This is a story about working class heroes...

What could be more symbolic of the ordinary working Englishman, than the white van driver? What embodies the British working class more than a beer-gutted builder, wolf whistling at a pretty girl in the street, from the vantage point of their scaffolding? What could be more patriotic than the colours of the St George's flag, and a rioting football hooligan, swilling lager while chanting racial abuse?

Oneupmanship is rife, even when people are talking about reverse snobbery. People say to me "everybody's got to work" as if they're some kind of class hero, some kind of fucking Victorian chimney sweep. They see themselves as hardworking, and everybody else as angst-filled spoiled brats.

But, this is stupidity, plain and simple.

The fact of the matter is, people don't have to work. There is enough wealth, that if it was all shared out, we'd have over $200,000 each, so a family of 2 adults and 3 kids would have a million dollars. That's enough to live for 548 years, in the developing world.

In actual fact, we have been programmed - brainwashed - to believe that what we do is productive and useful and necessary. Somehow, the world's going to come to an end without those sales forecasts. Somehow, everybody's going to die if you don't fill in your timesheet. Somehow, all the crops are going to fail if you don't sell any insurance policies today.

I was watching a documentary about legal highs last night, and the film-maker asked a guy who was manufacturing and selling legal drugs how he could live with himself, knowing that he was fuelling people's addictions: "everyone's gotta work" he said.

I worked for a weapons manufacturer, as my first job after college. If you don't think to yourself "what is the negative impact on the world of what I do?" then you're a fucking idiot. You can't hide behind "everyone's got to work".

"I was just following orders" is the equivalent of "everyone's got to work". Being a guard in a concentration camp, or an officer of an army committing a genocide... those things are jobs, and everyone's got to work, apparently. It's pathetic. You can't hide behind a justification like that.

Anyone who says I'm lazy is going to get a boot up their fucking arse. I've founded multiple businesses and worked 100+ hour weeks, in a non-stop career that hasn't included any breaks, any gap years, any sitting around reading fucking books. I've been in full-time education and employment since I was out of fucking nappies. Fuck off. Fuck all the way off.

What I'm talking about is conscientious objection. Yes, we normally associate that with people who refuse to do a government's killing for them. However, the way that wars are waged nowadays is not with boots on the ground, but in boardrooms, stock markets and with foreign currency trades.

There's an arms race, where multinational corporations have enslaved the world. If I have an economic monopoly, because I have used my stock price in order to acquire all my competitors, I obviously control the labour market as well the ability to manipulate prices.

I can buy a pair of jeans from Primark for £7. How is that possible? Somebody still has to pick the cotton. Somebody still has to operate the sewing machine. We haven't entered a robotic futuristic world yet.

Here's a picture of the very moment that I broke down, and became so depressed that I could no longer work. This is the West's lie, their fantasy, their trick. This is a robotic distribution centre, where goods are distributed to stores, for your consumption. This is what we believe is the reality of progress, and innovation.

However, somebody still has to pick the cotton. It might feel like we're arrived in a futuristic utopia, but the reality is that simply the shitty jobs have mostly been offshored. When I decided I wanted to be an electrician, it's because somebody in a callcentre in India can't clamber down the phone line and come and fix your lights.

The lack of a tangible reality, in almost everything I did as a software engineer, really started to fuck me up. Where's the physical proof that something I did was useful to humanity? In actual fact, I had proof of quite the opposite, having been right at the very heart of the credit crunch during 2007/2008.

Turning on each other and saying crap like "get a job" and "everybody's gotta work" is such utter bullshit. People who have become depressed and can't work have got it right. Propping up a system that enslaves most of humanity is total horseshit. You damn well should be depressed about your crappy job that ignores the blatant crime of economic imperialism. It is unconscionable.

We are now living in such a highly-leveraged society, that nobody can take their foot off the gas pedal. People have skin in the game - kids - so they think they have to keep servicing their debts, paying their rent/mortgage, working their crappy job. People mistakenly believe that work will set them free. Work will not set you free - you toil for your own demise.

The worship of corporate profits means that people must work longer hours for less money, in real terms. Wage inflation is rock bottom, and that means that your wealth is inflated away. The cost of goods, services, housing, food... all these things have massively increased, but average wages have barely budged.

The brainwashed massses are now fighting with one another. Instead of being pleased that your co-worker got that promotion, we think "it should have been me". We think "I could do what they do" and secretly hope that our peers are just as downtrodden as us, just as hard-up. There is jealousy, resentment.

The crabs in the bucket are pulling each other back down into their prison, whenever one of them is close to escape. The working public are crawling all over each other, in a seething mass of claws and excrement at the bottom of a plastic bucket, just waiting for the day that they're tossed into a pan of boiling water.

The government encourages us to report benefit cheats and other victimless crime. We are taught to bully and abuse people who don't work. We are brainwashed into thinking we're some kind of fucking hero, for working a shit job that does nothing except perpetuate human misery and further compound global problems.

Have a kid, get a dog. Try to pretend you're really important. Well done. Gold star. You worked your job, without giving a shit about what it really fucking means.

This is the reality of how your cotton pickers and callcentre staff get to work. This is the future. This is what you don't see, as a consequence of "everyone needs to work" and feeling smug about what a hard little worker you are.

Tags: #career #banking #capitalism #politics

This is a story about the collapse of civilisation...

What is it that causes empires to collapse? Why have fascinating ancient civilisations crumbled into ruins? Well, one prevailing theory seems to be that these societies failed to forgive debts, before there was a popular uprising.

There's a disrespect for working people that's highly prevalent in the world. We have a patronising attitude towards people who get themselves in heaps of credit card debt, or take out mortgages that they can't afford. We seem to assume that the when loans go bad, it's is somehow the fault of the borrowers.

In actual fact, having sat in on phonecalls with many people who are in a distressed debt situation, they did nothing more than try to make ends meet and have a lifestyle that should be considered completely normal in a developed Western country.

Most people who've got into a debt-spiral did so because there's no way to legitimately dig their way out of the hole. They already work the maximum hours that they're able to, but yet their earning potential has maxed out. When the car breaks down, they have to borrow to meet the shortfall, and this tips them into a downward spiral, because they'll never be able to find the extra cash, due to punitive interest rates.

The story is almost always the same. When things start going wrong, people hover up every bit of available credit in order to maintain their perfectly reasonable lifestyle. People still need to replace their clothes, and cheap clothes wear out very quickly. People still need to get to work, and transport costs are significant. People even need to service their addictions. Without tobacco and alcohol, many lives would simply be unbearable. These are not luxuries, and people are not profligate for expecting a minimum standard of living.

If you look at the kind of savings you can make by economising and shopping around, it's fairly depressing. You might be able to save a few pounds by shopping at another supermarket on the other side of town, but what about the extra fuel you burned getting there, and the extra wear & tear on the car? What about the waste of your time, that could have been spent working more hours... if they were offered?

The fact of the matter is, that in free market economics, prices will find a level that is just about affordable for people on an average wage. If you price things too high, then everybody goes bankrupt and just refuses to work because the game is a stupid one. If you price things too low, then there's untapped profits and people rise out of poverty and refuse to do shitty jobs anymore. So, things have to be priced just right so that everybody is looking at their bank balance and eking things out to the end of the month, every month, month after month, year after year.

If you're a politician, landlord or a businessman, you want to find the price elasticity of demand so that you know how much you can charge as taxes, rent and the price of your products, such that demand is not unduly impacted. You want to charge the maximum tax, maximum rent and maximum price for everything, without people saying "fuck this" in huge numbers. Everything is priced based on the limit of what most people will just about put up with.

Unfortunately, people get ground down. Working your whole life just to pay taxes and service debts starts to get pretty irritating. People can see that they don't stand any chance of ever getting ahead in life.

We can see that there's a link between poverty and ridiculous dreams. Where people are poor, gambling is popular, and there's no bigger tax on the poor than a lottery. The lottery is the ultimate con, because it robs the very poorest people of a significant proportion of their income, whilst also giving them false hope that they might one day escape their situation.

Other ridiculous dreams include becoming a professional athlete, and becoming a famous pop singer or movie star. The number of Premier League footballers and TV celebrities is a piss in the ocean. In percentage terms, you're more likely to win a lottery or some kind of accumulator bet.

So many kids these days say that they want to be "famous" but they have no idea what for... singing probably. Vast numbers of people watch singing contests like X-Factor, Pop Idol and The Voice, and unwittingly, they are buying into this fairytale dream that they're going to be plucked from obscurity and poverty one day, and get to live this A-list celebrity lifestyle that's rammed down our throats with shows like Made in Chelsea and The Only Way is Essex, let alone Keeping up with the Kardashians.

Panem et circenses has paved the way for the political class to become ever more powerful, with the proletariat feeling that their vote would make no difference, and their time is better devoted to watching banal wannabe celebrities croon on a television show, as well as spending money to vote on premium rate phone lines.

Banks are "too big to fail" but the ordinary working person receives no government bailout for their financial woes, when it becomes evident that they can no longer service the debt that they have run up. However, there has been no popular uprising yet, because people are resigned to government and corporate control of their lives.

For me, the rioting and looting that we saw in the Tottenham and Croydon riots in London is indicative of a huge portion of society who are taunted with expensive consumer goods that they'll never be able to afford, and offered no jobs or legitimate opportunity, in order to acquire the material things that they desire.

Debt has been the only way that people have been able to get the celebrity lifestyle that's rammed down everybody's throats. All those flashy new cars are on hire purchase. All those gold-plated iPhones are bought with credit cards. All those lovely clothes are purchased on storecards. I don't think these people are idiots, and I don't think they're financially reckless. They've been told their whole lives that they're entitled to these things.

However, the more that people are denied the things that they've been promised - houses, cars, holidays and all the trimmings - the more they're going to wonder why they should work, only to get deeper and deeper into debt, and to have a miserable life where they're just counting down to payday, only for their hard-earned cash to be swallowed by rent, debts, transport, food, clothing and other life essentials.

We are asking too much of our working people, and at some point they're going to realise that it's not the immigrants who are to blame, but the ruling class.

The party never stopped for the elite. The good times just kept rolling. You can't prop things up forever, when working people are so unhappy.

Tags: #capitalism #banking #politics

This is a story about being strung along...

How much does it cost to make a difference to somebody's life? How much time? How much money? How much effort?

By the time you end up homeless, far more stuff is broken than just needing a job and a place to live. Not only is your self-esteem destroyed, but also your squeaky clean credentials, which are required by the gatekeepers in the world of wage slavery.

I was asked to provide details of where I've been living for the last 5 years. If I was truthful, it would read like this:

• Current address
• Hospital
• Hotel
• Hospital
• Hostel
• Hampstead Heath (under some trees)
• Hostel
• Shitty student flat
• Hostel
• Hospital
• Girl's flat
• Kensington Park Gardens (under a bush)
• Hostel
• Crisis house
• Hospital
• Hostel
• Hospital
• Rehab
• Friend's guest bedroom
• Garden shed
• Own home

How the hell are the drones who process paperwork at my new job supposed to deal with that?

They say that moving house is one of the most stressful events that can happen in our lives. It's so disruptive. It's so hard to function, without a base, without somewhere settled to call home.

I used to drag tons of bags all over the city. It was worse when I was working, because I obviously needed smart clothes and my work laptop too. Can you imagine going from being homeless, to living in a 14-bed hostel dorm, but having to get suited and booted and go to work, with one tiny little locker and heaps of baggage? Can you imagine having to pack all your stuff up every morning, in case you got moved to a different dorm, and then going to work?

I've never claimed benefits, because I can see that they're just enough to do nothing but not enough to do something. For all the effort involved in filling in the forms, it's not worth it. No wonder people beg and steal... you really don't need that much money to support yourself in some kind of miserable existence, with no hope of escape. Benefits are the very worst option: maximum effort with minimum opportunity.

Anybody who thinks that cutting people off financially is some kind of motivatory strategy is simply an idiot. Here in the UK we have squats, soup kitchens and there is enough wealth to get by, hustling, scamming, stealing, panhandling and generally opting out of society. By raising the barrier to getting benefits, and offering so little assistance, people either find their way into antisocial behaviour, or get trapped into poverty.

Is it right that I should be trapped into a pool of people who can never work again, because we don't have a nice clean address history and we're stressed out as hell from being passed from pillar to post, as nobody wants to invest in our lives?

It takes time and it takes money, but there is a net benefit for everybody if you invest in the potential of people. There is no way that you can deny that the government, various councils and social workers decided that I was worthless, and not even deserving of a hostel bed, despite the fact that I contribute massive amounts of taxes. In the commercial world, it's the complete opposite: companies have shown that I'm worth huge amounts of money, despite the fact they'd shit a brick if they knew the truth about my past.

The obvious thing to do would have been to support me, so I could have gotten back to work sooner and started paying buttloads of tax again, but instead, Camden Council wasted months of my life before finally sending me a one-line email saying that they were making me homeless.

I wonder how many other 'lost causes' are actually capable people who just need a little investment. Stringing people along is not a good strategy. Shortchanging people, giving them less than they need, is a false economy.

Tags: #homeless #frank #career

This is a story about bath salts and plant food...

What the hell happened to me during the last few years, and am I a lost cause, doomed to a life of addiction, crime, health problems, before an early death? Are there 'choices' you make in your life that cause irreparable damage, and turn you into a modern-day leper, who should be shunned by society?

For any parent, there must always be the worry that your kids are going to go off the rails, and destroy their lives. Whether it's your teenaged daughters getting pregnant, or your unruly sons getting in trouble with the law... the number of things that are out to get your precious children are innumerable. It's a wonder that you can sleep at night.

But what do you do once somebody has gone off the rails? Is it best to write them off, and concentrate on any offspring who have stayed on the straight and narrow, not wandered off the path and gotten lost in the murky mists and quagmire of addiction?

Chances are, somebody you know has had their problems with alcohol or some kind of mind-altering substance. They might be spending what little disposable income that they have on Cannabis and being stoned throughout their few waking hours, whilst playing mindless computer games and stuffing junk food into their mouths. They might be getting into a cycle of debt and crime, as they pursue the unquenchable thirst for Cocaine or Heroin.

It's pretty clear that addicts can waste a lot of time and money, very quickly. But what does it mean, quickly, when time apparently runs at the same speed for all of us? "It all happened so quickly" friends and relatives wail, when a loved one slips away from them, into the depths of a destructive addiction.

Clearly, something doesn't add up. Yes, it's possible to become addicted very quickly, but does that mean that a person's life is irretrievably lost, a personality is forever changed, and your son/daughter/brother/sister/friend is gone as soon as that needle hits their veins, as soon as that powder goes up their nose, as soon as that smoke hits their lungs?

The idea that a person is a lost cause as soon as drug experimentation turns into habit and abuse, is just as ridiculous as imagining that a person is dead as soon as they catch a cold. The human body is remarkably resilient, and the mind and brain can adapt in reverse, just the same way that damage was done in the first place.

The sooner that you label a person, ostracise them, marginalise them and give up on them, the less chance there is of their recovery. Standing back in the hope that things will get better is the very worst thing that you can do. Addiction is a fire that rages through a building. Put out the fire when it's a few flames in a wastepaper basket, and a major disaster is averted, but if you wait until it's a raging inferno, then there will have to be some major rebuilding work. It's only a reluctance, a hesitation, from acting in a kind and compassionate way, that condemns addicts to an early grave.

I was able to buy this "China White" on the day that the the Government's new drug legislation was supposed to be enacted as law in the United Kingdom. In theory, this law was supposed to ban the sale of any psychoactive substances, including the legal highs and research chemicals which are openly on sale in shops and on the internet.

For those who are unfamiliar with drug terminology, China White is the name of a particularly pure form of Heroin. From a glance at the ingredients list on the unopened packet of chemicals, pictured above, this legal high is more of a stimulant. It would not have any opiate-like effect.

When the people who are packaging and selling legal highs don't even know the significance of the name they are giving to their product, such that a stimulant is sold under the name of a famous type of heroin, which would send you to sleep or even cause you to stop breathing and die if you overdosed... well, prohibition and ignorance are clearly the main risks to the public, not the availability of substances.

Cocaine & Cannabis are class A & B drugs, respectively, making them illegal to buy and sell. This has been the case for so many years that we surely have enough data to say whether the law is an effective way of curtailing drug consumption within the UK. I challenge anybody to take a walk over the canal bridge in Camden Town, London, on a Friday or Saturday night and not be offered both drugs at least once if you catch the eye of one of the shady characters hanging around in plain sight.

I've been offered Cannabis, Cocaine, Ecstasy (MDMA), Heroin and Crack on the streets of London, long before I dabbled with these illicit chemicals. There isn't a flashing neon sign above my head that says "ADDICT", so the only logical conclusion to draw must be that prohibition has done nothing to impact the sale and purchase of illegal drugs.

Rather than spending precious parliamentary time debating progressive drug policy that would save lives and reduce crime, following the model of Portugal, the UK has ramped up its prohibitionist stance, which clearly causes crime, misery and death. Drug addicts are convenient scapegoats, but surely as all experts agree that addiction is a medical condition, a courtroom is no place for a suffering individual to be treated.

Convenient scapegoats win political campaigns and sell newspapers, as well as giving simple-minded ignorant fools some kind of easy place to point the finger of blame and understand the complexities of a world that doesn't break down into black & white, cowboys & indians, cops & robbers, right & wrong, good & evil etc.

Thinking that you know an addict's story, by tarring every person with the same brush, is a shameful state of affairs. There is collective responsibility for the suffering of addicts, and the victims of crime that are created. They are two sides of the same coin, and victim-blaming the addicts is hurting some of the very people you are supposed to love and care for.

If you want your children to grow up in a safer, happier world, and to sleep a little easier at night, knowing that any of your children who do go off the rails can be shepherded back to the flock before you have to bury them... I suggest that everybody educates themselves a little more, before you are too quick to condemn, to make assumptions, and to fill in the blanks in your knowledge with tabloid ignorance.

If it can happen to me it can happen to anybody. I bought "NRG-3" off the internet, which turned out to be "bath salts" which turned out to be MDPV, which tipped internet billionaire John McAfee into temporary insanity

Tags: #addiction #drugs #politics

This is a story about engaging your mouth before your brain...

Most of what I write is not stuff that is ordinarily shared by people. We bottle a lot of stuff up, and perhaps with good reason, but what happens if your general demeanour means you're a fairly open book?

Sure, it's true that some of my life experiences - mental health problems, drug abuse, homelessness, being arrested by the police - are not things that your ordinary middle-class professional will hopefully ever experience. It is therefore logical that I should keep all these things hush-hush. Pretend they never happened.

I don't think that privacy and anonymity is necessarily helpful, judging by the direction that life is headed for many people who I speak to. We know there is a mental health epidemic, with millions of people laid low with depression, anxiety and a huge spectrum of illnesses affecting the mind. If we don't talk about this, and share our experiences, we suffer in silence.

It seems to me as if Psychiatry has failed. Pills, powders and potions have failed to cure the ailments of our very souls. Something is wrong, broken, with society, and medicine hasn't yet come up with the cures... probably because we are treating symptoms, not root causes.

It's been a theory of mine that we were never evolved as a species to live in such close quarters with one another. Open plan offices and tiny cramped apartments in overcrowded cities certainly make me feel like a lemming: compelled to throw myself off a cliff. It really doesn't help that so many service sector jobs are so soul destroying. Moving paper or electronic money around for the mega wealthy is most of what we do in the rich nations. It's not growing carrots or building houses.

Sure, some of us are tortured artists and entertainers. Some of us create organic artisan jam, or dog's milk yoghurt, or run a creative digital agency where we wear unfashionable clothes and stupid facial hair and ride fixed-speed bicycles to work. These, most surely, are the last days of a dying civilisation.

They say you should never get too close to an iceberg, because they can flip over unexpectedly. You might be rather pleased to be part of the top 1% or even 5%, but while you're sticking up at the top, there's a huge mass under the water beneath. Sooner or later, the massive body of ice that's been held underwater rises up, and the top of the iceberg is plunged into the freezing sea.

The motto of Über is "everyone's private driver" but how can we all have a jet-set A-list celebrity lifestyle? There simply isn't enough landmass to create enough helipads for everybody to be flying around by private helicopter, chauffeur driven around the place, pampered and flattered at every turn. Technology can't make us all rich, famous and able to have an impossibly high standard of living, despite its promises.

With our MacBook Pro and our high-quality digital camera etc. we all feel like a writer, a photographer, an artist. Facebook gives us the impression that people love looking at photos of us, so we must be glamour models. Twitter turns us all into bloggers, preachers, with our followers... our congregation.

There was a time when you could quit your job and probably make a good living selling cup cakes, setting up a trendy delicatessen or being a life coach. I'm not sure if those people who followed their dreams and quit the rat race are happy, but there's certainly not any opportunity to do it today. Things are so competitive. How many cup cakes have you got to sell, in order to have a salary comparable with somebody who shuffles paper around their desk and tries to look busy and important in the office, but is just a tiny cog in a big wasteful machine that doesn't actually produce anything of tangible value.

I'm mortgaging my privacy. I'm selling my soul. By making public every little tiny detail about my private life, including my massive f**kups, I'm potentially headed up a one-way street. If I achieve any kind of infamy, then I'm basically screwed, in terms of re-entering the world of the wage-slave drones.

So, I've got the best part of 6,000 Twitter followers in the space of 6 months. Do you think that translates to pounds in my pocket? Do you think that taking the unprecedented step of writing nearly 200,000 words about a fairly spectacular life implosion, would change my life significantly? Well, the ship has sailed for anybody hoping to get an easy ride, I'm afraid.

I like what I've written. I would defend it, to some extent. It serves as a permanent public record of not only what I've been through in the past, but more importantly, there is a subtle recording of what I was going through during the whole time I've been blogging. You can read my emotions, my moods, the challenges, the stresses... in-between the lines of what's written down.

I'm starting to be accused of being self-indulgent, self-absorbed, but why shouldn't I have this? Why shouldn't I be allowed to scream and wail and tantrum a bit, if I had to be the sensible grey-suited career guy, with the good job and an impressive CV, who had the mortgage and saved money for a rainy day and got married and did everything by the f**king book like I was supposed to. I deferred gratification like a son of a bitch, and there was no f**king pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The cake is a lie.

How many people are discontented? How many people are struggling? Not only struggling with stress and poverty and unpleasant things happening in their lives, but also struggling with the injustice of things, the pointlessness of some make-work wanky job that's completely useless to humanity. Or perhaps the work they can get is just so completely degrading and poorly paid it's not even worth working at all. You might as well just get off your head on drugs and alcohol and dribble while you play computer games or watch terrible trashy TV.

How many kids are getting smashed out of their skulls on cannabis, skunk and legal high smoking blends? How many kids are consuming dangerous amounts of cheap alcohol, simply to become highly intoxicated? What is it about life that these kids want to escape? Why aren't they sharing the anguish, the inner turmoil? Why do they retreat inwards, under the heavy sedation of intoxicating drugs and alcohol?

Now Microsoft and Facebook are hitting headlines, saying they're working on chat bots. The iPhone has Siri, which is supposed to be a kind of artificially intelligent digital assistant, that can understand what you ask it to do, and try and help you. People are delighted when it turns out that you can ask Siri to beatbox, and it will kinda do it, in a weird kind of way.

Why would we be wasting our time talking to computers, when we could be talking to each other? I wrote before about us sharing 21% less on Facebook, in the space of a year. Do we not keenly feel the loss of that connection with real people, who can get in contact and try to make us feel less alone with our problems and our existential crises?

No person is an island, and the isolating existence of interacting more with apps and websites and software in general, instead of with each other is a worrying trend. Ok, so I'm bucking that by providing a veritable brain dump of sharing, which is much akin to verbal diarrhoea, but at least it's putting stuff out there, where there's a chance I can get some help from my friends.

There's obviously a bystander effect, where nobody knows quite what to do when somebody starts having a public meltdown. People just aren't supposed to act like this. Where is my stoicism? Where is my stiff upper lip? Where is my shame? Where is my embarrassment and my intense desire for total privacy?

Nobody wants to be first, and people also worry that they're going to end up feeling responsible. Everybody feels they're already struggling so much to keep their own shit together, that anybody else bleating on about their own struggles should shut the hell up. Look after number one and keep yourself to yourself. Don't you think that could be the root cause of this horrible isolated existence that causes so much damage to our happiness, our sense of wellbeing, our mental health... leading to depression, stress, anxiety, breakdowns, self harm and suicides?

We're in such a hurry to label, to judge, to jump to conclusions. We like to bracket people and problems as quickly as we can. Somebody becomes known as a drama queen, or we tire of their depressed demeanour, the dark clouds that follow them around. We start to stop inviting the killjoy out, or generally interacting with them. Let them wallow in self-pity, right? I'm sure social services or somebody from a government service will step in before they do something stupid. It's somebody else's job. Not my problem. I've got enough going on with my own stressful, meaningless, empty, unfulfilling life that I hate and I'm depressed about.

I'm just typing now. The taps are open and the words are flooding out. I have relaxed my anal sphincter and a torrent of liquid brown verbal diarrhoea is jetting out of my arse and into the toilet bowl of the internet, and nobody gives a shit, because we are all sinking with shit up to our necks. There is a whole World Wide Web of shit out there, and we're all just pumping out this useless effluent into the cesspool of human emotional pain.

Do you think I'm going to look back on this frantic period of writing and recoil with horror when I read it back? I certainly expect that I will be cupping my face in my hands, saying to myself "what the fuck was I thinking?" but it must be about as close as it's possible to get to knowing what somebody's thinking, reading this shite.

I thought to myself that I won't hold back, I won't censor, edit or filter, because I can always tear this down with a click of the mouse. A stroke of the keyboard, and all this is gone and I can deny all knowledge that it ever existed. It's the digital photo that you deleted off your camera or smartphone... those shameful ones and zeros are gone forever.

But you know what? I've not felt the urge to take anything down. I've not felt the pangs of regret at sharing stuff that makes me look really bad. I've given the world everything it needs to pigeon-hole me, to categorise me, to bracket me, to judge me, to dismiss me with a label or an over-simplification of my entire existence.

That's what we want, isn't it? Computer credit scores, and computerised personality profiling, and a computer simulation of a real person, that responds in a predictable and easy to understand way. We don't want real lives, with all their messiness and unfathomable complexity. We don't want to get to know each other, but have to live with the fact that we still don't really know each other. We don't even know ourselves, even if you're an irritatingly self-absorbed little prick like I am, who self indulgently wallows in a world of introspection and deep self-examination.

Show me some more videos of funny cats. Distract me from the banality of my existence. Please don't remind me of the humanity that my fellow Earth residents possess or incite any kind of sympathetic or empathetic response in me. I'm quite wrapped up in my own world of pain and disappointment, boredom and stress. I want to pretend like technology and the advancement of civilisation is going to wave its magic wand and even though I'm fornicating with a person I'm nearly totally revulsed by the more I get to know them, in a filthy home in an overcrowded town, on a hopelessly poisoned planet, everything will be fucking rosy for the screaming brats that end up getting spawned.

What the hell is this anyway? This is what happens when the filter gets switched off. This is my life, with no filter.

I think I was born with no filter.

Look: I bought new socks. I'm sharing the private details of my socks life. Every time I have socks, I'm going to post it up on social media. Socks is supposed to be a taboo subject. Always practice safe socks.

Tags: #privacy #depression #mentalhealth #suicide #career #socialmedia

This is a story about comebacks...

I have very little memory of the last couple of weeks, or maybe even the last couple of months. I've basically been backed into a corner, shaking with the stress and feeling of being totally overwhelmed by the task of having to deal with all the things that couldn't be put off any longer.

The 'pinnacle' or culmination of this breakdown period, was when bailiffs entered my flat in order to cut off my gas & electricity, for non-payment of bills. The bills, naturally, had remained in a pile of unopened post, with me none the wiser as to the growing threat of this debt collection. Of course, I knew that the bills had to be dealt with sooner or later, but the crisis point happened to be reached just as I was sleeping off the 'hangover' of the last three months silliness.

I've basically been asleep for about 2 weeks, because I started taking Mirtazepine, which is an atypical antidepressant which was prescribed to me years ago, and I thought was OK at the time, but addiction issues kinda derailed me from taking it on a proper regular basis. This time around, I found that it helped me to get to sleep, and then carry on sleeping as a stress avoidance tactic, for much of the following day, until there were only a few hours of evening to fill before I could take my next dose.

This medication was not prescribed to me for depression. It wasn't prescribed to me at all in fact. I prescribed it to myself to treat drug withdrawal symptoms, after a hefty period of abusing legal benzodiazepines and Supercrack. I'm not exactly sure when this crazy new UK law comes into place, pretty much banning anything that's psychoactive, but I don't want to be trapped into being dependent on something that's illegal.

As it stands at the moment, it has been over a year since I have accessed the Dark Web and I'd like it to stay that way. The Dark Web can end up being unhealthy window-shopping for a former junkie, and then eventually, in a moment of weakness, disguised envelopes containing all manner of disruptive troublemaking can be wending their merry way to you through the postal system. That's a situation I definitely want to avoid.

Withdrawing from Mirtazepine was extremely unpleasant. I was overwhelmed with anxiety and insomnia. I'm hoping tonight will be better, but today, at least I didn't have the daytime sleepiness and lethargy that allowed me to spend the best part of 2 weeks in bed. I even made the bailiffs come and collect a credit card from my grubby mitts, while I lay in my pit of despair.

You see that slight upswing at the end of March? Hopefully that delimits the end of months of depression and drug abuse, and the beginning of a period of productivity. I've tackled some of the most pressing stuff that had to be done today, and if I can steer clear of the medications/research-chemicals that seem to make all your troubles go away, then things can continue, provided I don't become totally overwhelmed by stress and anxiety.

It feels like the Government is testing us, risking our lives, to discover what happens when they pull the rug out from under our feet. The shoddy, hole-filled 'safety net' has finally been so undermined, that nobody could possibly consider it an option, no matter how dire their circumstances. Get better or die, is the Government's unspoken mantra.

Personally, it is long overdue, me pushing myself to find more contract work or even something permanent, provided it isn't going to grate and gnaw at my soul so intolerably, that there's little point as the outcome would be entirely predictable.

I say "long overdue" but that's a little unfair on myself. The winter, plus the timing of losing my contract were particularly hard on me, coupled with the fact I was completely exhausted from efforts expended on the doomed HSBC Customer Due Diligence project anyway. I did need some time to rest and recuperate. There were chances to get straight back on the horse, and I would have done if fortune had favoured those opportunities, but the optimism of November of last year quickly turned into resignation about the wasted 6 or so weeks of Xmas build up and early New Year 'dead spot' in the recruitment calendar.

I actually feel reasonably awake and alert, and not totally overwhelmed when my thoughts turn to my todo list. I know that my suit and shirts are dry cleaned and shoes are shone, ready for action, and even that doesn't worry me now that the clocks have sprung forward and the weather can surely only improve from this point (famous last words!).

I know that I'd dearly like to see my Sister & Mum, now that I'm a bit more well. Too many broken promises and wasted good intentions in the last few months, so I'm not going to rush at anything, especially as my sister was really cross at me recently, using my parents words. It's easy to discredit and undermine a person's character when they're keeping themselves a safe distance away from yourself.

I know my blog has been my refuge and something solid to grab onto during some pretty wild storms, and it upsets my sister that I have seemingly had so much time to blog, but I hope you'll be seeing a return to consistency and continuity that went awry during the turbulent first months of 2016. Let's see where it takes me next, and I hope it's informative and entertaining for those following at home.

So deep think. Much complicated. Very story to tell. Wow!

Tags: #recovery #depression #stress #anxiety #drugs #addiction

This is a story about being tired & depressed all the time...

As things start to get out of control with uppers and downers, you're going to come across legal highs and the black market sooner or later. Let me describe my life to you, after it was ravaged by depression: I never left my bed except to go to the toilet. I never answered my phone. I never answered the door. What does a depressed person want? They want a life.

For the summary of what I'd tried myself to date, you can read:

https://www.manicgrant.com/2015/self-medication-part-one

and:

https://www.manicgrant.com/2015/self-medication-part-two

I was completely disillusioned with medications. The common antidepressants take 6 weeks before they kick in, and they're a nightmare to stop taking: the withdrawal effects are horrible.

I went on a legal highs website, and I systematically worked though every chemical they had on offer:

• 5-IAI
• 6-APB
• MDAI
• Benzylpiperzine
• Ephenidine
• Ethylphendiate
• 3-Fluromethamphetamine
• 3-Flurophenmetrazine
• Methedrone
• Methiopropamine
• Methoxphenedine
• Methylenedioxypyrovalerone
• Mephedrone
• Methylone
• Pentedrone
• 4-MePPP

Those are just the ones I can remember. I have a spreadsheet somewhere that documents everything I bought, and all the dosages I took. I used a high accuracy measuring scale (down to 0.001 of a gram) which I calibrated before every use, and I was careful to do an 'allergy test' before taking anything approaching a psychoactive dose.

The short version of the story is... all these designer drugs were a pile of pants. Complete rubbish. Waste of time & money.

With one exception: Methylone. The chemical name of Ecstasy (MDMA) is 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine. The chemical name of Methylone is 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylcathinone. Basically, the clever chemists swapped out the crystal meth and replaced it with Meow Meow. The novel compound is known as βk-MDMA, instead of just regular MDMA.

If you were to try and take Ecstasy every day, you probably wouldn't get much sleep, and people would think you were really weird. Your face would be gurning all over the place, and you'd keep telling strangers you loved them.

Methylone is not like that. It was as if I'd just gotten over a really bad sickness and I was back to my old self. I had energy and motivation. I could feel joy again. I was getting stuff done. I was functional.

I used to measure out my exact same dose every morning, and then I could feel the storm clouds part about 30 minutes later, and I could get on with a normal day, just like a normal person. I did my work. I did my chores. I socialised... I had re-entered the world.

This went on for the best part of 6 months, and then the government decided to make it illegal. I stockpiled as much as I could afford (about 2 months supply) but when that ran out I was screwed.

Prolintane and Pyrovalerone (sold as Jolly Green Granules) propped me up for a while, but I had pretty much lost my antidepressant. There was no more gas in the tank. The engine was spluttering to a stop. All the other stims I tried were just that: stimulants. They made me awake, alert and they stopped me sleeping. The best part of all about Methylone had been that I could sleep normally at the end of the day.

Out of a suicidal death-wish, I tried NRG-3, which sounded from anecdotal experience very much like MDPV (Supercrack). I was so terrified by this chemical that I diluted an entire gram in a litre of water so that I could measure a very precise 3ml (3mg) as a test dose, using an oral syringe. Turns out that water completely screws up the compound.

 Anyway, after the car-crash that was my ex's brother's wedding, I decided "fuck it" and measured out 15 milligrams of the powder on my scale.

"Binge" was not a term that I had first-hand experience with. Not until that point.

When 3 or 4 days go by, you haven't eaten, you haven't slept, you're just shovelling white powder up your nose... yeah I guess I had my baptism of fire.

When you wonder what day it is. When you wonder when the last time you checked the time or the date, or did any kind of reality check at all... you're pretty deep into a binge.

It's weird, how somebody who was always so self-disciplined, so self-controlled, even with coke and speed and pills... one day they find their drug of choice and they're like an instant junkie. I did kinda panic a bit when I'd had 800mg of a 1000mg bag, because I'd read about somebody who suffered heart damage after 800mg of this potent stimulant, but you find yourself saying "ok, well I'll make this the last one".... until it's all gone... and all you can think about is when can you get some more.

The reason it was so addictive, is because it broke my dependence on my girlfriend. We needed to break up, but I couldn't see an alternative. I couldn't imagine going backwards to go forwards. This stuff was powdered girlfriend. She no longer had any power over me anymore. I wasn't afraid of us breaking up.

She didn't like that very much.

Tags: #drugs #addiction #depression

This is a story about getting airborne...

In startups, we talk a lot about runway. That is, how much money you have left to pay all your bills before you go bankrupt. The thing about doing a startup is, you don't make money from day one. You raise some money, build a product then try to get the revenue up higher than the bills... and you need to do all that before you run out of runway.

Most ordinary working-class folks know a lot about runway. They know that they have to pay their rent, bills and then make the remaining money last for things like food and transport, until payday. Every single month there is uncertainty about whether they're going to be able to get to work, if their money runs out before payday. That's called running out of runway.

A lot of low-paid jobs pay weekly. That's useful for something called cashflow smoothing. It means that your cashflow looks like lots of little peaks that aren't very high. If you got paid the same money on a monthly basis, you'd see a massive spike on payday, and then cash would slope down, down, down for a whole month, before spiking again.

If you run a limited company or a public company, you could pay yourself wages, weekly, monthly, whatever, but wages attract income tax. Income tax is 45% for people in the highest tax band. So if I wanted to do some cashflow smoothing, it's going to cost me 45% of the money I worked hard to earn. That's quite a waste of money if there's another way to pay myself that doesn't attract such high taxes.

Generally, I have to work for a month, then I can invoice my client for the days worked. My invoice is payable within 30 days, but it basically takes a whole extra month to get the money into my limited company.

Ok, great. Now I can pay myself wages... but I'll have to pay 45% tax and loads of national insurance. On the one hand, I really need some cash, because I've already lived for over two months without a single penny of income, but the main person who's going to get rich out of that arrangement is the taxman.

So I work another two months, plus the month for the invoices to be paid. That means that I have three months worth of invoices paid into my limited company. Now it's time to pay myself a dividend. Limited companies can pay dividends from their profits once every quarter. So, to maximise your dividends, you need to have 3 months of invoices paid into your limited company.

But that means that you've been working for 4 months, and not been paid a penny. Harsh man. However, the tax savings are considerable. This is not about me being a tightass with taxes. I always paid full taxes, and then when I got sick, there were no state benefits available to me, despite being under the limit for savings etc. etc. The state safety net just didn't exist when I was homeless and penniless, so fuck the government. I now save the tax and try and set it aside for when I'm sick.

Now, OK, you have your dividend... 3 months pay. You're feeling pretty rich, right? Well, if you've been living in a hostel, you might like to now get a flat. That'll be 6 weeks rent as a deposit, a month's rent in advance, and probably about £500 in estate agent fees. There goes £6,000 of your hard-earned cash.

What about how you lived for those 4 months with no income? How did you do that? I guess you probably had to borrow money. So, you use your remaining dividend to pay off all those debts you ran up, staying alive.

So, what now? Well, you'll have to work for another 4 months, and then pay yourself another dividend, and live off what's left after you got yourself a flat and paid off your debts. Oh, there isn't anything left? Oh dear.

The thing is, the system is fairly well tuned to fuck you. I can borrow money more cheaply than the tax, but the interest is compound, so it works out about the same. I could take a wage and pay the tax, but then I'll have less money left to pay off the debts. Between the banks and the taxman, you're f**ked.

It's true, each quarter things get a little better. I was planning on working for about 9 months, and then I would have been quite nicely sorted, but if you think that it's stressful waiting for payday, try waiting for 4 months for payday.

That's the life of an IT contractor. I'm an IT contractor. That's what I do, for a living. Yes, I could bake bread, stack shelves or work in a warehouse... are you fucking stupid? There's nothing wrong with those jobs, but if I wanted to burn money surely it would make more sense for me to do some IT contracting and then literally set fire to £50 notes. Jeeps, you must have a degree in Economics from Oxford if you think that it's a smart idea to not work the highly paid job I'm qualified and experienced to do, and instead work a job that doesn't cover my cost of living and is stopping me from getting the highly paid job that I'm qualified for. I'm sure that you'll be getting a tenured professorship any day now, with original thinking like that.

My cashflow is lumpy, and I don't have much runway, but at least this time I have the flat already, and a friend who can count higher than the 3 deformed stumps on their retarded hand has helped me to make sure I don't end up driven to suicide by the stress of being let down by liars again.

My plan was to start the contract hunt in the second week of January, when people were coming back from their holidays. I'm over 2 weeks late and sick as hell, but it'll be OK. I somehow got the HSBC job looking like this:

Yes, that's a hospital wristband. Arms are pincushions as usual from double canula and providing a gazillion blood samples (June 2015)

Tags: #career #london #computing #hospital #nhs

This is a story about captains of industry...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a story about rehab...

What's the difference between detox, rehab and inpatient treatment for mental health disorders? Very little actually. Here's my little exposé into being a patient of the UK's most notorious private drug and alcohol abuse treatment provider.

As far as my medical records show, I was admitted to The Priory for treatment for Type II Bipolar Disorder, during an episode of acute illness. My private health insurance picked up the bill and JPMorgan gave me the time and the space to get better. They're a great employer actually.

I had found a local private psychiatrist, as I was running out of ideas for how to deal with my Dual Diagnosis (Bipolar & substance abuse) and I knew that the stats weren't good. Not many people recover from such a death sentence of a diagnosis.

I was very lucky to find the psychiatrist that I did. I had been trying to get in contact with a number of specialists directly, but things were very slow going during the Xmas/New Year period, when a lot of people suffer a big decline due to the bad weather and family pressure to put a jolly face on everything during the holiday season.

I contacted a general psychiatrist at the local private hospital, and he turned out to be one of the nicest, kindest people I could ever have hoped to meet. It was pure relief to meet somebody nonjudgemental who would hear my story without leaping to immediate conclusions. The first time I met him, he simply said "we can only play the cards we are dealt" which had me in floods of tears, as it was the first time that anybody had ever said something so kind to me.

I had been taking quite a kicking from my supposed loved ones - but I'm not going to go into that anymore - and been made to feel very guilty and a total failure for having gotten sick. It should be noted that I became clinically depressed and suicidal before any substance abuse entered the picture. Bipolar symptoms had always been present in my life, but it took a further 2 years to get diagnosed. Then, finally, substance abuse reared its ugly head and became the most pressing issue.

From my point of view, I had struggled for years and years with recurrent suicidal ideation, suicide plans. I have struggled all my life with mood instability. To be simply dumped in a bucket labelled 'lost cause addict' was a bit s**t to be honest, after 30 odd years of reliable good service, despite fairly debilitating mental health problems.

Perhaps I'm complaining too much, making too much of a big thing of my struggles? Yes, yes, yes, there are people who've had it so much harder than me, blah, blah, blah. Ok, unless you've sliced your forearms multiple times, lengthways along your veins, with a razor blade, do me a favour and shut up? Some of my friends are wonderfully supportive and have gone out of their way to learn about mental health problems. Perhaps you could follow their example?

So you think this is attention seeking? Save it for the funeral.

It's true that it's taking me a while to work up the bravery to take the Final Exit. Ending your life is a big deal, and you've got to do it right, otherwise you're just going to end up in hospital in pain.

I've had cans of inert gas to suffocate myself, 2 grams of Potassium Cyanide, enough barbiturates to slip into a coma and drown in my hot tub while unconscious, travelled to the top of tall buildings, cliffs and peered over the edge of high bridges. The most serious attempt I made was trying to open my veins with a razor blade. I must admit though, I was just testing the water. You want to make sure that you open some major veins, like the jugular, if you want to die quickly.

Stupidly, I still have hope and some faith in myself. I should write myself off for dead, like those-who-shall-not-be-named have done.

So it came to pass that I went into The Priory, with a referral to one of the country's leading experts on Bipolar Disorder and Dual Diagnosis. JPMorgan were told that I was experiencing mental health problems (true) but the main objective was for me to detox for 28 days, so that there was a clearer clinical picture, and the treatment of my Bipolar and depression could begin.

That makes me an addict right? Don't need to read the rest of the story. Skip to the end. Case closed.

Well, actually, The Priory and my psychiatrists were concerned with my mental health, and saving my life, not just labelling me as an addict and sticking me into the revolving doors of mistreatment and stigma that those suffering individuals endure. The Priory is actually a private hospital, and cares primarily for those suffering with various mental health disorders that are less controversial and stigmatised than substance abuse. There were ten times as many patients who were there because of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders etc. etc.

It's actually all part and parcel of the same group of problems. One fellow patient had been admitted with mental health issues, but out of some drive to self-destruct, she started filling up a mug with alcohol-based hand sanitising gel and flavouring it with orange squash, and drinking it to get drunk.

One of my fellow patients tried to commit suicide by climbing a high wall and hurling herself off, while I was there. Does it matter if she was being treated for depression, or for substance abuse? The fact of the matter is that she was suicidal at that moment. Mental illness of some kind had driven her to try and take her own life.

There was a game we used to play, when a car used to roll up to the house, and out would step the worried looking family members, dragging some dishevelled son, daughter or partner out of the back seat and into a meeting about admission. We used to try and guess what they would be admitted for. Sometimes it was obvious - if they had red wine all spilt down their clothes for example - but often it was nearly impossible.

But what's it actually like, in private hospital? Are there rock stars and stuff? Well, my doctors had treated a number of high-profile sportsmen and women, but when I was there, there weren't any rock stars. Couple of millionaires but no rock stars.

Really, it's much like an NHS mental hospital, except a little more well appointed. Everything is bolted down and the windows don't open and the doors don't lock. The lights don't dangle down and there are no curtains. Mirror glass is made of plastic, and pictures are screwed to the wall, not hung. Yes, there is quite a lot of anti-hanging thought that has gone into things.

When you arrive, you will hand over your razor, scissors, tweezers, solvent containing toiletries, shoelaces, belt etc. to the nurses to keep at their station. If you want to have a shave you'll have to ask for permission, and you'll only get a short amount of time to attack your face with something sharp.

Plus, it's still a hospital, and people are very sick. One woman said to me "it's OK, your secret is safe with me" and tapped her nose with a knowing wink. It later emerged that she thought I was a royal prince, and that my presence in hospital was a state secret. She also came into my room and stole all my underwear and my books, before the nurses tracked down her hiding place.

The rooms are actually as good as any 3-star hotel, with a writing desk, nice view of the gardens, an OK single bed and an ensuite with no shower curtain or plug (drowning is frowned upon). Once you're off suicide watch, you might get to move to one of the double bedrooms that are further away from the nurse's station.

Other than the slight refinement of having a TV and a telephone in your bedroom, there is little different from NHS mental health treatment. The food was very good, I have to say, but your days are generally structured around morning and afternoon trips to the dispensary hatch for your medications, and being regularly checked on by nurses if you're not in some group activity.

Between art therapy, yoga, mindfulness, music therapy, table tennis, TV, movie night and generally socialising with the other patients, it all sounds like a thoroughly lovely spa break. There was a gym and quite big grounds that one could roam in, provided you told the nurses where you were going and how long you'd be gone for. Leaving the compound within my 28 days was forbidden.

Your partner can come and visit you, and you can give a knowing wink at the nurses station before you have sex, so that nobody barges in on you unannounced. Just don't take too long. Visiting is only on a Sunday, so you'll probably have a sack like Santa anyway. You have to hand over your mobile phone and laptop, and digitally detox, so pornography is hard to come by. Probably because sex addiction is also treated at the hospital.

We should remember that although people talk about 'rehab' we need to be quite clear about the treatment route of substance abuse. There is first a detox. It's necessary to break the body's dependence on substances, and treat the withdrawal. If you are an alcohol or a benzodiazepine abuser, there's a good chance that withdrawal could kill you, so the hospital will put you on tapered medication to get you off those substances. If you are an opiate abuser, you will get very sick from withdrawal symptoms, and these can be attenuated with substitute prescribing or by putting the patient into induced sleep. If you are a stimulant abuser, you will suffer cognitive impairment, exhaustion and suicidal depression.

After detox, which could take the whole 28 days, then comes rehabilitation. Depending on how dysfunctional a person has been, they could need 3 to 6 months of rebuilding their damaged life in a safe environment. Just breaking the cycle of chemical dependency is not enough. There's a reason why a person entered that cycle in the first place. There's a reason why that person stayed in that cycle.

We know that gambling addicts don't inject packs of cards into their veins, so addiction can't just be about chemical substances, can it?

So it was, as my time at The Priory drew to a close, the staff gave me the bad news that my treatment was incomplete. I would need another 3 months of rehab if I wanted to make the changes permanent. I flipped out. I discharged myself, went home for a day. Then I spoke to one of the staff on the phone and decided to go back for the remaining few days of treatment. She-who-shall-not-be-named decided that I had "failed" in my commitment to getting better. That's simply a lack of understanding about the commitment that is needed to support somebody in recovery.

Recovery is not about abstinence, it's about having people who love you trying to support you. Support does not mean hectoring, bullying, nitpicking and generally being obnoxious to a person. Your holier-than-thou drinking and smoking and generally behaving like it's OK to do whatever you want and laughing in the face of the abstainer is not helpful, OK?

Abstinence doesn't even work anyway. It's just a continual reminder of what people want to believe: that you're somehow a bad person, that you're faulty, defective. People want to treat you differently, want to label you. Teetotallers are ridiculed, treated with contempt. Why bother being teetotal?

Certainly, not being a smoker was a problem in hospital. There would be long periods where I was left all on my own, because everybody was outside smoking. There is no real abstinence in the world. I found the nurse's stash of caffeinated coffee in one of the more remote kitchens, and in some hospitals you are even allowed to have caffeinated drinks. 'Addicts' are encouraged to not give up smoking and tea/coffee, because they will need those things as a crutch, during those early days of abstinence.

If you look a little more closely at human behaviour, you will see that people are self medicating in one way or another. You'll see the hypocrites, dosing themselves up with stimulants in the form of caffeine. You'll hear the hypocrites, being hypocritical about addiction inbetween puffs on their cigarette. You'll suffer the hypocrites, swallowing their pills and liquids they have as government sanctioned, medically approved substitute addictions.

I could go to my doctor and get a prescription - called a script in addict parlance - for something to salve my addiction and turn it into something seemingly acceptable in society. It's OK if my pills come in boxes from the pharmacy, with my name printed on them and with a prescription from my GP or psychiatrist?

If I had to go to work at the moment I would probably need some Dexamphetamine, or at least a gallon of super strong black coffee. Because I've used so many stimulants, I can drink heaps of coffee without having the anxiety, palpitations and sweats that you would get, but it's a poor substitute for genuine amphetamines, even if the caffeine molecule is virtually identical.

There's no magic in treatment. There's no magic to recovery. It's just time & space and being treated nicely by people, being respected as a human being.

It's important to respect people.

Just respect people.

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