the working class man or woman who votes against their self-interest. They've been turned into Islamophobes who blame immigration for their daily struggles in life, rather than remembering that it was the bank bailouts that started this whole mess, and the Tories who made the ordinary people pay for it. However, all my efforts have done is to label me as part of the London elite, living in a bubble... despised by the working class.

At the moment, politics depresses me, but the ever-present chance of a vote of no confidence in the government and another general election this year, would re-invigorate my interest and my enthusiasm to spread the 'gospel' of comrade Corbyn and a better life for everyone, under a left-wing socialist Labour government.

Politics is such a turn-off for most people, but I think that the referendum on our EU membership, the shock result of Donald Trump's victory and the credibility of a Corbyn-led Labour party, has engaged people who were previously disinterested and/or disillusioned.

Perhaps I'd better get ready to announce my Loony candidacy, should another election be suddenly thrust upon us.

Tags: #politics

This is a story about home treatment...

This is what the Conservative government's 1990's Care in the Community policy looks like, in practice. An extremely low-paid NHS worker, who isn't trained as a mental health nurse, is dispatched on public transport to travel across the London borough of Tower Hamlets, to bring me a bag of medication. They're supposed to check that the old packets are empty, which 'proves' I've been taking my medication. They're supposed to escalate any problems to nurses and doctors, back at base. If they can't find me or get in contact, they're supposed to ring the police.

It's that final point that's the important one: the police got co-opted into this half-baked scheme. Of the people the police deal with - the front-line officers - most of them will have mental health issues. The police are picking up the pieces of the mental health epidemic. When somebody is truly having a mental health crisis, the police will be the ones who get that sick person to the place where they should have been in the first place: a psychiatric institution.

There are nurses, psychiatrists, social workers and the like, who are involved in assessing whether you need to be detained under the Mental Health Act - what's known colloquially as a 'section'. If you're seriously mentally ill and out in the community, it's down to the police to find you, catch you, detain you and get you to that assessment where you get 'sectioned'.

Also, the police are out there, picking up body parts off the train tracks and underground railway. The police are there when somebody has jumped off a bridge and landed in a river or on some mud flats, or maybe gone splat into something harder below - perhaps a road. The police are there when somebody looks like they're about to jump under a train or off a bridge - CCTV operators are trained to look out for agitated members of the public, who look like they're about to top themselves.

Around the time of Care in the Community, there was an explosion in prescribing of psychiatric medication by our ordinary general practitioners (GPs) - our regular family doctors - there were 9 million prescriptions for Prozac in the UK in 1991. This is the principle behind Care in the Community: put people in a chemical straightjacket, and they can be safely released back into the general population. Ten years later, there were 24 million prescriptions for Prozac and another ten or so years later again, and London alone gets through over 60 million prescriptions for Prozac. These are almost all issued by a GP, not a psychiatrist.

When it comes to "serious" mental illness - anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder (a.k.a. manic depression), schizophrenia, personality disorders - the NHS kicks you out of the bit where you get various therapy options (e.g. CBT) and instead you're referred to a psychiatrist, who will prescribe some fairly brutal medication. In the case of schizophrenia, you could have a risperidone implant, injected underneath your skin, which will keep you in a chemical straightjacket for up to 6 months.

The other people who got co-opted into this Care in the Community policy were the general public. An average member of the public is fairly fearful of a schizophrenic, believing them to have multiple personalities and a propensity for violence. Several murders that received significant media attention, focussed on the fact that they were committed by formerly institutionalised schizophrenics. Depression is now such a common feature of people's lives, that any stigma has gone, but most people would be fearful of living near, working with, or having their children around a schizophrenic, surveys have found. Lock your doors - there might be a madman lurking nearby.

If I was in hospital, I'd have somebody checking on me every 30 minutes to an hour - making sure I hadn't found some way to harm myself. With the Crisis Team (a.k.a. Home Treatment Team) who are tasked with keeping me safe at home, I see them every other day. I could take a fatal overdose 2 hours before they were due to arrive, and by the time an ambulance got to me, I would be well and truly dead as a dodo.

I had stockpiled 336 tramadol tablets (16.8 grams) which is enough for two people to commit suicide, easily. As part of their responsibility to help keep me safe, they asked me for the tramadol back. I gave them 112 tablets (one box) which was a tick in their box. In hospital, I would never be able to hide the remaining 224 tablets from the nurses. If I took an overdose, I'd be fed activated charcoal, have my stomach pumped, be put on a respirator and given various medications to counteract the deadly effects of a tramadol overdose, in plenty of time to save my life.

I can't tell you what the cause and effect is. I can't tell you whether Care in the Community is the reason for the mental health epidemic, or whether it's something else, such as the collapse in living standards and precarious lives we live now, with our income and housing under constant threat.

Most people don't like to lose their liberty. In fact, it's distressing to be locked up somewhere, and not allowed to leave. There are crisis houses, where you can come and go as you please during the day, but you have to be back by nightfall and sleep there or else the police will be sent out to find you. This seems like a compromise that would suit most people who are having a mental health crisis, who pose no danger to the general public.

With the false security of Care in the Community, the number of beds available for those having a mental health crisis, has been slashed dramatically. You can attempt suicide and be hospitalised - in intensive care - and then discharged out onto the streets, simply because there isn't a free bed on a psych ward or in a crisis house, where you could more safely transition back to normal life. You can be suicidal, and the best the NHS can offer you is to come check that you're still alive once a day.

As a man, I'm many times more likely to commit suicide than a woman, but far less likely to seek help. This means that I have had the good fortune of being looked after once in a crisis house and once under a voluntary 'section' on a psych ward. Not many people receive lifesaving treatment like that - the resources just aren't there anymore.

So, what's the solution? Pharmaceutical companies tell us their medications are better than ever. More and more of us are taking powerful psychiatric medication. But, yet, the percentage of the population suffering from mental health issues is ever-growing; suicide rates keep climbing - there is, undoubtably, a mental health epidemic. My personal opinion is that it's not a medical problem: it's a problem created by insecurity: jobs and housing; it's a problem created by declining living standards and soaring levels of stress.

No amount of pills are going to fix the mental health epidemic, even if you bring them to my door.

Tags: #mentalhealth #suicide #depression #bipolar

This is a story about the never-ending story...

When I lost my house in my divorce, I did a smash and grab, boxing up things that I thought would have good resale value. I had money, even though my ex-wife had tried to bankrupt me, because I sank every penny I could borrow into Bitcoin at just the right time. I had a friend's guest bedroom. I had my health. I had hope; optimism.

"Why don't you sell some stuff?" my parents unhelpfully asked, when my ex-wife demanded a £7,000 bribe so that she would stop delaying the sale of the house and trying to bankrupt me. At that time, I didn't have £7,000. I had about £3,500. I sold my car, raising about £2,000, but I knew that to spend weeks and weeks getting £100 here and £200 there, just wasn't going to raise the remaining £1,500 without a couple of months of dedicated time-wasting. If you can earn £500 to £600 a day contracting, should you spend time selling a small TV for £100, or should you go and get an IT contract instead?

I hadn't 'lost everything' by any stretch of the imagination. Losing your home is unbelievably traumatic. Moving house is one of the most stressful things you could ever do. However, I was now living with two old friends and their three lodgers. What I lost materially, I also gained by getting out of a relationship where I was either being abused or in fear of being abused (yes: having to keep yourself behind a door, when somebody is punching and kicking it and screaming abuse at you is "abuse") and I gained some new friends and regular contact with some old ones.

That old life sat in boxes in storage for a couple of years, and I didn't miss any of it. I lived with my friends, then a miserable shared house that drove me to attempt suicide, then a bed & breakfast (Camden's alternative to a psychiatric hospital), then hostels, then the park, then a crisis house, then Hampstead Heath, then hostels again, then a kind man's spare room (who was horribly abused by his wife) and then the flat where I live now.

I've learned from my mistake, and I'll be storing the very minimum I can get away with. A lot of stuff is going to be thrown away. I know it sounds wasteful, but I've tried for over two weeks to sell some things for a price that makes it more like I'm being a charity than trying to get some money. Certainly, my time has been wasted more than you could possibly imagine, for an incredibly futile amount of money. I could make more money begging.

I now don't have enough money to pay for cheap accommodation long enough to get a job, start it, and get paid. There's also the Catch 22: in London, I can earn enough to dig myself out of the hole, but I can't afford the high cost of living. In some other town or city, I can earn enough to sustain my current shitty situation, but I'll never escape. Somebody's going to lose money they're owed (e.g. my landlord) and I'm going to pay reputational cost: credit rating wrecked, county court judgements... maybe even bankruptcy.

I could feel some relief to be off the treadmill, and be able to live "poor & happy" but poor is one thing, and having a black mark against your name is quite another. You can't even rent a place in this country without a credit check.

I'm not sleeping in a shop doorway that smells of piss, and having to beg enough money for food each day, but I've got a near impossible decision to make: is hope more important, or is it more important to have less pressure to keep a good credit score and avoid black marks against my name, They're both equally shit to be honest. As soon as I start defaulting on debts, the courts will fuck me over, and all hope of a simple life will simply evaporate - I'll be working shit jobs AND paying a disproportionate amount of my salary to leeches.

I've got a new pair of shoes, and they make me happy. My flip-flops, which were my summer footwear - very much part of my identity - I can't walk in because my left foot is numb. I tried cycling the other day, and it's really hard to bunnyhop with a numb foot. But, my summery shoes have been my lottery win, in the face of unrelenting worry.

How ironic, that the last time my life collapsed, I was trying to get away from somebody who was ruining my life, and this time, the collapse has almost been guaranteed by the fact that I left somebody who was improving my life, giving me hope, supporting me and underwriting some of my risks. I'll probably never meet somebody like that ever again, and that's the hardest thing... knowing that a moment of mental illness has cost me more than it ever has done in the past, and I've lost at least 3 well paid jobs because I went hypomanic.

I can't cope. I can't cope in the slightest. I can't even begin to face the first step down a road I've walked before. I've been cutting my arm again, but going slightly deeper and with a sharper knife; figuring out how hard I have to press to open my veins lengthways. I think about those 8 grams of tramadol - all you need for an overdose - and how easy and painless it would be. I think about the relief of it all being over.

The usual admonishment is about how selfish it is to leave so many problems for the living; that no matter how tidily you leave your affairs, somebody still has the awful task of going through the detritus of your life. What can I say? Sorry? It's not like anybody ever thought to themselves "oh, better not kill myself because it's a bit selfish".

Don't ring the police or panic or anything. If it's done and there's a body, you'll know and you'll be warned, so that unfortunately, some front-line worker will have to deal with it. At the moment, I'm just trying some food and some sleep, in the hope that this feeling will pass, because it's never been this strong and it terrifies me, to know I'm so close to the limit, but the need for some peace and relief from the stress and the misery and depression is totally overwhelming me.

"Try upping your medication" - oh go fuck yourself.

"There must be somebody who can help" - yeah, that's probably you, but because everybody thinks "there must be somebody" that means there's nobody.

"What about the government?" - yawn. Go watch "I, Daniel Blake" and then you'll understand what the Tories have done to the welfare state. Ken Loach didn't even use true stories he could have done, because he wanted to represent an average experience, rather than an extreme and sensationalistic one.

I'm going to try and sleep on it, but just getting through this evening seems like too much to cope with.

Tags: #suicide