This is a story about time...

It was Saturday the 9th. I was behind that door, dying. I assumed that nobody knew where I lived. I assumed nobody cared. I was wrong.

I'm still pretty unclear how exactly the emergency services got to me so quickly.

The thing about activated charcoal and gastric lavage is that they only work during the first hour or so of an overdose. I knew this, so I'd set a timer on my phone to stop myself from being tempted to send any "goodbye cruel world" type messages, which could have triggered efforts to save my life before I reached the point of no return.

Saturday nights are pretty hectic for the emergency services. I'm surprised they got to me so quickly. I'm surprised they got me to hospital so swiftly. If they hadn't I wouldn't be writing this.

Maybe social media is addictive, it "isn't real life" and it's causing the collapse of normal healthy face-to-face relationships, but I'm pretty sure I'd have sunk without a trace if it wasn't for my digital connection to the world. It was kinda inevitable that the author of "the world's longest suicide note" was going to do the deed at some point. My suicide attempt wasn't a cry for help; it wasn't attention-seeking. I don't believe that my suicide attempt was avoidable either - circumstances were too hostile to allow my mental health to improve.

Back on that Saturday the 9th - and today - I found myself in a strange city, far from friends and family. I was isolated and alone. Stress, anxiety and depression all conspired to make life feel totally unliveable.

Tonight, I'm in a hotel room near an airport 1,200 miles from home. Language and cultural differences make it additionally obvious that I'm out of place here. I'm doing a rewarding but stressful job. My mental health has been pretty bad. There are lots of similar features to that previous Saturday the 9th. However, there's unlikely to be a "straw that broke the camel's back" type trigger tonight.

I'm mindful that I wrote a blog post called The Closest I've Come to Suicide back on Saturday 9th September, merely hours before I actually tried to kill myself. Things can change. I'm a little superstitious and unwilling to tempt fate... I don't want to jinx anything.

I sometimes feel like I'm trolling my friends - giving them a lot of stress and worry about me. I sometimes feel like it's bad behaviour, to talk about my suicidal feelings. What's the alternative though? Should I just bottle it all up and leave everybody wondering what the fuck happened to me and wondering if there was anything they could have done to help, once I'm dead?

Having written this provocative blog for over two years, I hear from a lot of people who've lost loved ones to suicide. The impact on those who lose a relative or a friend is devastating. People are left wondering "what could I have done differently?" and beat themselves up about it.

There are quite a few well-worn platitudes that are trotted out whenever a suicidal person is brave enough to share how they're feeling. Generally, the suicidal person is guilt-tripped into thinking about the consequences of their suicide. I imagine this is the reason why more people don't speak up when they're feeling suicidal, because the presumption is that they're selfish, cowardly and don't care about the pain they're going to cause for other people. These accusations are unhelpful and untrue - suicidal people know that they're going to cause pain and suffering, but life is so horrible for them that it's not enough to keep them alive. Guilting people is not the way to keep them alive.

I sometimes wonder if there's a difference between me and those who've succeeded in killing themselves. I'm afraid that it's pure blind luck. Even with 20,000 Twitter followers, I'm still subject to the same human physiology as anybody else - the massive overdose I took should have been fatal. You can have all the fame and wealth in the world, but you're just as mortal as the next man or woman.

I talk about the inevitability of my suicide attempt, and the worry that I'm trolling my friends. In a way, I'm embarrassed to have survived, because it makes it look like it was some half-arsed botched attempt where I didn't really want to die anyway. I'm embarrassed that I put my friends through the horror of thinking I might've succeeded, but I also know that I told hospital staff not to resuscitate me - I refused treatment, because I wanted to die. I can say with my hand on my heart, that I wasn't trolling anybody. It wasn't a cry for help. It wasn't attention seeking or a publicity stunt. My suicide attempt was premeditated and my method was extensively researched in preparation.

So what about all those deaths from suicide? Suicide kills more men under the age of 45 than cancer and other diseases, road traffic accidents, drugs, alcohol and everything else. Suicide is the biggest killer of them all. What is it about suicide?

Well, there are a lot of greedy, selfish, horrible men in the world, who just want to get rich at any cost - they don't care who they trample on. I emerged from hospital to find out that the wannabe Labour MP who I was working for, was sacking me for not turning up at work for a couple of days - it should be noted that those two days I was in a coma on an intensive care ward, with a machine breathing for me. This wannabe politician was completely unconcerned with the fact that I'd nearly died. This guy professes to be a Labour politician, no less - in theory, his values are all about protecting workers from unscrupulous bosses. What a liar. What an awful, awful person.

The world is a desperately competitive place. People will commit suicide because of pressure to attain good exam grades, to get ahead in their careers and generally because life relentlessly batters us with horrible uncertainty about financial and housing security. Of course people are going to commit suicide when life's so stressful. I attempted suicide and immediately lost my job and my apartment - isn't that awful? If that's what a wannabe Labour MP is prepared to do to a fellow human being, the problems in society clearly come right from the top. If our politicians are arseholes who don't value human life, of course we're going to see vast numbers of people committing suicide.

What happened after my suicide attempt is that things got worse. Things got a lot worse.

Then things got a bit better.

Friends who I haven't spoken to in years got in contact.

I made new friends. I got a new place to live. I got a new job.

Writing this blog has caused me to lose my job and my home, and has made me an easy target for discrimination. Writing this blog leaves me exposed to cyber-stalkers who want to find out what my weaknesses are, and exploit me. Writing this blog leaves me open to criticism from those who say that my message about suicide, mental health and homelessness is contrived - that I somehow pre-planned everything that happened to me, and that my opinion is therefore invalid; that my story is unrepresentative.

If you prick me, do I not bleed? Do I not feel lonely like other people? Do I not find the burden of debt and financial worries to be unbearable? Do I not need a roof over my head?

My blog begins two years ago, with me living in a hotel and working for a bank. That's exactly the situation I find myself in today. Was it necessary to have been hospitalised three times? Was it necessary to have become homeless? Was it necessary to nearly be bankrupted? Was it necessary to lose my job? All of the hardship I've been through might look avoidable, to a casual observer. A BBC journalist even accused me of having planned the whole thing.

I genuinely believe that if I hadn't lived my life in the public eye, I wouldn't be alive to tell the tale. Of course, some concerned friends saw my final Tweets on that Saturday night - the 9th - and they raised the alarm along with a bunch of other followers. Somehow, the emergency services were swiftly delivered to my door. A friend told me that my phone had been traced, but that's improbable, given that I lived in a dense urban area - signal triangulation is highly unlikely to have been accurate enough. It's a bit of a mystery, who gave the emergency services my address in time for them to save me.

I've written about a lot of this before, so I'm aware that I'm repeating myself, but it seems apt because it's Saturday the 9th. So much has happened in the intervening time, including a 3-week stay on a psych ward and me emigrating from England to Wales. So much has happened, in terms of having space and time to digest the traumatic events and trying to figure out what I'm living for. So much has happened, in terms of friends who've been kind enough to get back in contact and even offer practical help. So much has happened, with new friends and a new home, and healthy human relationships.

I'm still stressed and single and broke. My job is 1,200 miles from home. There is still a whole load of shit to go through before I have everything I need for a liveable life. You might be screaming "OTHER PEOPLE HAVE IT SO MUCH HARDER THAN YOU" at the top of your lungs, but fuck you. As my guardian angel once said: there's only one person on the whole planet who has it harder than anybody else. Are they the only person in the whole wide entire world who's allowed to feel depressed, stressed and anxious? If the "think about the starving African children" platitude had any value, we could just blast that message through megaphones and all depression and suicide would be cured overnight.

If you think I'm self-centred, self-pitying, selfish, self-absorbed or any other criticism you want to level at me, then perhaps it's you who completely lacks any empathy. Do you not care that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45? Do you not care about this very real problem, that's only getting worse and worse? Do you not care about the epidemic of mental health issues?

I will vociferously defend my decision to blog about my mental health problems and suicide attempt(s) because I believe that my social media presence has been a major reason why my life hasn't been claimed by suicide. For sure, there have been lots of high-profile suicides. Fame and notoriety are not protective factors. However, in the face of a mental health epidemic, it's clear that pressure, guilt, shame and stigma are not working in anybody's favour. It's only through an honest and candid examination of how we're really feeling, that we might be able to save those who are on the brink of killing themselves, in the nick of time.

I think that even my harshest critic would be hard-pressed to deny that my navel-gazing suicide note blog played a major part in saving my life. Without my blog, how would I have made a new friend who offered to let me live with her and her family? How would I have reconnected with an old friend who helped me get another job? How would I have coped, through homelessness, hospitalisation and without any money? My blog is the consistent thread throughout all the traumatic experiences of the last few years.

It might sound like I'm giving my blog credit, when really credit belongs to those who took practical steps to help me - those who phoned the emergency services, those who phoned me when I was in hospital, those who helped re-house me and those friends who have made a concerted effort to re-enter my life. Of course, I'm incredibly grateful to those who've gone to great lengths to assist me, to reassure me that I am loved and that my life does matter.

There's a lot of pressure now to sort myself out. I have a pretty good opportunity to get back on my feet. I have support. I often wonder if it's time to change the name of my blog from "the world's longest suicide note" to something else. However, it was back on Saturday the 9th that I wrote about how close I was to suicide, before then being tipped over the edge later that same day. If I'm reluctant to declare myself safe, then tough titties - I know how fragile things are, so it would be foolish to prematurely take myself off the endangered species list.

Perhaps you - dear reader - feel a little led-on by the whole thing. Perhaps you feel a little cheated that I didn't die. Who knows. All I know is that it doesn't feel like it was very long ago that I was dying on Saturday the 9th.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about being caught on camera...

There was a time before digital cameras and Facebook when it was thrilling to see photographs of yourself that other people had taken: this was the pre-selfie age. There was a time when creating a digital identity was hard - social media wasn't dominated by the big players, and maintaining a homebrew website required expert technical skills and a significant investment of time & effort.

Some enterprising tech boffins created free software that allowed bulletin boards to be created by relative novices - these were forums where internet users could discuss topics, under the banner of a certain hobby or interest. Originally, bulletin boards were telephone numbers you could dial up from your computer, to do the kinds of things we do on the internet today, except that these bulletin boards were isolated communities.

Facebook and Twitter have taken the bulletin board - where we build a community around a common interest - and allowed us to build a community around our personal identity, with the bait of seeing ourselves tagged in photos or mentioned in tweets. On forums, there was a thrill in seeing a thread of discussion getting many views and replies - to be the original author of a popular thread was something to take pride in. We covet 'likes' of our updated profile photographs and our pouting selfies, as we preen our digital identity.

With the ubiquity of smartphones that are capable of capturing and uploading photos and videos, making them instantly available on social media, we are amassing a huge library of images of ourselves, as well as projecting an identity that goes well beyond the people we see on a daily basis, face-to-face.

Our skill in presenting ourselves as we want to be seen - Facebragging - is something that we have had to recently learn, especially as we increasingly mix work colleagues with our close friends, online. Our digital identities can overspill unless we are careful to manage the audience with whom we share things.

A sinister and creepy cyberstalker made a horrifying boast to me:

"I know"

I'm sorry, what? What do you know?

"I've read your blog. I know"

What? What do you know? Have you really read my blog? There's the best part of three-quarters of a million words here - I seriously doubt you've read much, and I seriously doubt you know much.

Those words - "I know" - were said to me by somebody who was making a very important decision. Because of the sheer volume of noise on social media, I'm relatively hard to find. Thanks to my concerted efforts over a number of years I can laugh at anybody's attempt to "know" me - stalkers only scratch the surface. Yes, I am applauding myself for writing so much that even the most determined cyberstalker would be exhausted.

I live in fear of cyberstalking.

Don't we all live in fear of cyberstalking a little bit? There's probably a sex video of you and somebody else that's hidden somewhere on your computer or smartphone. What about all those sexts that you sent between you and your sweetheart? What about all those paedophiles who want to molest your children? What about all those rapists who are following your every move on social media? The world is out to get you.

My fear of cyberstalking is a little different.

I'm now convinced that almost everybody is far too wrapped up in their own self-centred little world, to give two fucks about much of what anybody else is doing. The cyberstalker who said "I know" in a very sinister and horrible way, was intent on harming me just as much as you'd expect of any stalker - zero fucks were given about my health and wellbeing, and a very great deal of harm was rendered to me.

Perhaps I should set my privacy settings to the maximum and erase everything that's personal and accessible to malicious attackers?

To protect myself from a determined cyberstalker would be nearly impossible. Our lives are lived online nowadays - to reject social media and not cultivate a digital identity, will leave me isolated and without access to online communities. To have to always consider how anything I share could be used against me is exhausting, and how am I supposed to ask for help or otherwise indicate to my friends that I'm in trouble? Pretending that my life is awesome and I'm totally OK is ridiculous, if I'm doing it just in case a cyberstalker goes digging.

I'm not suggesting we all post our mother's maiden name, social security number, credit card details and other data that would lay ourselves open to fraud... or maybe I am. In an open and trusting culture, the bad apples are easier to spot - nothing to hide, nothing to fear.

The fact that I've suffered significant financial loss due to a cyberstalker is akin to a kind of fraud that has been perpetrated against me. I'm no fraudster: who I am is plain for all to see. That somebody would steal my data and use it against me is criminal. Why should I be persecuted and discriminated against, because of what dirt you think you've dug on me? It's like a kind of blackmail to use my digital identity against me.

I wonder what kind of person would think that whatever I choose to write on my blog is more important than the facts, which have included things such as being in intensive care in hospital with a 50/50 chance of living or dying. Wouldn't you care about the person - i.e. me - and not about the digital identity? "Are you feeling OK because I was really worried you were going to die?" would seem like the more appropriate human response, rather than the extremely creepy and sinister "I know". I mean, what the actual fuck?

So, I've been cyberstalked, and the stalkers have caused significant harm to me. Just hearing "I know" from somebody who seems to be a respectable member of society, does show that there are some downright evil fuckers out there. However, I stand my decision to be brave and publicise who I am and what makes me tick.

In my experience, it's better to be brave and bold, even if it feels scary and nasty people try to fuck you up.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #career

This is a story about how nothing really mattress...

This is the last double bed I slept in, 27 days ago. That's my brand new bedding with brand new pillows and a brand new duvet. I moved to Manchester with nothing more than my laptop and a bag of clothes. New life - clean slate. This is the apartment where I tried to kill myself. It was a miserable place and I'm glad I never slept there again.

I woke up on Saturday 9th September, and I was miserable. I wrote a blog post in this bed, about how miserable I was and how close I was to committing suicide. It was prescient.

The next bed I lay upon was owned by a guy who I had become friends with through my girlfriend. My girlfriend at the time was of no fixed abode - sofa surfing with a guy who she met on a dating website. I'd travelled to this friend's apartment to see my girlfriend. We lay kissing and cuddling on our friend's bed. Then, we broke up.

Coming home to my miserable apartment, I didn't get into bed - I took a massive overdose and lay on the bathroom floor in the dark, waiting to die. The next bed I laid upon was in the Accident & Emergency department of the nearest hospital.

I'm presuming - because I was unconscious - that I stayed on the same hospital bed, as I was transferred from A&E resus to the Intensive Treatment Unit (ITU) and then to a High Dependency ward. I was on life support. I was having seizures. I don't remember any of this.

I vaguely remember having to scramble across onto a different bed, to move me out of the High Dependency ward and onto a general ward. I remember this because there was a bag of my piss sloshing around that had to be moved too, and there was a tube coming out of my penis, which I had to be careful not to entangle with anything. The tube that was going up my dick yanked my male member around - it wasn't a comfortable experience.

From hospital I was thrown in a police cell. There was a 'bed' made of concrete painted with light blue paint - the same glossy paint that adorned the floor and walls of the cell. To slightly soften the hard concrete, there was a thin blue foam mat, which was wipe-clean. I did not sleep.

Driven home by the two police who had interviewed me - at 2am in the morning - I finally got back home at 3:30am. My sleep medication was nowhere to be found and I'd had a traumatic day - sleep was impossible. I lay awake on my bed, waiting until the earliest possible moment I could go to the office and try to find a work colleague - I was in a desperate situation and I needed help from somebody friendly and sympathetic to my plight: alone in a strange city with no friends or family; no smartphone, laptop, debit card, credit cards, cash or driving license.

After a second dreadful day I was pretty fucked up, as one might expect of somebody abandoned in such shitty circumstances. As sleep deprivation reached the 40+ hour mark, I ended up back at the same hospital's Accident & Emergency department that I had been in 5 days earlier.

Another day, another hospital bed. This one I came round face down on, with my wrists handcuffed behind my back, after having received an intramuscular injection of 4mg of lorazepam. It was approximately 3am in the morning - now 6 days after my original hospital admission.

Sectioned first under a 136 (up to 72 hours) and then upgraded to a section 2 (up to 28 days) I was then taken to a secure psychiatric facility with airlock-type doors, to stop anybody escaping. I was given a private room that was quite nicely appointed, with a writing desk and an ensuite wet-room.

Having blearily come round in the early hours of the Tuesday morning, it was now Thursday night. I finally had a single bed in a comparatively peaceful environment in which to collapse and sleep, mercifully with the assistance of some zopiclone to calm my jangled nerves and soothe me into my slumbers.

Gone were the bleeps and hisses of the machines that were keeping people alive, on the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), replaced with the sound of alarms, slamming doors, shouting and running in corridors, as my fellow patients were restrained by staff. I found it somewhat comforting, to know that my crisis was no longer at its peak.

After 8 days on the PICU, I was transferred to an acute psych ward. It was terrifying.

With me in hospital I had two Apple iPhones, two Apple Macbooks, a Nintendo Switch and £1,150 in £50 notes. It's not really recommended to have that amount of valuables on your person, in amongst some very poor and deprived people. The wealth disparity was vulgar.

My guardian angel facilitated the return of my surplus iPhone and Macbook - Apple were excellent and refunded me with no quibbles.

I begun life on the new ward in a private bedroom, but I didn't have an ensuite shower and the TV blasted right next door for 19 hours a day, at full volume. At first, I was too tired to care and I could sleep through the dawn chorus of utter bullshit television a million decibels, but then it started to keep me awake, leaving me less than 5 hours of shut-eye per night.

Then, the dreaded dormitory. Dorms are a mixed bag - very dependent on the luck of the draw, in terms of your fellow occupants. Security is a massive concern, as nothing more than a privacy curtain separated my personal possessions from anybody who'd care to have a look through my bags. Snoring can be a pain in the arse, with one person able to keep everybody else awake listening to their noisy slumbers. Thankfully, my dorm buddies weren't too bad.

This morning I woke up to "second; minute; hour; power; shower" repeated over and over, as a poetic dorm buddy wrote a new rap. That was 5:15am. It was still dark. He was pretty loud. He's sleeping now - snoring.

Today, I'm bustin' out of the psych ward. Watch out, general public of the United Kingdom - I'm going to be moving among you again as a free man.

This is my current bed. I'm lying on it as I type this. I don't know what the bed or the room I'm sleeping in tonight looks like - I've never set foot in the house I'm going to travel to this afternoon. It's a leap in the dark, as is my wont.

Some of my few remaining worldly possessions are here with me in Manchester and some are in London. I'm surprised that I haven't lost more of my valuables. I can't quite bring myself to do the maths, to figure how much money I've lost on this crazy jaunt to the North of England. What does it matter? I'm alive and about to be accepted into the fold of a kind family who are taking me in - the IT consultant who lost his mind in a city where he didn't have any friends or family. It's unlikely that I'd have ended up homeless, but I wasn't relishing the prospect of being chucked off the psych ward and into a dreadful bed & breakfast, in some shitty suburb.

The very definition of "my" home and "my" bed has been smashed to smithereens. Tonight will be the tenth bed I've lain upon in less than 28 days, including several hospital beds and the concrete slab that passes for a bed in a police cell.

Distress flares were fired off and a good samaritan is coming to rescue me from a fairly dire situation.

Tonight, I sleep in a normal house for the first time in what feels like a very long time.

Tags: #hospital #mentalhealth #nhs

This is a story about being inspected...

Today the psych ward is being inspected by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the staff are so nervous that some of them feel physically sick. I try to reassure one nurse that they're doing their best, despite staff shortages and rampant drug use - the synthetic cannabinoid called Spice is ubiquitous throughout prisons and psych wards.

There's always somebody peering over your shoulder, sneeringly judging you. Is it any wonder that paranoia takes hold in a mind, destroying it? The United Kingdom has an exceptional ability to track the movement of its citizens, using simple conventional CCTV - no spy satellites even needed.

In the free West, we deride the Stasi and the KGB. We talk about China's vast number of people employed to snoop on their own citizens, but we don't acknowledge the work of GCHQ and the NSA. Have we forgotten Edward Snowden's revelations so quickly? The Government read your fucking emails and the police - the regular ordinary police - have a backdoor into Facebook to read all your private messages.

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. If you believe that, why do you feel stressed if a police car is following you when you're driving, and a sense of relief when the police overtake you and disappear over the horizon? You have insurance; you've had your car's roadworthiness tested; you've paid your road tax... nothing to worry about, right?

It was only a short time ago that I was deeply indoctrinated by my schooling, that had shaped me into a meek conformist - I was fearful of defying any of society's rules and regulations. A family friend wanted to go fishing with me, and I said we needed to obtain a permit. "Our prisons are full of people who got caught fishing without a license" this friend laughed. "What are you in here for? Murder. What are you in here for? Fishing without a license" he continued jovially.

The city centre is crammed with 50,000 protestors preparing to march. I walk past a police cordon and I can hear a police officer yelling at me that I can't go the way I'm going, but I know that he'll be busy dealing with my obedient friend who will have stopped per the instructions. I keep walking, pretending to be unable to hear the entreaties to return. The policeman lets my friend go and we walk to the head of the march.

I'm sure that anarchy would be a disaster for sick and vulnerable people. I have no desire to see civilised society crumble. We can't all do whatever the fuck we want, whenever the fuck we want. Perhaps if everybody acted like I did, it would be the end of the world as we know it.

"Don't walk" says the sign in the United States. I jaywalk with gay abandon. Even in Manchester people look at me like I'm mad and suicidal, for the way I cross the road. However, it's done with such confident aplomb that nobody challenges me. I notice that people who are surrounded by plenty of steel and glass and plastic, such that they would suffer no injury at all if they killed me to death with their motor vehicle, do not give a single fuck about whether I live or die. In London, a motorist will slow down or even brake, to avoid killing a pedestrian, but these provincial plebs treat human lives with no such sanctity.

To live in a crowded city is to be humbled by humanity. To be detained against your will on an underfunded psych ward is to humbled, also. In the city, you are forced to confront your pathetic meaningless existence, as an ant crawling in its nest would be, if it had the faculties to perceive itself and its surroundings. But an ant's nest is akin to a row of gleaming skyscrapers, insofar as being a testament to what can be achieved by a society working together. On the psych ward, you are forced to confront your powerlessness over forces greater than yourself - society will exclude its troublemakers.

Perhaps you think I would endorse heroin being sold in supermarkets and that babies' pacifiers should be replaced with crack pipes?

As six police officers pinned me to the ground and my bum was injected with lorazepam, in the Accident & Emergency department of a hospital, I noticed a cleaner and a security guard nearby - some of the lowest paid people in society are often completely unacknowledged for the role they play in maintaining the division between the peasants and the aristocracy. My face was inches from the floor, but the policeman's trousered knee on my head was clean and so was the linoleum. Circles of red and green blinked at me - the police bodycams, videotaping the whole gruesome specatcle. I'd fallen from grace, but I hadn't slipped anywhere near the bottom - it's a long way down.

A friend whose judgement I trust and respect, tells me that I should drop the bad boy image of "the guy who got fucked up in Manchester". She knows that people are watching and I'm misrepresenting myself. She knows that people are lazy and won't look any deeper than the superficial image that I present.

Is my life - and the way I document it - by accident or by design? Do you imagine that when I'm writing, I don't think at all about how things are going to be perceived? The joke's on you if you don't read what I write with the prerequisite pinch of salt.

If you just dip in at random - like a care quality inspector - then you will get a random impression. On a good day you'll get a good impression. On a bad day you'll get a bad impression.

Do you think the graph above shows that things are improving? No. No it does not. Things are getting worse. Much, much worse. The data above shows conclusively that during the period under examination, there was a fourfold increase in the very metric that was supposed to be cut by 80%.

Do you remember blue tablet man? Well, anyway, he assaulted a nurse for giving him a yellow tablet (5mg of diazepam) instead of a blue tablet (10mg of diazepam).

A drugs dog sweeps the ward. The patients believe the dog can sniff out cigarette lighters. I ask the handler if the dog can sniff Spice and he confirms that it can. There's Spice everywhere on the ward, despite its deleterious effect on the mental health of susceptible individuals - prodromal schizophrenia can turn into fully-blown psychosis under the influence of the powerful synthetic cannabis, making it all the more concerning that it's so widespread on an acute psychiatric ward.

The patients here are the lucky ones and they know it. Everybody agrees it's better to be here with a warm dry bed and three hot meals a day. Everybody agrees it's better to be here, where the chances of being beaten up and/or robbed are minimal. With winter on its way, months of unimaginable suffering lie ahead of Manchester's homeless population, which has increased 1,100% in just 7 years - and a huge number of them smoke Spice.

Abandon hope all ye who entered the world from the mid-1990s onwards. What are the prospects for the youth of today, and the glut of graduates who were promised that indebting themselves and spending three or four years at university would be a good move?

Does it not seem like an obvious reaction to a decline in living standards, to retreat into drugged-up oblivion?

We're sifted and sorted and dissected by tests. We're examined, inspected and measured in every conceivable way. We never have any respite from the world's desire to label us, grade us and monitor us. The pressure to meet the expectations placed upon us is relentless. Some of us will crumble and have nervous breakdowns or be paralysed by anxiety disorders. Some of us will rebel and kick back at the suffocating environment that's desperate to eject and marginalise anybody who doesn't neatly fit in a box. Lots of subcultures have sprung into existence, with members exchanging knowing looks - these people are so much happier now that they have rejected the stereotype they were supposed to embody.

It saddens me that the hard-working staff on the ward are anxious and on best behaviour, when the other 364 days a year I know that they try their very hardest. This is just one of many psych wards, where the macro problems are greater than anything that can be influenced in the microcosms.

If you're going to randomly dip in, be careful to not make a lazy judgement based on a small sample size.

Tags: #nhs #hospital #mentalhealth #addiction #politics

This is a story about subservience...

It's grim up North. I didn't think it would be but it is. Here's Coronation Street. Beautiful, isn't it? Presently, that discarded sofa would be where I'd sleep if I discharged myself from hospital.

Without the crutches of alcohol, benzodiazepines and sleeping pills, I feel overwhelmed by stress and anxiety, because of the precarity of my position. Without a home; without a job; without financial security - there's plenty of rational reasons to be distressed.

People implore me to sit back and relax, but they don't realise that I've got loan payments to make; credit card payments to make; overdraft interest to be paid. To have to spell this out multiple times is frustrating.

"Why don't you just go bankrupt?"

Yeah, nice one, Einstein. Did you know that I do a lot of consultancy for financial services organisations? It's imperative that I have a clean credit record - prospective employers will do credit checks on me. You might as well suggest that I go out and commit a crime and add a criminal record to my list of woes.

"It's too soon to be thinking about going back to work"

Well, unless I'm accepting that I'm abandoning all hope of ever repaying my creditors and suffering a life of poverty at the mercy of the state, then no, it's not too soon. There's a concept called runway that I talked about at length during the first half of this year. I was unwell, but during my convalescence I was running out of runway. What happens when a plane runs out of runway?

In short, I'm driven to seek income, to prop up my depleted finances and keep servicing my debts.

If you're really wanting to poke your nose into the darkest recesses of my life, then you should know that I can easily earn enough to replenish my savings and get onto an even keel, with just 5 or 6 months of contract work in London. That I ever left London seems like a mistake, but I had few options - what I did was the right thing in the circumstances.

Today, I'm detoxed from alcohol and benzodiazepines - the physical dependency has been treated - but it quite literally nearly killed me. In addition to the massive deliberate tramadol overdose, my hospitalisation meant I abruptly stopped drinking and taking benzos, which caused me to have loads of seizures - in short, you should never suddenly stop heavy drinking or taking large doses of benzos, because you could die.

So, one might argue that I'm in a better place than when I attempted suicide. Yeah, I guess the biggest threat to my life has gone - my physical dependency on medications and alcohol.

Now, the biggest threat to my life is me - the desire to be dead is an insistent nagging thought that won't go away. It makes so much sense to commit suicide: all I have ahead of me is stress.

The rebound anxiety - having ceased taking medications and drinking alcohol - is causing me to suffer an intolerable amount of unpleasant feelings. It feels like I'm going to feel awful forever, and who would want that?

Of course, my perceptions are probably warped - nothing lasts forever. However, should I really be living my life just hoping to die of natural causes?

I could be writing about how pleased and happy I am to have a second chance - I survived a very large overdose and other medical complications that really should have killed me: the team at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) were very surprised that I survived. Shouldn't I embody every trite contrived platitude you've ever heard? Shouldn't I be carpe diem'ing? Shouldn't I be counting my blessings? Shouldn't I be thanking my lucky stars?

Without stopping to consider all the reasons I tried to kill myself, my problems are not going to go away on their own, are they?

If my suicide attempt was an impulsive thing that I had any regrets about, then perhaps surviving would give me some long-lost appreciation for life. However, I'm spine-chillingly cold and rational about the biggest decision that anybody can ever make: the decision to die. Having been stuck in a never-ending cycle of attempts to get my life back together again, I was exhausted and unable to face rebuilding everything again. I'm still exhausted.

There was a fleeting chance that my suicide attempt could have been a minor setback, but I was completely shafted by the company I was working for. The mistreatment I suffered was inhumane; monstrous. I'm almost speechless that I could have been treated so badly.

I'm stuck between three things:

1. To act positively, and go and earn some more money
2. To act negatively, and pursue my legal rights
3. To simply attempt to kill myself again

To follow the first option is to repeat the behaviours I mastered a very long time ago. It was 20 years ago I got my first full-time job; rented my first apartment. It was 20 years ago that I learned about office politics and how to get ahead in life - a life of corporate conformity.

Instinctively, I reject the bullshit that made me unwell. For 20 years I've observed the rats in the rat race, and for 20 years I've observed the world become a shitter place - an exploding population is on collision course with mass starvation; unrestrained fossil fuel burning has led to runaway climate change, which is causing parts of the world to become uninhabitable, killing and displacing billions of people; deregulated free-market capitalism has raped the globe's finite resources and created a culture of wealth-worship where nobody gives a fuck about anything.

To be a principled, ethical man, is a kind of disadvantage - my political philosophies about social justice and a more fair and equal world, are exploited. I find myself screwed over by people who are willing to trample on anybody and everybody, in a desperate and disgusting scramble up the slippery sides of a mountain of dead bodies.

I've proven that I can play by the rules, but the whole game is bullshit and most people are cheating. I don't have anything to prove to anybody anymore; I've shown that I can wear the corporate mask and fit in with the herd; I've shown that I can live a life of subservient conformity, but it drove me to point of taking my own life.

I don't wanna play anymore, and the only way I can see to call time on this bullshit is to kill myself.

I think to myself that I've suffered and that I must turn that suffering into a piece of art - a monument to the stupidity of humanity. It's grandiose and ridiculous to think that a piece of writing could have any useful effect on the world, but this is my only legacy. Do you deny me the facts? To think that I would no longer live & breathe was a shock to many who've stuck with me and followed my story.

Of course, I'm sick and I've got "insight" into my illness - that is to say that I can consider an objective point of view. It's natural that I'd be feeling terrible, only 24 days after I very nearly managed to kill myself. It's natural that I'd be feeling terrible, given the clusterfuck of issues I've got to sort out if I want to go on living. I can see that I may very well be feeling unnaturally anxious, because my brain is re-adjusting to life without booze and benzos to soothe the stresses that are ever-present in the world.

A doctor suggests that I avoid the news, political protests and other things that I might get worked up about. Is this akin to a lobotomy? I think I would very much like a lobotomy... that's how I arrived at the brain-numbing chemical lobotomy that I swallowed every single day. Unfortunately, my brain is very much intact.

Why am I still so painfully conscious?

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about indoctrination...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: #politics

This is a story about succession planning...

The British have always liked hot drinks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why have a dog and bark yourself?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a story about yesterday's weather...

Past performance is not indicative of future results. In the long run, we're all dead.

Do you know what actuarial tables are? I'm going to tell you even if you do. Actuarial tables tell you the probability that you're going to die, based on your age. Life insurance salesmen know that provided their average premiums received exceed their average payouts - which can be calculated from actuarial tables - then they will most likely make a profit. You would be foolish to not purchase insurance, because if you're unlucky enough to suffer death or other catastrophic loss, the risk you have indemnified your family or yourself against is a tiny fraction of the premiums you've paid. However, there comes an inflection point - the coefficient - where the premiums are the same or worse than simply putting that money aside each month, as your own insurance against the loss of something of unimportance, like your mobile phone.

The pension age of the United Kingdom was enacted into law in 1908, to be paid from your 70th birthday onwards. Only 25% of people would reach pensionable age in 1908, and those who lived to collect their old age pension would only live for 9 more years, on average. The pension was means tested, so it was not paid to anybody who could have been reasonably expected to support themselves. Most people born in the first decade of the 20th century lived through two world wars, further altering the demographics of the time.

Contrast that with today, where life expectancies have rocketed, but yet the baby boom generation have wrecked the planet with gas guzzling cars, atmospheric nuclear testing, irresponsible parenthood in the age of the contraceptive pill - plus high quality condoms & sex education - and an attitude that has generally mortgaged their grandchildren. Now, the insufferable hippies of the 60s and 70s are sitting on huge piles of assets - property that far exceeds their needs - while there is a housing crisis, refugee crisis, and the prospects for young people are diabolical. "Don't borrow any money or be profligate" these absolute c**ts chide, whilst having enjoyed limitless energy, well paid jobs for life, cheap housing, free university education and the expectation that they would retire on a full state pension at the age of 60 for a woman, and 65 for a man.

This is a repeating theme for me - I've often aired my views on the dreadful lack of respect that is shown to hard-working young people, by the older generation who had it all and then still asked for more. Today, this older generation tries to snatch unearned and undeserved money from a finite pot of wealth they didn't help to create.

I've lived in a little bubble, having been a sharp enough cookie to see which way the wind was blowing. I was raised with no respect from my parents or acknowledgement of my efforts in the face of the same adversities that we all face. So, I took myself off to wherever would pay me the most money, doing whatever I was best at, despite the personal hardships I incurred for supporting myself independently.

Wandering around Waitrose supermarket in the relatively newly-created private estate of Canary Wharf - where any undesirables are asked to leave by pretend policemen - one might argue that I'm some sort of investment banking spoiled rich kid who has no conception of the Real World Out There (not actually a place).

While depositing unused canned and dried foods into the local food bank collection point, a friend - who I also fucked in the dark while high on drugs (she has asked me to acknowledge this publicly for some reason) - rummaged through the items that your average Canary Wharf banker had donated. These included household essentials such as cashew nut butter.

There seems to be an orderly queue of people forming, who would like to claim individual credit for my existence. If we were to apply the strictest and simplest possible attribution of accreditation, my parents could claim 17 years and I could claim 20 years. If we take into account the undeniable fact that state institutions raised me from Monday to Friday, for at least 30 hours a week, from the age of 4, years old then we can see that my parents' claim is vastly diminished. I'm the reason I'm still alive; not anybody else.

"I suppose they should've let you starve then" you sneer.

Actually, I'd have preferred to not be born at all. To starve is to suffer. Why create life if only to make it suffer? It's immoral.

My parents clamour for adulation for achieving their detestable petit bourgeois rentier class aspirations of amassing a property portfolio that has negatively contributed to the fact that my sister - ten years younger than me - cannot afford the security of owning her own property. Notable is the hypocrisy that my parents will not lend my sister the deposit to buy a house, even though their parents gifted them the cash to buy their own first home. Now this bunch of self-congratulating smug old shits have arrived in a position of demographic dominance. These coffin-dodging c**ts outnumber the productive members out our society, and will continue to do so, like an infestation of fleas or other parasites, sucking the life blood out of a tiny kitten.

If you really thought about it, you'd fucking kill yourself. I certainly consider suicide every day.

Tags: #parents

This is a story about hypocrisy...

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

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

I'm in a precarious position.

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

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

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

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

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

Here's how the government process goes:

Q. Have you lost your job?

A. No, I have a job

--- I'm not eligible for JSA --

Q. Are you able to work?

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

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

Q. Are you receiving JSA or ESA?

A. No. I'm not eligible for either

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: #career

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: #politics