This is a story about getting rich or dying trying...

People come to London seeking their fortune. I went to Ireland seeking my salvation. In a way, I kinda found it.

My life had fallen apart. I had lost a lucrative contract with Barclays through no fault of my own (the guy who terminated my contract was then sacked because of his stupid decision) as well as breaking up with my girlfriend, being evicted from my apartment in Swiss Cottage (again, through no fault of my own) and had once again found myself homeless and unemployed. Many friends took sides during my breakup, and I ended up suddenly alone.

It was January, in the depths of a depressing British winter. No job, no money, no friends, no girlfriend, no nothing. I was fucked.

A friend who I met in the summer, when I first became homeless, had returned to the emerald isle. He had generously made an open offer that I could go and stay with him and his family if I ever needed it, and oh boy did I need it. I was suicidally depressed and a big danger to myself. Camden council had been supremely unhelpful to a resident who they owed a legal duty of care, but they didn't give a shit whether I lived or died.

I guess a lot of unimaginative runaways go to London, and a huge proportion of them will end up in Camden Town. Camden is cool, undoubtably. Camden is full of wide-eyed young people, tourists, and huge amounts of recreational drugs, casual sex and music venues. It's a great place to spend a summer on a shoestring, smoking strong cannabis and chatting up girls.

I had made a couple of similarly Peter Pan-esque pals in Camden, in their mid thirties and working dead-end jobs on low pay, forced into living in hostels and dreadful squat-like houses with several people sleeping in every room. For me, it was a hugely novel experience, having been a wealthy IT consultant working in banking since I took my first big money contract at the age of 20, for Lloyds TSB in Canary Wharf. After 17 or so years of fabulous wealth, slumming it for a summer was almost fun.

My girlfriend at the time was a waitress at an Italian restaurant. Despite having a degree in economics from the University of Bologna, she had rejected the rat race in favour of a minimum wage job and getting ridiculously stoned every day. She was fun and easy going, just so long as all you wanted to do was sit around while she chain-smoked joints, and have great sex of course.

I wouldn't say I outgrew my circle of friends, because I loved them dearly, but the stresses and demands of my contract at Barclays were not really compatible with the lifestyle of casual labour and the pursuit of recreational drugs. At some point, the worlds were going to collide.

My girlfriend and most of my friends felt that I had arrogantly snubbed them, but in fact I was desperately dependent on our social circle for my wellbeing and happiness. When things all fell apart, I did too. I was devastated by the collapse of my social life, as well as losing the structure and routine of my employment.

I ran away to Ireland, and my friend picked me up from Cork airport and took me back to the little village of Killavullen, that he and his family call home. Nestled in the hillside above the village, looking over the valley below and just at the edge of a vast forest, my friend's family home is a peaceful idyll that is completely unlike the rat race of London.

The timing was not ideal, and I arrived in the middle of various challenges facing the family, but they welcomed me and treated me with incredible warmth, kindness, care, despite the crises that they were dealing with. It's not my place to be indiscreet about the family matters that I became aware of, but suffice to say the last thing they needed was some sick burnt out heartbroken citydweller suddenly thrust into the mix.

My state of mind collapsed still further, as it became clear that there would be no reconciliation with my former friends: I was a pariah. There was nothing for me back in London, except a certain collapse in my will to live. My friend's family insisted that I should stay with them until I felt fit and well enough to return home. I missed my return flight and didn't book another.

I tried to go along with the flow of family and village life, getting to know the people that my friend grew up with, and his family.

My friend and I went panning for gold - I had bought him a kit while in England and had brought it over to Ireland for him - as well as climbing to the top of the 'mountain' that he lived on. We drove around the vast forest that covered the hillside, and explored the neighbouring villages, as well as nearby Cork city centre. Although I had visited Ireland twice before, I had missed the point about stopping to smell the shamrocks. I'm always in the mode of rush, rush, rush.

We travelled to the huge cliffs at Old Head, and I stood there on the edge, having had a haircut, a shave, a bunch of hot meals and having slept in a warm comfortable bed in a welcoming family home for some time. Instead of wanting to jump off the edge of the cliff, I was actually happy to be alive.

Tags: #friends #homeless #london #ireland #family #suicide #depression #career #banking #computing

This is a story about taking a break...

This time last year I was charging around Ireland, exhausted and stressed out of my mind to the point where I was losing my marbles, because I'd had such a rough ride up to the point that I finally got out of the country for a few days break.

August is a dreadful time to get anything done. The French have the right idea, basically taking the whole month off work, leaving the cities and heading for the coast. I peaked a little early this year, because I wanted to be on holiday while celebrating my birthday.

A friend raised the very valid point that becoming engaged in debate is exactly what I'm looking for when I'm courting controversy. To say that I'm shitposting or attention seeking would be untrue, but there's certainly a reason why I don't just keep a private journal.

Now that I'm in my mid-thirties, most of my peers have spawned offspring, and that means they're taking their snot-nosed little shits on holiday. Can you sense the provocative sarcasm? Certainly the irony in my tone has not come across effectively at times, causing offence to stressed out mummies and daddies over my irreverence towards the magic of parenthood.

Every so often I reconsider whether what I've been writing is balanced and fair, and occasionally somebody tells me I'm out of line or otherwise gives me feedback that directs my attention towards points of view I hadn't considered.

However, now we are in the middle of the school holidays, I definitely feel like any attempts to address my critics would fall on deaf ears. Most of my child-encumbered chums are too busy trying to stop their offspring drowning while in the paddling pool or World War III from kicking off in the back of their family-sized car packed with infants and infant paraphernalia.

Unless you've met me during your sprogged-up years, you're not going to know that I'm actually poking fun. For my own amusement, I'm assuming a caricature: that of the footloose and fancy free bachelor, who is too much of a cultured citydweller to be bothered with mopping up sick and pooh. In actual fact, if you have met me during your years of parenthood, I hope you think I'm at least a little bit sympathetic to the trials and tribulations of raising unruly offspring, and it's obvious that I actually like kids.

Ironically, those friends who genuinely are footloose and fancy free and have rejected the commitments of family life, have also missed the point. While they are off partying around the world, with buttloads of disposable income and zero fucks given for how the other half live, they've ignorantly chided me for not being more grateful for my lot in life. A couple of pals who life has conferred considerable good luck upon, have deigned to give me a lecture on homelessness and the struggles of the working class... presumably while also sipping champagne on a yacht and completely failing to see the irony.

The irony is not lost on me, no matter what you might think, and believe me when I say that I do consider those who have not been fortunate in life when I bemoan my own situation. I hope that I always give an adequate nod to say that I acknowledge my own fortune that I haven't had my limbs all cut off and lemon juice squeezed in my eyes while my testicles are removed with a rusty spoon. My God I'm so glad that didn't happen to me. Oh how terribly fortunate I am. I can hold up a prompt sign if you like, so you know when I'm being sarcastic.

I have this strange habit of directing what I write at various groups of people or individuals, which must be very confusing as a reader, but it's also confusing for me as a writer. Who am I writing for now? My passive-aggressive attacks on my parents, and my rebuttals of my critics, have fallen on deaf ears. It's the school holidays and everybody's off on the beach or at a country show.

I could stop, regroup, and even take this opportunity to actually write on themes rather than using my writing as a vehicle to deal with the demons of my mind and argue aloud with the thrust of my critics words, even if they're not reading or responding.

There's something satisfying in knowing that you've won the argument, whether your opponent listened and responded or not. So many people are terrible at debating anyway, believing that contradiction is the same thing. "No it isn't" then "yes it is" repeated ad nauseam. Yawn!

And so it is, I feel like I'm talking to myself, and this feeling is further exacerbated by the summer break and the "calm before the storm" moment I'm facing, where I feel like I'm shouting into an empty room, but I also know that I'm closer than I think to making a breakthrough.

Taking a break can so easily mean the abandonment of a project, and the web is littered with abandoned blogs. I might not have achieved much, but I've certainly achieved a degree of consistency.

I'm so close to turning a corner, and yet it feels like I'm getting nowhere during a lonely school holiday where everyone is distracted spending time with their families in the sunshine while I plug away at an unfulfilling job and continue to bare every aspect of my soul on the public Internet.

I could stop, but then I would be like Wile E. Coyote when he runs off the cliff. It's only when he stops running and looks down that he falls. If that cartoon coyote just kept running he would be fine.

That's the discipline of the completer-finisher. That's my discipline. I don't stop. I don't give up. Not until I achieve something. Not until I reach some kind of goal. The project's not done. I have to continue even if it's bleeding me dry.

Anyway, void, I know you're always here listening to me and it's mighty therapeutic to be able to talk at length. Feels a bit weird continuing to blog away when so many people are off on their summer holidays, but there we go!

Tags: #writing #ireland

This is a story about terrorism...

Do we take stability for granted? In actual fact, I think we do a remarkable job of Keeping Calm and Carrying On, in the face of the threat of violence.

I often think about Britain's role in my lifetime, as a diplomatic and tolerant nation. We made great strides in the Northern Irish peace process, and IRA bombings and bomb scares had almost faded from memory. We managed to protect Salman Rushdie, when he published the The Satanic Verses, while at the same time maintaining a good relationship with the Islamic world. Acts of terrorism, like the Pan Am bombing, were committed on British soil, but yet our nation never stumbled as a respected statesman in foreign affairs.

However, perhaps our politicians took our position for granted.

Entering into an illegal war against Iraq was just downright arrogant and stupid, on the basis of supposed intelligence that was never questioned within the corridors of power, despite the fact that the public were obviously not convinced by the outlandish claims.

Surely nobody can deny the fact that Britain's recent foreign policy has made our nation a target, rather than a safer place for our citizens. The war in Iraq was cited by the 7/7 bombers, as the reason for their attack. Our MPs voted to bomb Syria, further compounding a refugee crisis, and angering the Arab world. Then we held a referendum on leaving the EU, which threatens to derail the Northern Irish peace process as well as unleashing a tidal wave of racist hatred & intolerance.

London needs to remember that Britain is a European nation, and Europe has land borders with the Middle East. We are not the USA, with a massive body of water - The Atlantic Ocean - that separates us from those who want to kill us.

It's OK for the USA to meddle in the affairs of Ireland, Europe and the Middle East, because they are the best part of 4,000 miles away. So long as the Arab parts of the Middle East don't get intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, they're more than happy for Britain to idiotically make itself unsafe in the process of protecting American interests.

Our Irish neighbours who believe in the re-unification of their island under a single republic, can quite easily take a short ride on a car ferry and come and blow us up. Have we forgotten that? I can't really tell you how my fellow Brits in Belfast feel, but I certainly don't want to offend my friends in The Republic of Ireland, by making them feel like Britain is yet again becoming a viciously violent imperialist, at the expense of European peace.

Britain has long had a tradition of multiculturalism, and offending our Muslim population seems unwise. We can't deport people based on their religion. Many Muslims are second or third generation. They're as British as you or I.

The USA can send Israel guns, bombs, tanks and warplanes, in order to illegally occupy Palestine and oppress the Arab people. The USA can do this, because they are thousands of miles away, across vast oceans, from the vast swathe of the planet that they are committing atrocities against. Muslims are just 0.9% of the population of the USA. However, in England, 5% of the population follow the Muslim faith.

Britain is in no position to act like the USA, in terms of foreign policy. Britain is in no position to make itself an enemy with its neighbours and its own citizens.

Horrible racists like Donald Trump might talk about "the ban" on people of the Muslim faith, and this might even be sadly workable, because of the popularity of the policies in a predominantly isolated nation. However, Britain is an island trading nation, a multicultural society, and close to the great landmass of Europe, which borders Asia and the Middle East. We don't have a Panama Canal to the south, and an Arctic wilderness to the North. People quite regularly swim across the English Channel.

To use the language of the USA is ridiculous. We can't talk of imposing our own brand of freedom on people, and riding around the world in war machines, blowing up whoever we like, and then acting all surprised and upset when a few people fight back.

The UK has increased and increased its reckless stupidity with foreign policy that threatens the safety of every peaceful law-abiding citizen. I don't want to live in a country where I have to be mistrustful of the Muslim community, the Irish community. I don't want to go back to the days of bomb scares and terrorist attacks.

Britain and London's great success has been in welcoming visitors to our shores. I feel safer in a multicultural London, than I would in a sea of angry white faces, all chanting jingoistic racist nationalistic tosh, at the expense of national security.

You can't use violence and aggression to bring peace. All that warmongering foreign policy, and racist domestic policy, will accomplish, is to alienate the many cultures who had previously felt at home in Britain, and turn ourselves into a proxy target for those who seek to hurt the imperialists that oppress them.

Having Tony Blair as Middle East peace envoy was a dreadful insult to the Arab world. What on earth is Britain doing, other than painting a big target on its back?

Tags: #terrorism #politics #london

This is a story about the start of an eventful year...

On May 13th, 2015, which was my Mum's birthday, I decided it was time to try and clean up my act and get back on my feet. I spoke with a friend from Ireland who had been very supportive during a very difficult start to the year, but later that day I was sideswiped by events that defy rational interpretation. This is my account of those events.

I came to be staying in a hotel near Finsbury Park, Islington, North London. How I came to be there is a matter of shame and regret, that I don't particularly want to go into. I believed that the predating matter had been settled, and I was killing time until the 13th of May, which was the last possible date I considered it acceptable to have not yet managed to get my shit together. I had set myself a deadline, but I was being quite slow to get on with what needed to be done.

When I had checked into the hotel, it had seemed quite an ordinary place, stuffed full of tourists. The layout of the building was maze-like, and I struggled to find my room. The room numbering wasn't logical, and there seemed to be staircases everywhere. My room was sparse beyond belief, with two very basic single beds, and a flimsy wardrobe. The curtain was barely more than a semi-transparent sheet. I'm not being snobby, because I was lucky to have a dry roof over my head, but I mean to describe the setting for some of this tale.

My hotel room was on the top floor, with a large sash window looking onto the terrace of houses opposite. You could see in the windows of the house opposite. Outside the window was the top of the bay windows of the rooms below, forming a kind of balcony without any railings. Obviously you weren't supposed to climb out of the window onto that balcony, but more on that later.

There had been some excellent sunny weather, and I had come and gone from my room to a little shop nearby to purchase ice lollies, as well as other food & drink, but I was pretty under-nourished. I was also extremely sleep deprived.

2015 had not been going well. In Swiss Cottage, my landlord had decided he wanted to end the contract of me and my flatmates and re-let the flat at much higher rent, after he had spent money on much needed renovation. The flat had chronic damp problems and the heating didn't work, until I had eventually nagged him into fixing the place up... triggering my own eviction. My contract with Barclays had been unexpectedly terminated due to a complete asshat of a guy trying to protect his key-man dependency and little fiefdom... I wasn't the only one who he didn't get on with, and the existing contractors had refused to work with him, leaving me with the short straw.

I returned to the hostel I had lived in, after being chucked onto the street by Camden Council, a year earlier. Camden Council had been most unhelpful in their legal duties to house a resident, and had wasted a lot of time. I was given two weeks in a crisis house, but it was then left up to me to try my luck with local homeless charities. They literally didn't care.

In the summer of 2014 I had been living in a hostel in Camden Town, funded using my overdraft. This had gotten me back on my feet, so why wouldn't I go back there at the beginning of 2015, when I no longer had a place to live? It turned out that most of my friends had managed to move on and make a better life for themselves. The prospect of starting to rebuild my life again, from scratch, was devastating.

I decided to head out East, and lived in a hostel in Shoreditch and then one back in Swiss Cottage. These were chaotic times. Food and sleep were the big casualties, which had a knock-on effect on my mental health. Dragging piles of bags all over London, while not looking after yourself and having very uncertain living arrangements is quite detrimental, it turns out.

It has to be confessed that stimulant abuse was a large component of these problems. The insomnia and anoretic (appetite suppressing) effects of these chemicals conspire to cause you to neglect to sleep and eat. Without sleep and nutrition, the brain quite naturally gets pretty strung out, and you're more susceptible to strange thoughts and behaviours. Quite possibly this entire tale can be told as the result of a chain of unchecked drug binges, but there are elements that are clearly external influences.

As with any drug addict, ever, I decided to have "one last hit"... and this is where things go a bit sketchy.

I was overcome with a sense of threat. I felt like I was being watched, listened to. I decided to lock myself in the bathroom, around evening time on the 13th of May, 2015. I stayed there until the next morning, trapped by fear.

Fear of what? Well, at first, it was impossible to describe. I felt that the people in the houses opposite were staring in through the large sash window, with its flimsy curtain. I felt that the people in the neighbouring rooms were listening in to my mutterings. I felt sure that there was some hostility, just outside the door of my room.

When I was in the bathroom, for the whole evening and night, there was nothing to suggest that anything untoward was happening, but I was still racked by this irrational fear. In the middle of the night, to calm myself down I started telling stories to myself, in the pitch blackness: I hadn't turned on the bathroom light. I gave myself a lecture, on all the physics that I know. I went through everything from fluorescent lightbulbs, to Cathode-Ray Tube televisions, Light-Emitting Diodes and lots of other phenomena that can be explained by Quantum Mechanics. I then started to tell myself a story about the birth and death of the Universe, in some kind of helio-centric model, with a new interpretation of atomic fusion. Clearly, I had lost my mind.

As dawn broke and I could see light under the bottom of the bathroom door, I was certain that I saw flickering light and shadows in my room. This made me extremely agitated. As time went on, I heard stampeding in the corridor, and crude animal noises being made by people, whistling sounds. Then, the fire alarm bells started to be sounded at random intervals, accompanied by yet more running around that sounded like adults acting like children.

I was intensely annoyed at this animal call, running in corridors, fire bell cacophony. I felt extremely persecuted and afraid of imminent attack by these savages. Clearly, I was being deliberately spooked, pranked, by some malicious idiots. This went on for a couple of hours.

Eventually, I could stand it no more, and decided to act as if I couldn't hear what was going on, and try and act normally. I had a shower in the dark, towelled myself off and burst back into the bedroom to face my persecutors. There was no clear sign of anything wrong, but I was freaked out.

There were sounds that were quite clearly audible of the other hotel guests in the adjoining rooms. I was muttering to myself under my breath, in a German accent for some reason. I assumed that my low-volume muttering could not be heard by anybody. I was quite angry and resentful that I had been made so fearful by a bunch of childish adults, playing pranks in the corridor, and started to mutter all kinds of weird things about these people, mostly about them being crass, uncultured out-of-town folks.

At some point, it seemed like I had clearly been overheard, and there was an angry reaction outside the door. I felt ashamed that I had caused offence, as much as I felt surprised that my insane mumblings had been overheard. I took the 'please do not disturb' sign and tore off the 'not' and hung it on my door handle outside my room as some kind of peace offering. As far as I could tell, the hostile family I had upset took particular offence to this, and it sounded like I was about to be lynched.

I hurriedly packed my bags and phoned the hotel reception, and asked if they could smooth things over with these guests, as I didn't fancy getting my head kicked in by some family of chavs who seemed to be spending most of their day hanging around in a budget hotel room antagonising me, rather than going sightseeing around London. I begged the manager to send somebody to safely escort me to a waiting taxi, where I would beat a hasty retreat.

There was a knock at the door, and an energetic young man, beaming from ear to ear bounded into my room when I opened the door. He listened to my concerns with a look of pure amusement playing on his face. He looked as if he could barely stifle a laugh. I'm still not sure if that's because of my strange behaviour and the fact I was clearly off my rocker, or whether he was "in on the game"... but that's just paranoia. The fact that he was a young, well-dressed English guy in good physical shape certainly jarred with the sullen under-paid Eastern European staff that I had encountered up until that time. I had not seen this man behind reception ever, during my comings and goings.

Nothing much seemed to happen. No taxi arrived. No phonecall from reception to say the coast was clear and I could make my escape, free from persecution by the chav family, baying for my blood for taking the piss out of them as uncultured scum. I know it's pathetic to say it now, but I had been half-joking and simply continuing the madness of muttering random crazy stuff to myself, in a bad German accent, such were the depths of my insanity.

I phoned the non-emergency number for the police, and tried to explain my predicament. This didn't go well, and I didn't seem to be getting anywhere. The day wore on and started to get towards evening time. None of this could prepare me for what happened next.

The strange thing is, that over 24 hours had elapsed since I had taken any drugs, and the amount of time that they would last would normally be around 16 to 18 hours, maximum. It made no sense that I was still experiencing severe paranoia, auditory hallucinations, delusions and other weird thoughts and ideas. I struggle to explain later events by simply saying that it was a result of drug abuse.

Perhaps I had finally done it. Perhaps I had finally tipped myself into complete insanity. Certainly, the sense of threat that I had initially perceived was mostly unfounded, unwarranted, irrational.

So, I'll leave it at that for part one. We pause this tale, with me terrified of an angry lynching mob of a family outside my bedroom door, the hotel staff alerted to my distress as well as some non-emergency contact with the police, who were no strangers to me... although it was Kentish Town (Camden) police who I'd had brushes with in the past, but I was now in a different borough of London (Islington). Who knows how joined up the different forces and stations are, especially when dealing with somebody who's got no criminal record.

I wonder what the conclusion will be when the tale is told. That I definitely interacted with people during this time, suggests there is a very real but unfathomable component to this weird story... let's see where it leads.

This is where things started to get unravelled, before I ended up in a couple of hotels near Finsbury Park. The fun run took me right past my bike, where it was locked up on the street outside, as a deliciously ironic twist (May 2015)

Tags: #london #drugs #addiction #bipolar #police

This is a story about destructive relationships...

I stood up my most respected and one of my most sorely missed friends for the third time yesterday.

I was supposed to see him and his family just before Xmas, then we were going to have Tea at the Ritz, then we were going to travel to Heathrow, catch up on the train and in in the ample time before his flight.

WHAT'S GOING ON?

Well, I've never not had a girlfriend. I'm too addicted to sex. After the most almighty row at my ex-wife's brother's wedding, we took a break from each other for a few days. While she discussed my faults and possible solutions with her parents, I found a way out of one destructive relationship and into another.

I have written before about our unhealthy co-dependency on sex, and sex on drugs. "NRG-3" had no ingredients listed, but it was the last untried chemical on a legal high & research chemical website where each weekend, my ex and I would fuck on a different drug.

I would spend a bunch of spare time at Cambridge, reading about research chemicals, and then I would order one, ready for when I next saw my ex. I saw us like Alexander and Ann Shulgin, and had read their candid co-biographies about synthesising about 3,500 psychoactive drugs, and testing them all on themselves. The ones that seemed safe and interesting, as an aphrodisiac, Alexander took with Ann and they compared notes in their famous books PIHKAL and TIHKAL, which I read when I was 17/18 years old.

Only "NRG-3" was going in the bin. I did some snooping and found that "NRG-x" was the name for the old stock of unsold 'legal' highs that weren't legal anymore. Most people speculated that it was Methylenedioxypyrovalerone, which Crystal Meth and Crack users were switching to because it was 1/1,000th of the price per dose. Except MDPV had terrible extrapyramidal side effects in people not regularly abusing stimulants: panic attacks, palpitations, tachycardia, hyperthermia and said to be more addictive than the illegal drugs.

John McAfee, the famous billionaire software engineer became addicted to MDPV and started posting videos of himself pointing a loaded gun at his head on YouTube. The more I read, the more convinced I was that I needed to add the pyrovalerones to my 'never try' list (heroin, crack, crystal meth, PCP).

Only, in a suicidal state after the aforementioned temporary separation from my ex-wife, I thought "fuck it, what harm can 15mg do?" 15 milligrams is 10 to 20% of the size of a dose of 'most' stimulants. The line of white powder is more of a short, thin, hyphen. Your eyes can't believe that 15mg is so tiny.

My affair started immediately. I loved this drug. I loved the effects of this drug more than the pleasure I derived from my destructive relationship with my ex-wife. I had a mistress. I was having an affair. I was also free from the fear of losing my co-dependee.

I took 800mg over 4 days when I had intended to only take 15mg, for the duration of it's effects, which could be between 3 and 24 hours. It's not a stable and predictable compound. My behaviour had always been stable and predictable: I would take a single accurately measured dose, orally, and I had never ever broken my rule.

I had tried maybe 50 drugs up to this point, so I wasn't naïve, but I found myself saying and doing things I knew were addict clichés. "I'll just have a little bit more", "that looks underweight/small, I'll just increase the dose slightly", "I'm going to have one last dose then I'm going to stop", "OK, this really is the last one".

I didn't eat, I didn't sleep until the 3rd night. When I woke up I was having a terrible panic attack. Time inched by. My pulse and blood pressure were maxed. I was convinced I was going to die. I wasn't naïve though. I downloaded a computer game called Samorst, and played that for 12 hours. I felt a bit better.

This happened a few weeks after Springboard ended. I knew I had to pitch in London a month after demo day. I remember almost turning back home as I was almost on the train to London, because the thought of leaving my drugs for a few hours was scary. Way scarier than giving a pitch while high and hoping nobody from Springboard noticed I was high, sleep deprived and I had lost weight.

Everyone said that my London pitch was better than my Cambridge one (practice? home town?  drug-induced confidence? Smaller audience?).

Maybe I just didn't care so much. Jason Trost of Smarkets spotted the founder problem I had right away. I picked a startup that would be cashflow-positive, I could code in on my own in no time, and we already had a customer (5 or 6 household names by the time we started Springboard). The problem was this: I'd solved the problem in my head, written it: boring work only now, and I had no founder passion except pride in our startup.

David Hazell should have been the CEO from day one, and it took him well out of his ColdFusion comfort zone, but he can code Java and Objective-C as well as running a well administered business.

So how do you cure an MDPV addiction? Simple. Stop taking it. My ex took it as personal that I got addicted and she thought I wouldn't quit out of stubbornness  and I just needed shouting at and abusing.

I had a 'man cave' (office/lounge/bedroom) built in the summerhouse I built, but she would still walk down the garden path to shout at me there.

As if this wasn't enough, my parents were ordered to come and take me away. Things didn't get off to a flying start when my ex lets my Dad in and he's been primed to start shouting "you're a junkie" too, the moment he got in my front door. I was in the middle of an email about admission to a specialist drug clinic in London, and I should have told the hypocritical c**t to get the fuck out of my house that I paid for, back to his house which was bankrolled by my mum, and the money that came from the profit of the little cottage that my granny bought her.

My parents then insisted that we get some fresh air (it was January and I was not in a good state). Even though I wore dark glassess and a coat with a big collar, it was still mentioned at work that somebody had seen me out on the clifftop while I was off work sick.

My GP kindly gave me 5 weeks so I could attend the 28-day detox program at The Priory, where one of the country's best psychiatrists specialising in dual diagnosis (Bipolar & substance abuse) was based. A few white lies were told to protect my professional reputation and my health insurance would pick up the £12,000 bill.

My ex-wife said if I went into private hospital, she would divorce me. My psychiatrists said dual diagnosis mortality rates are very high, they disagreed that it was lack of willpower that had meant I hadn't quit by means of being shouted at, and professional care was needed, even just to see what was going on with my comorbid Bipolar II.

3 and a half weeks is what I lasted in hospital, before it dawned on me that I was going back to the same life. 3 weeks became a kind of benchmark. I could quit for 3 weeks, but never any longer. Ignorant people will say that proves a lack of willpower. Fuck you ignoramus.

When separation and divorce finally started to happen, my friend Will rescued me back to London, where I managed 2 months abstinence before my lazy ex wife insisted I travel 240 miles to get 3 valuations on a house she lived and worked less than a mile from.

I had just founded a new startup, was in advanced discussions about raising money, had built a working prototype, cycled to TechStars London every day, had a beautiful girlfriend and lived with one of my oldest friends and made new local friends as well as reconnecting with old.

Paying the mortgage on an empty property ate my savings, especially when she rejected a cash buyer who wanted to move in 6 weeks. Instead she chose an agent who didn't know the area or have any clients looking in that area, and accepted an offer from a couple in a chain who didn't even have an approved mortgage. They took 6 months.

When my parents refused to help ease the cashflow burden like they had repeatedly promised they would - not wanting stress to cause a relapse - it took me a hell of a lot of effort & distraction to raise money that I would have prepared in advance, if I knew their offer was just hot air.

I relapsed back in Bournemouth, with the idea of turning the house into a homeless shelter or something else to piss my ex off. Rang the family solicitor after all the other laughed at me, because I had trashed a hotel room in a drug-fuelled rage, and I wanted to prepare them before I handed myself in to the police.

Strangely my friend Tim turned up, got me out of there, then my Dad got me back to Oxford. Turns out the family solicitor had phoned my mum and begged them to help their son. I was very keen my dad contact the hotel and let me settle the matter with them directly. He didn't care. He doesn't have my ethics.

I had told Will (most innocent and naïve man ever) to chuck me out if I ever got any mail from Spain or Germany. Luckily I managed to find MDPV in the USA, but it still feels shitty using drugs in your friends house, even if you're trapped on the first floor with your leg in plaster in agony because the docs won't give you anything stronger than Tramadol (in case you abuse it).

Camden Town is not a good place to be a drunk or a drug addict. I would meet with Frank every day for weeks until he got a paid hostel bed. While I was making notes, to tell his story, I unwittingly took down the addresses and contacts of everywhere I had to go to try and get help from Camden.

Eventually Will did chuck me out, because of lies my Dad told him. Will did it very nicely, but my Dad destroyed the relationship we had. I remember lying in hospital, 2 canulas, torn liver, burnt abdomen, failing kidneys, and not only did Will ask for his keys back, he asked if I had made any other copies.

This is what happens when a drug addict hypocrite c**t like my Dad starts 'helping' instead of helping like he originally falsely offered to do with a modest bridging loan.

(as an aside my parents lied to my sister and said they'd lent me 250% More money than they actually did, and that I was 'emotionally blackmailing them' by being in hospital, even though they're not my next of kin anymore and I would never bother telling them if I was in hospital. No, my mum said it's ok because it's only worth making the coroner's if they need somebody to identify my body)

I survived homelessness and further hospital admissions, so I saved my mum that train fare, but Camden Council kept reneging on their promises. I got a one line email from Camden Council Housing, saying I couldn't even get a hostel bed

"On the basis of the information you have provided I am afraid that you do not meet the residence criteria to be considered for our Hostels Pathway Scheme."

What the fuck? Do you only accept people with money and houses and nice parents?

If you ever want to speak to a psychiatrist in hospital here's a little trick. Ask the the receptionist if you can borrow her phone and then dial the switchboard. Say "can I speak to the bleep holder for psychiatric liaison please?" Make sure you don't let on you're a patient until you absolutely have to. Saying "I'm trying to locate a bed in a psych ward or crisis house in London for a voluntary admission" doesn't actually contain any lies.

In this way, I was able to get 2 whole weeks of accommodation out of the council tax I pay Camden Council. I don't feel bad, because I had a massive wound in my leg and my penis was hanging off.

At the end of the two weeks, Camden Council said "here's a number for you to phone [if you haven't been mugged or stabbed, and still have your phone]  in the morning for us to come check on you". I said I wanted to stay in a a derelict tennis court maintenance shed to stay dry. They said, "we need you to stay where [muggers are and people have pissed]".

So I booked myself into a suite at the Royal Camden Golf & Spa Resort (a 14 bed dorm in a hostel) and proceeded to go into drug withdrawal. The think about London hostel dorms is, there's bunks, and there's a bathroom, and then outside there's the capital city of London, but if somebody is going through drug withdrawal in one of the bunks, fuck London, you should stay and watch them cos there's no privacy. It's like "Trainspotting" as a live play with one of the best actors you'll ever meet.

Fuck rehab at £430 a night... a hostel is a great place to get clean, provided you have a Laurence. Laurence could see that this was a dress rehearsal, and opening night would be never hopefully, and ushered a disappointed crowd of rubberneckers off around the sights of London. 

I'd managed to hang onto enough money to put myself through the cheapest rehab in the country, which is in Bournemouth believe it or not. I told my mum to hang on though (could hae been yet more lies anyway) because I needed to finish my round of golf and I had a massage booked for later [as in, hostels are like cheap rehab anyway].

Before long I had a group of friends. Laurence from the mountains. Rory the Lidl vodka stealer. Jody the poet. Definitely not French Jack. Psychic Laura. "I just want a baby" Priscilla. "Quite Old But You Still Would" Marla, Gorgeous Flavie, My later ex (banned) Antonella. DJ Kristos.... and many many more, including Paolo who had previously been acting tourguide, but with about 8 times as many years in the Big Smoke than him, I accidentally stole that role.

The thing about a hostel is, if you want drugs, everybody else wants to share, and you have to be high in public. Also, there's none of this pious "not a drop of alcohol shall pass my lips bollocks", and it's a lot easier to get clean with a beer in your hand than an herbal tea being told by some ex-junkie "drugs are bad mmmkay".

It took me a month to get clean and another month to get a job (and stay clean) and then I stayed clean until I dumped Antonella for being abusive, and then Laura got all mumpy that I didn't move onto her. Jody, who was in Love with Antonella, also was angry with me. My entire group of friends in London (except Rory) fell apart, and then my contract ended.

• Abusive relationship = multiple relapses
• No money + massive stress = relapse
• No job + no friends = relapse
• Innocent/naïve middle class person + lies about drug addiction = no friend

So I was nursed back to health by the nicest family in Ireland. The O'Riordan's of Killlavullen, Cork [The Rebel County]. I owe them my life.

The thing about the O'Riordans is that they're the smartest most hard-working and make do people you'll ever meet. Eddie, Laurence's dad's climbed 8,000m peaks and can sail, as well as repair just about anything. Breda, Laurence's mum is just so full of love & care, without all that œdipus complex bollox that my mum needs to deal with. There's sister Maria the nurse who all the boys in Magners drink in to look at and chat to, but they know they'd get the beating of a lifetime if they touched her. Then there's Danielle, with her scholarship, but she's practically already [unofficial] #2 in a company that's about to IPO. She's got Dublin culture but no arrogance.

Anyway, seeing and staying touch, and not falling out with friends is hard. Imagine if all your money just takes you deeper into debt, and keeping your mind quiet is harder than working any job... and it used to say lots of interesting things, but now it just says one: "MDPV"

Just about anything and anything that could have hurt my self esteem has happened. Showing a nurse your penis hanging off is a good one. How's about the police leading you out of a hotel, handcuffed, just wearing boxing shorts ["I'm sure you deserved it, you devil"].

And I keep having to go back to doing what I have done since the age of 17 to stop myself from going bankrupt, but I hate it and it's so easy I can type and have a conversation at the same time. And then when I've got just enough money, I'll walk into the boardroom and I'll tell the board exactly what I think, and I always get fired, but they're too scared I'm going to whistleblow to not give me a reference, so they just quietly sack whoever needs to actually go.

So, I came up with a couple of lists of things I like doing and don't like doing, and I've come up with a bunch of ideas that bring in money, keep me busy, and doing the things I like not the things I don't.

I'm sending it to Jakub, because he's the only man alive who can judge whether I'm talking pie in the sky bollocks or it might be worth a go (maybe with some discussion with his dad).

I have a practical speculative list too, which I might send to Rory, as he's the only man alive who'd come in on me with some mad scheme to stop both of our minds from driving us mad.

Jakub, it just remains to say, I'm so sorry for standing you up, but I was 6 months clean in San Francisco, but I had to ethically walk away from the HSBC corruption and incompetence. Since then, it's been promises, promises and false starts, but I'm waiting for the day when I either die cos I'm dumb enough to figure out how to get high for 14p a day, or smart enough to do something I can be proud of and it was my destiny.

So cute (9 October 2013)

P.S. - Sansa (Happy Birthday!), Lydia, Margaret, Nicola, David, Willian, Will, Jess, Cameron... I'm going as fast as I can. It's like trying to get a 10,000kg ball rolling.

Tags; #startup #addiction #friends

This is a story about home...

I always wanted to live at the water's edge. Now I do. If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.

Getting myself off the streets and into a flat was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back though. It wasn't even my idea. Working 12 to 14 hours a day 7 days a week was not really possible while homeless, but equally I don't need such a great place to live. I have been living to work, so all I really need is a bed, somewhere I can prepare food and a shower.

When an aeroplane cabin loses pressure, oxygen masks will automatically be deployed. If you have ever listened to the safety briefing that the cabin crew give, you will know that you should put on your own mask before helping others. I haven't really applied that advice in day to day living.

I did a Hack-a-John where I spent a couple of weeks training a friend who is an idle gambling addict, to be able to get a job. I then got him an interview at the biggest bank in Europe, for a position on the #1 project. He messed it up. The reputational damage that I personally sustained kinda sealed my fate on that particular contract. I was a marked man for doing something so audacious. John, however, doesn't seem to see things in the wider context, and has gone back to sitting on a couch, gambling. That's ingratitude for you. I can lead a horse to water but I can't make it drink.

I then went to a Hackathon to try and help with the refugee crisis. There I met an extremely capable and lovely guy called Klaus. I wanted to get involved helping refugees. I ended up helping Klaus - the tidy Kiwi - who urgently needed a place to stay. He now sleeps on my couch, enjoying the above views.

Life in London is pretty hard. You might think that I sit around swilling champagne and eating in expensive restaurants, taking taxis and wringing my hands as I read The Guardian but in actual fact I'm far too busy trying not to die.

My life is minimal beyond belief. All the clothes that I own in the world are in my floordrobe (the pink and grey boxes on the floor) plus I have a single suit, single overcoat and a single pair of dress shoes. I do also own 10 smart work shirts - 5 at the dry cleaners and 5 ready to be worn for the working week... which doesn't quite work when you are in the office 7 days a week.

For years, I've been trying to tell my friend Posh Will that investment banking hours are unsustainable and not productive. However, I had to do yet another horrible banking project in order to try and save my own life. I needed the overtime to get myself off the streets and into a home.

Bizarrely, I kind of regret it. I was surviving quite well as a homeless person. I think I was given about a 30% chance of surviving one particularly bad hospital admission, but I pulled through. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Life is much easier when you're just concentrating on staying alive, rather than worrying about any dependents.

I'm not really sure how I ended up with dependents. Why did my friend John end up relying on me - the suicidal homeless guy with mental health issues - to get him a job? Why does my friend Klaus get to go to the gym, and yoga and spend all his time talking to his friends & family, when I'm the one paying for the roof over his head?

Yes, I really need to learn to look after #1... and I don't mean the #1 project in the biggest bank in Europe. I need to learn that it's important to put on the oxygen mask before helping others.

So I'm really at the end of my tether. I'm at my wits end. I've got nothing left to give. However, if I'm going to be a better leader, there's no sense in getting angry with the people who I have carried - they were just smarter about being selfish, looking after themselves at the expense of others. That's the way to win the rat race.

London and our adversarial culture really does encourage us to trample on each other. I think absolutely nothing of clattering into some thoughtless person who would rather that I stepped into the road, into the path of a bus or a truck, in order to get out of their way. I really don't bother with good manners if somebody is standing on the left hand side of the escalator, or decides to stop and have a chat with their companions in a really inconsiderate location.

We have run out of patience and we don't have time for asshats in London. This sprawling metropolis is already creaking and groaning at the seams, and Londoners really don't have time for gawping tourists who left their own sense of good manners at home. Perhaps I should come to where you live and just stand in the road causing a traffic jam because I want to admire something interesting without having to think whether it's appropriate in the wider context.

I would say that London is not dehumanising, as many people believe. It's actually the complete opposite. It's overwhelmingly humanising. You see all of humanity's very worst traits in evidence. You see people starving on the street while people pay £6 for a coffee and croissant, barely a few metres away. You see people shouting and fighting, but you pretend that you didn't, and you just scurry down a dark hole, underground, to go and be forced to invade each other's personal space in the interests of getting home a little quicker.

The calm serenity of living by the Thames is really unsettling for me. It feels like I have left London. I can feel my body, my soul, mourning the loss of humanity. It's really fake here in Canary Wharf. There are no beggars, no homeless people. This rich enclave has excluded the undesirable members of society from the private estate.

It might look enviable, and perhaps you are even enraged that I have become depressed in my current situation, but I'm not going to lie to you. I was happier living with homeless people and at the moment I feel like I'd rather go back to living on the streets. I just can't handle the pressure of those who think I'm a hypocrite, and those who want to ride my back.

I don't feel very true to myself at the moment, true to my values. I always believed that when you have surplus, you should give it away, but it's never enough for some people. I'd rather just be responsible for myself again. My life felt much less in danger when I wasn't carrying any ungrateful fools and dealing with jealousy and accusations of hypocrisy.

If I'm going to continue my journey with authenticity, and without hypocrisy, I may have to give up the material distractions that other people struggle to see beyond. People probably see my home as a status symbol, rather than simply a place that I can eat, sleep and wash.

"Been there, done that" is what many travellers do, when they're racking up pins on the globe or any other kind of stamp collecting. People can be very boastful about the experiences they have racked up. They have cultivated an entire personality, their whole self-esteem system around their travel tales and photographs. Perhaps I'm the same, but it's literally life and death for me, rather than simply a means of impressing dinner party guests.

I love cooking and I love hosting friends. I used to throw huge garden parties for loads of people. I used to thrive on it. Has it really helped me today? No, not really. Everybody else just moved on with their lives, and a single guy who's still living like a bachelor I don't really fit into the rhythm of my old friends lives now they have wives and kids. Lots of my friends left London to get sprogged up.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes, and London seems to be so much about drinking. Drink all your wages, and spend whatever you have left on meals out and foreign holidays. I don't really do that. I haven't been drinking for 62 days and I haven't had a holiday since October last year. Even my meals out have a business purpose. What you see is not what you get with me... my brain is always in work mode. Even my flat is basically a co-working space.

The line is being blurred between work & life to the point where I literally never stop working, even to the point that my dreams are filled with work stuff. I'm a total workaholic, but what else am I supposed to be living for? You tell me if I can afford to take my foot of the accelerator. I don't think I can... the world is too highly leveraged. We haven't made allowances for people who need to stop and catch their breath.

So I desperately need to go to Ireland again. I desperately need to decompress. I desperately need to get away from the relentless pressure to provide for everybody, to prop them up and help them keep their dreams alive. I need some time out for me.

Not sure if I'm going to get that time, because I need to make hay while the sun shines. There is work available, and my bank balance could sure do with a boost to make sure that Klaus has a couch to sleep on while he's doing his gym and yoga and stuff.

One day I'd like to do yoga. Maybe when I'm dead.

That is all.

I need to go back to Ireland and be a culchie for a little bit, as I'm not getting to be much of a culture vulture in London (February 2015)

Tags: #london #career #ireland #homeless #mentalhealth #depression #suicide #friends

This is a story about protesting without violence or vandalism...

Holding a gun makes you feel powerful. You have the ability to be judge, jury and executioner, all rolled into one. Thankfully, we don't have that many guns in the UK, yet. I'd like to keep it that way.

Fighting fire with fire is never a good idea. "Offence is the best defence" is actually an offensive quote, and it breeds arms races. Who's going to have the bigger stick? An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

Guy Fawkes' plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament was not a good idea. But the fact that he failed meant that he got his point across, even if he was burnt alive. Becuase we killed a man, he lives on as an anti-government symbol that will rise up whenever people are disillusioned with the 'democratic' system we have in place. That's about the only positive spin we can take from that night, November 5th... a long long time ago.

Tonight, London is bracing itself for widespread disruption, around the Million Mask March and the work of Anonymous. I fear that more anger-prone outbursts will result in violent clashes with the Metropolitan Police. I love the police... they do a very difficult job under horrendously difficult circumstances, protecting the most vulnerable people in society, and trying to uphold laws that YOU supposedly voted for.

But the majority of people are not politically active. They are disillusioned with politics in this country. They will happily vote on X-Factor or Big Brother, and indeed they follow these programs with great interest. Do they watch Party Political Broadcasts and Prime Minister's Question Time? No way. They don't see any connection between what goes on in Westminster and their lives.

Sadly, the lives of too many people in this country are ruled by too few people who are far removed from the reality of ordinary living in the United Kingdom. That is causing bitterness and resentment. The 'have-nots' are very angry with the 'haves' and they have no way of expressing that anger in a constructive way that makes a difference.

I fear that things are going to turn ugly tonight, and I really implore anybody and everybody to keep a lid on their feelings and try and go about their business with some dignity and self-control. Yes, we all like letting off fireworks... but I implore angry young people to do it responsibly.

The thought of a policewoman or man being horribly burned, like earlier this week, is really inexcusable. That person has a family. That person is human too. It's not them and us... we're all in this together, even though that Gammon-Faced Cockwombling Spunkflute that is David Cameron uses that line, but doesn't mean a word of it, in his massive house in Chipping Norton.

So anyway, I'm #notanonymous. You know who I am. I'm making a dignified and nonviolent protest about the divisions in British society. I'm proud to be a subject of Her Majesty the Queen of England, and live, love and work in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Long live The Queen and God bless her and the United Kingdom.

I remain, Ma'am, your loyal subject.

I know you like Corgi dogs, your Highness, but I hope you like this picture of my cat, Frankie (June 2007)

Tags: #politics #frankie #notanonymous #civildisobedience

This is a story of a culture that is destroying people's mental health and lives...

Management by balance-sheet, bean counters, spreadsheet jockeys and "yes" men and women are joining a set of executives who do everything in their power to abstain from any of the hard work and responsibility that is necessary in the world.

We have all heard horror stories of people being sacked by text message. In fact, skilled workers, professionals, have been steadily robbed of their worth and self-esteem since powerful rich men, behind closed doors in gentleman's clubs were allowed to asset strip British industry. The practice continues today, as companies are allowed to be headquartered in the UK, but are offshoring all the jobs for cost reasons, and are draining the wealth of the nation.

Europe is fast becoming little more than a tax haven for global businesses, with billions, if not trillions of dollars of profits being pushed through legal entities that have little reason for existence other than to evade the taxes that these companies rightfully should pay to the countries that they have extracted the profits from.

Luxembourg is the most obvious example, but Ireland has recently jumped on the bandwagon. The amount of tax that is paid by Vodafone (group HQ is Luxembourg... funny that, considering that Newbury, UK is where I thought they were founded?) or Apple and Amazon (taxed via Irish legal entity... I know Apple Maps is rubbish but it's a long way from Silicon Valley?) is a pittance. The amount of profits that these companies make is disgusting, versus what they pay as percentage of their gross profits.

However, maybe there is a good reason for all of this?

When I became unwell, and asked good old UK government for support - as somebody who has always paid my full taxes, has no offshore bank accounts, has never tried to evade or avoid taxes - I found that there was worryingly little of a safety net there.

I went to my doctor (General Practitioner, or GP for short, here in the UK) and had a 30 second conversation about what was going on in my life.

"Have you heard of Fluoxetine"

Well, yes, I have heard of Fluoxetine. It's the generic name for Prozac, which is an antidepressant from the 1980s. What the hell is my doctor doing dishing out 25 year old pills to somebody who they have taken 30 seconds to get to know? Well, we know that the NHS is extremely cost pressured, given that we have to give such large tax breaks to profitable billion dollar companies and make sure that we don't take too much inheritance tax from dead multi-millionaires. Oh, and we need nuclear atomic bombs too. Yes, we need to make sure we can always annihilate every person on earth at the flick of a switch.

Luckily for me, I walked away from a course of powerful psychoactive medication, that has been proven in long-term studies to be less effective than placebo. It also takes 6 weeks to take effect. My episodes of depression tend to be about this long anyway. Also, SSRIs make you fat and destroy your sex life, as well as blunting your emotions and generally making your sh1t life even more sh1t, but you'll be too doped up to even realise, unless you ever emerge from the chemical haze.

I'm pretty upset about this, if you hadn't picked up on that.

Another thing that is very annoying is that, as anybody who takes a few more minutes to get to know me will tell you, I'm certainly not what you might term unipolar. My life is littered with examples of radical mood swings. Catch me at a certain time, and you will see my racing thoughts, pressured speech, lack of sleep, intolerance of dimwitted twits, and evidence of my wacky projects.

One day I whimsically decided to knock down my shed, order a load of wood from a sawmill and build a giant beach hut summer house thing in my back garden. Somebody suffering from unipolar depression does not normally do such a thing, according to the DSM-IV/V.

I had to learn all about Google Sketchup, so that I could design the thing, learn about different types of timber, wooden building construction techniques, roofing techniques, planning laws governing outbuildings, estimate how much I would need in terms of materials, locate a sawmill, find a roofing supplier, get a chop saw, nail gun and roofing blow torch (the most fun tool of all).

At no point did any of this seems slightly strange or beyond my capabilities, as a spotty IT nerd who did little more than turn coffee into software for a living, by pressing buttons on a computer, in a comfortable air-conditioned office.

Working around-the-clock seemed perfectly normal too. I remember one neighbour pointed out that the sound of nails being hammered at 9pm was not helping him to study for an English exam... but how are you supposed to hammer quietly? I did try and hammer more considerately, but it seemed more considerate to simply get the project done as fast as possible (I think I took 3 days to complete the structure) given that I didn't know the sleep patterns of everybody within earshot.

So "Mega Shed" as she was affectionately known, appeared at the bottom of my garden in under a week, at a cost of £700. An ordinary week in anybody's life? Well it's hard to judge from an internal point of view, as you can't step out of your own mind and view yourself as others would.

Naturally, friends, colleagues and family are always impressed by a person's industriousness and ingenuity, so I saw no real reason to back off the gas. When the world rewards you for efforts, this reinforces your belief that what you are doing is sustainable.

I then decided to sit in my garden and read a huge stack of books on Quantum Mechanics. This then progressed to me reading every paper that looked interesting in Cornell University's online archives. Naturally, I then started emailling a bunch of the authors, and getting engaged in particularly interesting email based discussions with people around the world about De Broglie's Matter Waves (Pilot Wave theory) which looked a hell of a lot more elegant than all that Standard Model crap that couldn't be unified with General Relativity.

Instead of being discouraged, I found academics to be kind, indulgent and generous with their time. I took things too far, of course, and wrote a paper on the measurement of collapsing Quantum States in an entangled system, spread over a physical space larger than the light-cones of the particles being measured. Standard Quantum Eraser type stuff. I even tried to get it published. Lolz.

At no point did anybody actually directly say to me "you seem to be as mad as a box of frogs on acid with lasers coming out of their nostrils" so I kept digging myself into a deeper and deeper thought hole until I sank into another depression, with no idea what had just happened to me.

The thing is, it's fairly entertaining, enthralling, to watch somebody who is hypomanic. In our age of Big Brother and myriad reality TV shows, we seem to think that it's OK to be a spectator in somebody's spectacular life.

We seem to think it's OK to sit back and watch somebody go absolutely bezerk. It's that person's fault, right? Or maybe it's not their fault, but it's not your responsibility... that would be somebody else? Maybe doctors? Maybe the police? Maybe the council? I don't know... I'm just going to watch - because this is just too horrible to miss a minute of - and I can't tear my eyes away this is just so awful, somebody should do something about it, but not me, and not yet because I'm really getting into this. Brilliant. Who needs TV anyway?

I don't think that I'm not personally responsible for getting unwell, but I don't think that people know how to help, really. I don't think that people are particularly incentivised to help either. We have a very isolated existence. We don't know our neighbours, we don't trust strangers, we ring the police to deal with things that we used to work out between ourselves, we expect our doctors to give us magic beans to cure all society's ills.

So, today is World Mental Health day and World Homeless Day. I can tell you, from personal experience, that mental health issues can lead to homelessness. When I was discharged from hospital after a suicide attempt, I was given 2 weeks accommodation, and I was expected to use that time to arrange my own accommodation. I went to the council offices with a letter from my doctors, explaining that I was extremely vulnerable and that I should receive urgent assistance. The person I spoke to then went on holiday and that was the last I heard of it.

I don't blame the system or the people. People are trying to do the best that they can, but there are so many people in need of assistance, and so little money, because we are fixated on helping the rich to get richer, rather than supporting the most vulnerable members of society. I'm not even angry about it. Living in the Royal Parks and on Hampstead Heath was an eye-opening education for an extremely highly qualified and well educated guy who fell on hard times. If you think I chose to become homeless, then f**k you, you ignoramus.

Yes, I could have sold my camera, but I wanted to document what happened to me and I already sold all my other possessions to support myself. When will you be satisfied? Sell my clothes? Locking me up for being naked will be expensive (June 2014)

Tags: #mentalhealth #bipolar #depression #homeless #sex #banking #career #london #culture

This is a story of the people behind the camera; the unsung heros....

As I was having a "brand interaction" with Shaun the Sheep, I observed that there was one gender that was statistically more probable to be behind a camera, photographing a little person.

Mums are our unsung heros, Grannies are the nonjudgemental free babysitters for mollycoddled mummies boys, Aunties are the eyes that see everything from afar, Cousins are the ones who are 'Goldilocks'... not too close but not too far. You shouldn't marry your cousin though. Not enough genetic diversity.

Men are arseholes. Powerful men are entitled, bullying, cruel and myopic arseholes. Men are warriors, but we are supposed to be civilised. There is nothing civilised about war. There is nothing civilised about bullying, pain, human suffering, hunger and feeling unloved.

Mums are the antidote to men's raging testosterone. When women give birth, maternal instincts are programmed into the mother, which are necessary for the survival of the species. However, human babies have very large heads (ouch!) and are totally unable to support themselves and their alien head until they have drunk lots of mother's milk from the mammary glands of their mother.

Oxytocin is released into the bloodstream of nursing mothers, as part of bonding, but there is a sympathetic reaction, which is not in the mother's body, but in the father (if he stuck around for the birth). The release of this hormone is critical, to change the mode of the male, from fight, fuck and flee, into a responsible adult who deserves to have his offspring survive for long enough to possibly pass on 50% of his genes.

This is not so much the 'selfish' gene, as the 'anti-freeloader' mechanism. I'm sorry buddy, but you don't get to sow your wild oats and expect to reap what you sow. That's called rape.

I'm sorry to say it, but there are far to many rapists in the world. Men who think that they can get away with taking what they want, and not sticking around to face the emotional and physical consequences. The price for your 3 seconds of copulation could well be a pink/brown/yellow/red, screaming, incontinent midget, which can't feed itself, but yet you find yourself doing a weird dance in worship of this blood and mucus covered alien that just exited the mothership.

The "summer of love" was merely a chemical blip that nature would inevitably find its way around. The powerful drugs that have been synthesised in Bayer, Roche, Lily, Pfizer, Myers-Squibb etc. etc. which were tested on animals, including many of society's undesirables is a holocaust that we have conveniently forgotten. Baby boomers should not be nostalgic for being doped up in a field having unprotected sex, because that's f**king up society.

Many well meaning Physicians have entered Psychiatry, believing that it was a new Science, motivated by the desire to improve lives. Nobody did the long-term studies to find out whether the outcomes were better or worse. Where data has existed - for example, with Heroin, Cocaine, Laudenum, Snuff, Cannabis - the long term outcomes only look OK for the extremely wealthy. Are you the Queen of England? No? Then perhaps Cannabis is not for you. Big Pharma gets very rich indeed of patent royalties, which is completely at odds with the needs of sick people.

Psychoactive substances have always been the means of controlling society. Whether it was the Coca leaves of Peru and Columbia, Betel nut of Africa, Paan of Southern Asia, Tea of North India and China, Coffee and Cocoa of South America... and of course, Tobacco of the Americas. Older than all of these, is of course, alcohol which was brewed by monks in order to addict people to something that would fill their congregation pews.

As shamanism, witch-doctoring and magic declined in Europe, so organised religion rose to fill the void, as child mortality and and an early death were guaranteed to feature in the lives of Medieval people, along with hunger and bitterly cold winters. Life was short and sh1t.

Civilisation has advanced. We now have the resources to treat diseases, making them go away and people live instead of dying. In a hell of lot of cases that's a mosquito net and a sachet of salt & sugar, which will save the life of a person with runny pooh, provided they have access to clean drinking water. It's as simple as that.

Add food into the mixture and you're improving lives immeasurably in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Sahara is a bleak and desolate space that separates almost an entire continent from having access to civilisation. Do we travel there to distribute clean water, medicine, bicycles? No, we go there to steal gold, diamonds, uranium ore, dam their rivers, steal their resources and take what little crops the African people grow to feed themselves, paying barely enough for them to survive the winter. This is rape.

I don't know if this is coming across, but I'm quite angry about this. I have been for as long as I've been able to hold a complex thought and set of feelings in my young mind. I'm sorry I wasn't a right-on lefty liberal, born with a copy of The Guardian clutched in my hands, as I was ejected from my mother's womb. I'm sorry that you're too far up your Islington Blairite Hypocrite Champagne Swilling Holier-than-thou F**king A*se to see that the working classes care too... but they didn't have the benefit of your privileged education. But then you're so smart that you knew that? No?

Thankfully, Oxford is a think-tank, where burnt out Blairites decide to raise a family. It used to be an affordable commuter belt City with enough culture and academic interest to make the trip into Paddington on the train, worth jostling with other suits in the morning.

Oh yes, Oxford has its fair share of people who look down their noses at the great unwashed masses. Thankfully though, some of them couldn't avoid actually encountering some grubby street urchins, and having their perceptions shaken up.

There was a joke shop in the heart of Jericho, where you could buy water balloons, smoke bombs, whoopee cushions, firecrackers/bangers and other things that could shock a smug mummy's boy out of his self-obsessed preening, admiring themselves in their gowns in shop windows as they walked through the cobbled streets of Oxford's dreaming spires.

My Parents never really reprimanded me for launching a "Swallows and Amazons" style attack on the punters, from the high boughs of trees and bridges in the University Parks. We were little monkeys, who tore around town on our BMXs and skateboards faster than any Park Ranger or officious old fuddy-duddy could chase after us. We used to ring doorbells, egg houses, put treacle on door knobs. We were working class kids thumbing our noses at the establishment and everybody loved it, except for the arrogant elite.

Luckily, all the 'warrior' men were all in London, hunting big game and beating their chests. We knew our mothers would tell us off and say "wait until your father gets home" but we also knew our fathers would be exhausted from full-on days of p1ssing contests in the Big Smoke, followed by horrendous rat-race train journeys from hell.

This kind of matriarchal society took the sting out of any beatings that the kids got, and us kids bonded a lot more with our mothers than would be ordinary at that time. Did it lead to a load of mummies boys? Actually, it might have led to a group of people who feel so loved and cared for that they feel invincible. Is this a bad thing? Well some of my friends have died young, making unwise decisions when fuelled by alcohol.

There was one friend who shone bright in all our lives, and the circumstances in which we lost him were close to my own childhood experiences, of playing on railway tracks unsupervised by adults. I could totally picture exactly how it happened. It was chilling, and still is today. I am not imagining myself doing that, I am actually able to perfectly empathise with the mindset that would have led to a tiny mistake, which cost my friend his life.

I hope that his Mother and family is OK, if they read this. I'm trying to write it as sensitively as I can. Our friend is still very much alive in our hearts, and I'm crying as I write this. Tears are rolling down my cheeks and splotching onto my keyboard. I can remember how he touched our lives, as clearly as if it were only yesterday.

The cruellest twist of all, was that we had reconnected just as we were leaving adolescence; and embarking on our journey into adulthood. It robbed us all of the chance to see just how great that young man was going to become. Life can cheat and short-change us still, even at the end of the second millennium.

The challenge that life set our group of friends, was how to cope, in the modern age that had scattered us to the winds. We couldn't really grieve properly as a group. Even though, by total coincidence, this young man had ended up in the same City in Hampshire as me. Most of our other friends had remained in Oxford, where we grew up in.

I used the Internet to try and reconnect with these friends, but it was still very early days, and I felt very damaged and bitter about having been taken away from this group of beloved people. My parents were always moving me away from my friends and schools I loved. I didn't undertand why this had to happen. It was heartbreaking.

We left Aberystwyth for Kidlington, we left Kidlington for Tackley, we left Tackley for Oxford, we then had an abortive attempt to leave Oxford for Cinais in France (thankfully my teachers stepped in and stood up for me, explaining that my life was getting f**ked up by this wanderlust) but we still left for Harcombe, and then the family left Harcombe for Charminster.

By this point I had gotten f**ked off and left home at age 17/18, for Dorchester and my first job. I had barely settled in when British Aerospace then had the lovely idea of moving me to the Portsmouth/Fareham/Gosport area. Eventually I got f**ked off with that company keeping me away from my friends (and being responsible for making weapons that were used to kill people) so I moved to Winchester, where unsurprisingly I didn't have the most developed set of social skills or any ability to relate to my peers... unintended consequences, but it certainly hit me right in the feels.

I had a very weird time in Winchester, but I made 2 key friends, one of whom has recently re-entered my life, which restabilised it temporarily. Friends are important. Continuity is important. Stability is important. Trust is important. Truth is important.

I'm still working through thorny feelings about being taken away from my peers. It left me feeling I had to be fiercely independent and do everything early, in a rush. I've always felt like I had to take care of my Parents. When we were in Ireland when I was a little boy, I remember staying awake all night so that I could go and fetch the coal in the morning. I got myself dressed at dawn, and was just heading out with the coal scuttle to fetch the coal, when my Dad woke up and asked what I was doing.

Yes, you can raise your kids in a Victorian way, and they will turn out OK to outward appearances, but they may have problems reconciling your nostalgia for a time that probably didn't exist and you are over-romanticising, with reality in the 20th and 21st century. The projection of your inadequacies will have unexpected consequences. "Children should be seen and not heard" is one of the most offensive things I have ever heard in my life. F**k you, you dinosaurs.

It's not your fault. You were the best Mum & Dad (I wasn't allowed to say "Mum" or "Dad" for some reason) that you knew how to be. I did have an interesting time in my not-really-allowed-to-be-child-hood, being your experiment in denying the infantilism of an infant. It's benefitted me in the long run... I've had a great head start in many aspects of my life. I'm just not what you might call, a rounded character. For every yin there is a yang.

I'd probably make a good butler. I like dressing up and I sound posh. I can be anything you want me to be. I aim to please, Sir.

Tags: #childhood #career #london #oxford #parents #drugs #addiction #alcohol

This is a story of queue jumping and those who get left behind...

I keep this in my wallet, to remind myself not to be one 0f the self-important pricks who thinks they deserve their position in the world. It reminds me that it's never OK to barge in front of the struggling masses. I found it in the middle of a forest in Ireland. The former owner, I imagine, was a jumped-up London eedjit who littered one of the most beautiful and unspoilt parts of our world I have ever seen. This little patch of green is one of the few places to not have been totally screwed by selfish and greedy monsters.

This keepsake also reminds me of the day that I decided to make a switch, from being so consumed with the rat race that I was unable to stop and smell the roses, to notice that there are very few places left that have not got massive concrete tower blocks, huge piles of plastic rubbish, terrible air quality, polluted rivers and all the increasingly obvious signs that the human race is acting with little or no care for the future of the planet.

It also marks the day that I reconnected with nature, having been stuck in the concrete jungle for far too long. The problem with London is, that unless you have a healthy outdoor hobby, like cycling or surfing, you have very little connection with your environment. We live under artificial lighting 24 hours a day, and our views are dominated by huge buildings, not towering trees.

Another problem with London is the drinking culture. I'm not sure if London drinks alcohol to switch off and get some sleep, after all those strong coffees, or whether to numb the realisation that the standard of living is actually pretty poor, when you consider long commutes, high rents, overcrowding, crime rates and poverty everywhere you look (except for Canary Wharf, which is a private estate).

So, I decided that I am going to quit drinking. This is harder than you would think, when you work in an industry where a standard interview joke with a candidate is "Do you drink? Don't worry if you don't, we can send you on a course". They closed the bars in offices, as the City has cleaned up its image, but you can still roll from your desk straight to a bar within barely a few strides.

Let's be clear about my drinking though. I drank pints of lager out with the lads from work. Drinking spirits and drinking alone set of alarm bells in my head, luckily, but binge drinking huge amounts of beer is not good either, even if everyone else around you is doing it too.

It has taken some time to prepare my colleagues for the relinquishment of my final vice. I have never smoked in my life. I gave up caffeine over the last year or so and I am now completely decaffeinated. I am targeting targeting a 1 pint a week, which will be cut to zero in October. This is a drastic reduction from having 5 or 6 pints of Peroni (over 5% alcohol) on a midweek evening, and my body and my colleagues have felt the impact.

So, at first, my body was extremely unhappy about going alcohol free. My sleep was terrible. I was waking up sweating in the middle of the night. In the morning I felt like I was full of flu: aching joints, feeling sick, painful abdomen. This was when I was STOPPING... surely we are supposed to feel better, not worse? Well, as it turns out, it takes quite a long time before you start to feel better.

I was shocked by how long it has taken me to taper my alcohol consumption down to just a single social drink, which I accepted on the proviso that nobody was allowed to pressure me into having another one, and I would go home after I had finished it. My colleagues carried on and were nursing hangovers the next day. I felt surprisingly rubbish after only 1 pint, but I was able to get up and have my breakfast at the normal time.

I think it really is like my friend, Tim, often jokes: "I'm not an alcoholic, because alcoholics go to meetings". The City runs on that kind of gallows humour. However, I have now started to lose friends and colleagues to alcoholism, and many more are very ill indeed. I don't want to be next.

Could this be my last ever pint? My body and brain wish it was (October 2014)

Tags: #career #london #alcohol #addiction #mentalhealth #banking