This is a story about escape velocity...

A happy healthy life is a fairly simple prescription. It's not hard to look for slightly happier people and imitate their magic formula.

In essence, what I have distilled things down to is this:

• Home - so you can be warm and dry and your stuff isn't stolen
• Job - so you can pay your rent/mortgage, bills and buy food & clothes (yes, clothes wear out)
• Family - not blood relatives, but anybody who loves and cares about you
• Friends - social media doesn't count; you have to see friends face to face
• Disposible income - get deeper and deeper into debt and you'll lose your home
• Goal or passion - this can be work, this can be your kids, this can be a hobby; you need something.
• Girlfriend/boyfriend - everybody's gotta get laid, and it's important to have intimacy and companionship

At the moment I have 3 out of 7. Assuming that you need 50% or more to be OK, it's no wonder that I'm depressed as hell and have a lot of suicidal thoughts.

Yes, I have friends who I see less than once a week, so I do have friends. Yes, my sister and I do occasionally exchange text messages, even though we haven't seen each other for the best part of a year. Yes, my goal has been to get myself into a position of financial security, and I've been making great progress, but it's not really my goal... it's just a necessity because of needing to not be homeless and destitute.

So, all I really have is a home, a job, and I'm making more money than I'm spending, which is digging me out of debt.

I love my friends dearly, and it does help that people are in contact via social media, email, text message. I have the offer of speaking to a few friends on the telephone, which I'm grateful for. I also make the effort to travel as much as I feel able to, in order to see people face to face, and I'm glad when I do it, even though it's expensive, exhausting and time consuming to zoom all over the country, if not the world.

I just don't have a group of buddies you know? People to go to the pub with. People to go out for a meal with. People to play frisbee with in the park. I'm lacking a social group.

I'm also lacking that significant other. Somebody to just hang out with. Have sex with. Make food with. Watch movies with. Play games with. Go sightseeing with.

I've stitched together a patchwork quilt of whatever I can get, in order to just about cling to life with my fingernails, but it's inadequate. That's not to say I'm not ungrateful for those occasional invites to hang out and do stuff. It's just not enough. I thrive on face to face social contact, and I'm not getting enough.

To further compound problems, the team I've been managing at work are all in the Far East, so I don't even get proper face-to-face social contact at work. I sit at my desk, lonely and bored. I've helped to create a great culture in my team, but I don't really benefit from it, because they are quite literally 6,666 miles away (I just looked that up - I love that fact!).

In desperation, I made compromises that are just not acceptable, sustainable. I took a job that pays well and is very easy, but doesn't provide anything other than the money that I need. I made other choices because of the desperate need for something rather than nothing. There's an opportunity cost. If I'm in a job that I hate and drains my energy, then I don't have the time and the motivation to get something better.

In a way, it's good that a couple of things are coming to an end, because it's prompting me to go after the things I want rather than the things that I took through desperation. Of course, I'm grateful to have the money, and the support that I've received, but you make different choices when you're in deep shit.

So, on Thursday 22nd September, 2016, I will have completed a year of blogging, 6 months 'clean' and my 6 month employment contract will be over.

On Thursday 22nd September, 2016, I will have 1 out of 7 of the things that I need, with the threat that I will quickly lose even that one single thing.

Without a job, I'll have more expenditure than income. I need to pay rent, bills, service debts. I need to replace worn out clothes and things that break. I need to buy food and toiletries. Life is not sustainable in Western society without income.

I don't have savings, but I do have creditworthiness. Yet again, I will have to borrow money in order to keep my head above water. I have no financial safety net. What I have instead are commercial lenders who are prepared to extract their pound of flesh so that I can avoid homelessness and destitution.

If you think I could have saved more money than I have done these past months, you are mistaken. Without a short holiday, I would never have lasted the extra months. Without alcohol, I would never have coped with the stress and anxiety. I could have penny pinched on my accommodation, but can you imagine how awful it is living in a hostel when you're working full time? I worked, slept and ate. How far has it got me? Well. Probably about 50% of the way towards financial security.

I need to take a break, because my nerves are frazzled and I'm exhausted.

I doubt any contract could be as bad as the job I'm about to finish on Wednesday. For my next contract, I'm going to look for something where I'll be working with a team in London. I need a much more interesting workload. Being bored to death is no way to die.

With money comes the opportunity to travel, socialise, make the investment in a new hobby. With a more tolerable day job comes energy and enthusiasm for each day. With a more liveable life comes the freedom from drink, drugs and medication, in order to simply get through the day.

It's a fucking nutty strategy, to go for the big win. What you just don't understand is just how close to irreparably broken my life is. You just don't understand what it's like to not have so many of the elements that prop up your life. Look again at the bullet pointed list above, and score yourself. How many of the things you need do you have?

Look back at the last 4 weeks of your life and ask yourself this:

• How many nights were you homeless? - zero, I presume
• How many days did you work? - I'm guessing somewhere around 12, on average
• How many times were you in contact with your family? - I'm guessing at least 4
• How many days did you see friends face to face? - I'm guessing at least 8
• Did you make more money than you spent? - I'm guessing at least breakeven
• How many times did you do something 'fun'? - I'm guessing at least 4
• How many times did you have sex or snuggles? - I'm guessing at least 8

Those would seem like adequate answers to me. If you're hitting those numbers, your life is probably just about OK. Less than that in one area, maybe you can make up for it in another. For example, you might have been out of work and losing money, but at least you were surrounded by your loving family a lot more of the time, because maybe you were staying at home looking after the kids.

I'm certainly not saying it's easy being a stay at home mom or a househusband, but suicidal depression can come about through death by a thousand cuts. All the little things that are wrong in your life add up to an unbearably horrible situation.

In some ways I'm relishing next Thursday, because I can sleep and recharge my batteries. With spare time that's completely free from artificial structure, such as having to be in a certain office at certain times of the day, then I can start to relax and decide what I want to do next.

The obvious thing to do is to get another lucrative contract, and work for at least another 4 months, so that I can get a cushion of savings to support me in pursuing a passion. Without being able to underwrite my own risk, I have zero faith in my family or government to support me if I fall on hard times. I have a friend who's offered me some financial support, but I think it's unethical to accept it because then I'm borrowing from their safety net.

In this individualistic society, nobody parachuted in to rescue me when I was homeless, destitute. Nobody came to rescue me. Nobody came to my aid. Help was not forthcoming. Even when I had letters from my doctor, my psychiatrist, my social worker... all begging for the government to support me as a vulnerable person with mental health problems, the people I dealt with were unhelpful, obstructive and ultimately just wasted my time and effort even asking for the support that I was entitled to, because of their legal and moral obligations. Those public servants' salaries are paid for with my goddamn taxes. I've paid a lot in, and when I needed it, I could get nothing out.  It's down to me to support myself. I might as well be living in some developing world country, where at least the cost of surviving is lower.

People who warn me to stay within easy reach of the National Health Service for mental health reasons, are just naïve. I've been round and round the system many times since becoming clinically depressed in 2008. The system is bullshit. There is no safety net if you're a single man.

And so, I must play russian roulette with my life in order to support myself. The upside is OK: I might become wealthy and comfortable again, in a relatively short timescale of just a few years. The downside is horrible though. Can you imagine how much time I've spent thinking about how I'm going to kill myself? Can you imagine what it's like to spend a significant proportion of your waking hours feeling so awful that you pretty much want to die?

I swear if one more person tells me to go to my doctor and get some magic beans I'm going to scream. STOP MEDICALISING NON-MEDICAL PROBLEMS. The problem is clearly outlined above. I don't have broken brain chemistry. My brain has correctly identified the problems in my life. There are no short cuts. There's no way to cheat the sytem.

Of course, there is a short cut.

Drugs will tell your brain you feel loved. Drugs will make you feel relaxed. Drugs will make you feel happy. Drugs will make you feel contented. Drugs will tell you that you don't need friends. Drugs will tell you that you don't even need to eat or drink. Drugs will tell you that everything is fine.

Everything is not fine, so I don't want drugs - and by that I mean medication too - to tell me that things are fine. Things are not fine. I almost need these awful feelings to prompt me to get a better job, find some new friends, get a girlfriend, get a hobby. It's just that financial circumstances have constrained me more than you can possibly imagine.

Imagine if I'd declared bankruptcy at the start of the year. That would have been a stupendously dumb decision, in hindsight, wouldn't it? I'm presently not bankrupt. Presently, I have enough money to clear my credit cards, my overdraft.

Of course, my position can't last. You have to run just to stand still. I'm losing my job, and that means I will quickly go into debt again.

"Get another job then"

Guess what, Einstein... that's what I'm going to do. Even though I'm suicidally depressed, overcome with anxiety, I'm going to go and get another motherfucking job you c**t. Even though I'm technically entitled to disability benefits and a council house because my mental health is so debilitating, I am able to do these crazy raiding missions to go and gather nuts before my brain explodes and it all comes crashing down again. I'm locked into this boom & bust cycle. No wonder my bipolar disorder is so exacerbated.

And so, round and round I go. Up & down. Boom & bust. Highs & lows. It's not a medical problem. Its the motherfucking dance I'm forced to do by this farcical society. This is what you get when you don't support people. This is what you get when you isolate people. This is what you get when you only look out for number one.

"The pills will help you stabilise"

No, they won't. Have you looked at the long term studies? Have you studied the data, the clinical outcomes? Have you done the research? No. Of course you haven't. You just have this bullshit belief in the power of medical science. If I had an infection, I'd go to my doctor for antibiotics to treat it. I don't have a fucking infection. I have an allergy to shitty unbearable unliveable life.

I've tried all the meds under the sun. I know what life on medication is like. I've had tons of doctors and psychiatrists. I've tried tons of therapies. It's all a crock of shit. The fundamental problem is the fucking shitty world. Look around you; do you like what you see?

I'm not going to change the world begging on the street with a cardboard sign. I'm not going to change the world by impoverishing myself. I'm not going to change the world by trying the same things that people have tried for hundreds of years, without success. Only an idiot tries the same things expecting different results.

So, I'm on this crazy journey. I'm hoping that by next Wednesday I might have managed to write 365 blog posts, and probably around 450,000 words. That might not make a difference to you, but it's surely making a difference to me. It's probably making a difference to somebody, somewhere. I have visitors from around the world, reading what I write. Even if it's absolute garbage, it's better than just being a helpless spectator. Even if you think I'm an irrelevant bleeding heart lefty liberal who doesn't amount to a hill of beans, at least I'm composing my thoughts. At least I have a belief system. At least I have values and things that I passionately believe in.

It's very hard for me to come up with a reason why I'm struggling along at the moment. Why am I putting myself through this awful shit? Why don't I just kill myself, and then the pain will be over? Why don't I just give up, and relapse back into drug addiction?

Actually the second one is fairly easy to answer: somebody who dies of drug addiction is easy to discredit as a 'dirty' junkie. Somebody who's 'clean' and has just completed an important project for a major corporation, in a valuable role, and has set their financial affairs in good order, is a rather more inconvenient and difficult problem to find a soundbite to toss them into the gutter.

I want to be a thorn in the side of every selfish c**t out there who wishes their fellow humans dead. I want to shame people into action, from their comfortable existence where they don't even lose sleep over every homeless, hungry struggling person in pain and suffering out there.

Where the fuck are people when those around them are in distress? Who the fuck do you think is going to sort problems out, if it's not you?

Even though I could have put my tax money to far better use supporting myself, rather than paying the salaries of people who tell me they're not going to help me, I'm still glad to give away a substantial proportion of my income. However, I'm not buying a clean conscience. It's not like I pay my taxes so I can watch my friends become homeless and mentally ill, and assume that the council and some doctors are going to wave their magic wands and make it all better.

What the fuck happened to the empathy? I think I would offer to let somebody sleep on my couch, lend somebody money or go and visit somebody in distress, before I even experienced horrible things first hand myself. I had quite a comfortable existence up to the age of 32 or thereabouts, but I didn't think it was big OR clever to sit on my fucking arse not doing anything when people were suffering.

Those who have been kindest are those who have suffered the most, which makes me detest the comfortably off for their lack of empathy, their lack of humanity.

If humanity is destined for a situation where we let even our own family members and friends flail and drown, then I'm pleased that climate change is going to wipe you miserable c**ts out of existence. You don't deserve to survive, if your "I'm alright Jack" attitude is the prevailing one. I hope you and your kids and grandkids die slowly and painfully if you spawned more mouths to feed with not a single concern for anybody else.

Believe me, I do observe how happy and fulfilled my friends who are parents are, even if they complain how hard it is being a parent. Did you forget that we live in the age of birth control and abortion? You chose to have kids, and no matter what you say, you do get immeasurable benefit from having them. You have happiness and security, knowing you procreated. You have a flood of oxytocin when your cute kids throw their arms gleefully around you.

Believe me, I do observe how happy my friends are to own a dog, even if they complain about having to pick up the poop and hoover up the hair and other mess. You chose to have another carnivore on the planet, eating meat that meant that food for livestock was grown, rather than having more food for those who are starving, and depriving the planet of those extra trees that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Having a pet dog is selfish as fuck, but I do see how nice it is to have your dog playfully jumping with joy to see you, and throwing sticks in the park for them to fetch.

I can see that there are choices that benefit me as an individual hugely, but I choose not to take them, because I'm responsible for more than just myself. I don't believe that collective responsibility is something that naturally follows from individual responsibility. In fact, I see that the two things are naturally opposing.

Can't you see the fucking trends? Of course you do, but you just don't want to believe it.

You don't want to give up eating meat. You don't want to adopt instead of having your own biological children. You don't want to stop driving your precious little darlings around in a gas-guzzling 4x4 "because it's safer for our family". You don't want to plant trees instead of having a pet dog. You don't want to do anything different at all, in fact, even though you're fucking everything up for your kids and your grandkids.

That's why I'm depressed. That's why I'm suicidal. That's why I'm stuck in a hole I can't get out of. That's why I'm desperate and driven crazy by all this bullshit. That's why I'm doing things that are atypical... because the typical is what got us into this fucked up mess in the first place.

I don't care whether you're religious or not, but imagine some future judgement day, when it's obvious that the planet and the future survival of the human race is clearly doomed: will you say that you went along with things, supported the status quo, or did you try and change things? Did you at least act differently? Did you at least try and help in a way that's less pathetic than recycling your bottles? Did you help anybody other than the fucking clones you spawned to replace yourself?

Note: I'm not anti-parents. I don't hate my friends. I'm not some "wake up sheeple" fucktard. Dismiss me if you like using some convenient label that you were taught to use by those who wish to perpetuate the status quo.

If you're not acting with your conscience, or at least kept awake at night worrying about this shit, that's unconscionable.

You probably should worry about me. No doctor in a white fucking coat is going to make everything OK. It's not a medical problem. It's not a government problem. It's everybody's problem, including mine, but it's more than I can handle on my own.

Tags: #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #climate #politics #capitalism #homeless

This is a story about looking after yourself...

I'm an incredibly calculating person. When I take a risk, it's a calculated risk. If you want to be a sailor, a rock climber, a mountaineer, you've got to be able to weigh up multiple factors. You look at the difficulty of the route or passage. You look at the weather conditions. You look at your equipment. You think about your crew, your rope party. You consider your own abilities. Failure means falling to your death, or drowning.

Let me give you an example.

I was at a petrol station, and I was paying at the counter when a car that was on fire was driven up to the pumps and then abandoned by the driver and passengers. They fled for their lives. The car was there, going up in flames, right next to the petrol pumps.

What would you do?

There didn't seem much point in standing around waiting for the fire brigade. There certainly didn't seem like a moment to lose, as there were passengers sat in their cars, waiting for the drivers to pay for their petrol and come back to their vehicles.

Selfishly, the best thing to do would have been to stay where I was, at the counter where I was paying, or to flee out the fire exit at the back.

I didn't think "I want to be a hero". I thought "can I put that fire out?". I decided that I could.

I went out onto the forecourt and shouted for everybody to get out of their cars and get the fuck away from the petrol station.

Then I picked up a couple of fire extinguishers and went and put out the fire. It wasn't unbearably hot because the whole car wasn't yet on fire. The whole engine compartment was on fire, but with the wind behind me, it carried the smoke away from me, along with some of the heat. I managed to direct most of the foam from the extinguisher into the engine compartment, and the flames were quickly put out.

That was a calculated risk.

I'm currently working a job that is destroying my mental health. It was a 6 month contract, and I calculated that in that time I could reach financial security. Financial security is an important component in wellbeing, given how shockingly appalling the welfare state is. It's more important that I'm able to support myself financially, than it is that I suffer 6 months of depression, putting me at risk of suicide.

My assumption is that when I have reached the point of financial security, I can have a mini nervous breakdown, and then start to recover without sinking back into financial hardship. If I have financial security, I can recover without becoming homeless and destitute again.

If I have learnt anything about my mental health to date, it's that I can recover from almost anything, given enough time & money.

It's sad to see lives thrown away because we treat them so cheaply.

If I can do it, I will have proved that it's possible to plumb unimaginably awful depths and recover, if only we would take the chance and invest in people. If only we trusted people. If only we respected people.

So many people get written off as if they're as good as dead, and that's disgusting.

It should be a collective stain on our conscience that we prefer to prop up the ideas of the "lost cause" and to discriminate against people because of the mistakes of their past, rather than looking at their potential.

Instead of chucking me into some "care in the community" bucket as an incurable madman, or kicking me into the gutter as a hopeless addict, I'm looking forward to proving what an injust death sentence that is. My parents are reprehensibly disgusting people for abandoning their own son when I was vulnerable and alone. My parents had insisted that they would help, only to renege on their promises at the vital moment.

I've done nothing but try to improve the lives of others. I'm not a thief, a liar. I'm not a violent man. I'm not even a criminal.

My dad's a criminal. My dad has a criminal conviction for his drug offences. The police have seen fit to caution me 4 times for various things, but the police have seen that there is no criminal intent with me that would warrant prosecution. My dad has broken the law and he has a criminal record. Why would he treat me like a criminal? Why would he treat me as if I've committed crimes, when it's him who has the criminal record?

I suppose we judge people based on who we really are. If you're a bad person, you see bad in other people. I've always given people the benefit of the doubt. I've always helped people, and even forgiven them when they've screwed me over.

I don't think I'm necessarily a good person, but I try to be. I try to help people. I try to see the best in everybody. I try to invest in people's potential.

It's a calculated risk, being nice to people. Sure, I've lost loads of money as people have taken advantage of me. I doubt anybody thinks I'm a mug though. I doubt anybody feels proud or pleased that they profited at my expense.

One of the best ever moments I can remember was when a young addict couldn't believe that I'd forgiven him for - as he saw it - scamming me out of a load of money. In actual fact, my risk was hedged. It was a calculated gamble. I just hope that he benefitted in some way. My life certainly wasn't any the worse off.

Anybody who says "don't give money to an addict or an alcoholic because it'll do more harm than good" is simply wrong. If you're poor and you steal from the rich, you don't feel guilty about it. But if somebody is kind to you and trusts you, and you betray that trust, it eats you up inside like crazy.

By helping people to be solvent you can help restore their sanity. For many people who live lives of poverty, this can be surprisingly cheap. I could get my friend Frank a hostel bed so that he wasn't living on the street for £120/week. I could help get Frank a room in a shared house for £500. Nobody had taken that kind of chance on him before.

Fixing my situation has been more expensive, because I'm more leveraged. When my parents fucked me over, I borrowed what I could on credit cards, bought Bitcoins, and made 1,200% profit. That was a calculated gamble. When I was homeless living in the park, looking for a well paid IT consultancy contract, I was using my creditworthiness to stay alive and get back into lucrative work: that's leverage. The peaks and troughs of my debt and my solvency are erratic and stressful, but you'd be a fool to bet against me.

Obviously, the idea is to link two lucrative contracts back to back, or have one last long enough to give me a financial cushion to at last be safe from homelessness and destitution. I desperately need a break from these boom and bust cycles. I desperately need a run of good luck.

The luck is not forthcoming, as my 6 month contract has been terminated 2 months early, but I have a little time to rest before the stress and torment of having to find a new job.

If you put all this into the context of relentless depression, suicidal thoughts, threat of homelessness, bankruptcy, destitution, reputational destruction, and everything else that threatens to consume me, I'm surprised I'm still standing.

All I know is that I'm able to just about make a swap for my mental health and sense of wellbeing, for a chance at financial security. It's a calculated gamble.

Tags: #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #bipolar #career

This is a story about prescriptions...

Are you underemployed? Are you unchallenged? Are you jaded? Are you disillusioned? Is your existence meaningless? Are you lacking purpose, goal? Are your ambitions, creativity, ingenuity and resourcefulness being thwarted? Are the prime years of your life draining away, washed into the gutter?

I want to write 3 times a day, at least.

I need to write 3 times a day.

I get to work, nearly an hour late. I have a quick 10-minute call with my team. Then, I have nothing to do until lunchtime. If anything is going wrong I try and fix it, but my whole job is to try and steer the ship strategically so we don't ever get into trouble. I'd love it if a big crisis kicked off, but I've managed things effectively, so everything runs itself with little drama. Sensible, but boring.

So, I need to write something in the morning to get me through to my mid-day break.

I take a 2-hour lunch. I get away from my desk and go and read a book somewhere. Sometimes I sit in the park. Sometimes I sit by the river. I'm only supposed to take an hour for lunch, but who's going to question it when my team are so far ahead of the project deadlines and the client is happy?

Then, I need to write something in the afternoon to get me through to home time.

I stay on top of any queries. I'm watching like a hawk in case there's anything I need to deal with. One strategy that I've employed in the past is to let things build up and build up until there's an artificial crisis that I've created, and then I deal with the backlog in a flurry of activity. Through this strategy of putting things off I made a depressing discovery: most 'work' is unnecessary and can be forgotten about. Nobody's going to die if the crap that I do doesn't get done.

When I get home, I have pent-up frustration that I haven't been productive. My energy and enthusiasm for completing tangible tasks with meaningful output, has been completely unmet during office hours.

Sometimes I draw. Sometimes I make music. Sometimes I make a video.

What I really want to be doing is writing. There's nothing nicer than relaxing on my sofa with my laptop, brain-dumping. I have so much to say, and there's so little time. Words come flooding out of me. There's no shortage of things I want to write about. Researching what I want to write about means that there is even more to write about. Research sets off a chain reaction. The number of topics that I'm passionately interested in grows exponentially.

When I get home, I take off my suit and hang it up. I put on my civilian clothes. I relax, but I'm still not quite in a relaxed mood. It's not like I want to go out for a run, or to go out drinking or dancing. I'm not quite able to shake off the shackles of the rat race, despite the fact that the last thing I would ever think about doing is flipping open my work laptop or giving my project a moment's further thought.

My thoughts revolve torturously around "how am I going to get up and do it all over again tomorrow?".

Drawing, music composition, video editing... these things require a considerable amount of effort. Writing is something I'm compelled to do. Freedom of expression is important, and I've allowed myself to be completely free to write, when time allows. I do not self-censor. The only people whose identity I'm careful to protect are my friends. The only people whose feelings I consider are those who care whether I live & breathe. It's remarkably liberating, not caring if some mean judgemental family member takes offence. It's terrifying thinking that every word I write could make me unemployable, but so exhilarating to thumb your nose at a job you have total contempt for.

A simplistic analysis might conclude that I have transferred my 'addictive personality' to writing, but doesn't our society applaud the workaholic? The serial entrepreneur who puts him or herself through enormous stress is lauded as a captain of industry, an engine for growth, a valued member of the economic community. Whatever I do, I'm unlikely to approach it half-heartedly. If I'm going to work a job and make money, I'm going to work as hard as I can, and make as much money as possible. If I write, I'm going to write until my fingers bleed and I have to be prised away from the keyboard.

Society applauds my bipolarity. Not so much the depression, but the fact that I can achieve 'overnight success' during my hypomania means that I have no shortage of achievements in my portfolio. My shrewd opportunism means that cash windfalls have always carried me through the inevitable crash in my mood.

In fact, the whole working world is structured to celebrate the person who does the heroic big push to meet the deadlines. The steady eddies who just quietly get on with their work, have nothing remarkable to help them to stand out from the crowd. Even the idea of working at the level of intensity that we do in academia and employment, is destabilising. Cramming for exams, dealing with unrealistic workloads, and then collapsing during the holidays, barely recovering before the next painful bout of work or study. Who cares if your nerves are frazzled, as long as you're getting the "A" grades, right?

The project I'm working on is being cancelled, because it's failing. My team is way ahead of the deadline and our part is the big success of the project, but the other 7 teams have failed. It's a big mess. An expensive white elephant. A big embarrassment for the consultancy and the end client.

My attitude has been completely different to the projects I have worked on in the past. Normally, I don't care what my official role & responsibilities are. Normally, I go and find the biggest fire and try to help put that out.

I decided to adopt the attitude of focussing only on my responsibilities. I decided that I would concentrate on the job that I'd been originally been asked to do. I didn't go looking for trouble. I didn't tread on anybody's toes.

The net result is that I have happy bosses who are overjoyed with my work and I'm getting a good reference, but the overall project is a failure. Whether or not I would have been able to make a contribution to the success of the wider project is debatable, but I do have a track record of helping to turn around late or failing projects. I've made a habit of running into the burning building when all others are fleeing for their lives.

It's so bizarre and surreal that I've spent 4 months keeping a low profile, writing, doing as little as possible, and I'm far more appreciated than when I was working 14 hours a day, 6 days a week.

I used to get rung up routinely every weekend, to run conference bridges and orchestrate things on the failing project I worked on before this one. When shit was hitting the fan, I was there rolling up my sleeves and at least trying to be a calm head, even though I obviously claim no credit for the hard work of my colleagues.

That previous project ended with me finding out my security pass and access to email had suddenly been revoked and I was persona non grata with the senior management team who had previously been begging me for my help.

This current project is finishing with the work that my team have produced being lauded as some kind of 'jewel in the crown'. I'm being hailed as some kind of amazing manager, when in truth all I've done is sit unobtrusively in the corner of the office and write my blog.

I'm certainly one of the highest paid writers that you're ever likely to meet, but yet I was hired to run a software project, not to write.

For all those people who say "art is just a hobby" you're wrong. I spend the bulk of my time and effort writing, and being an IT consultant running a software project has been a little side project for me.

People walk up to my desk to ask me a question, and I quickly minimise what I'm doing. I then give the first answer that pops into my head. My whole body language seems to suggest that I'm very busy and my time is precious, so there isn't really a culture of lengthy discussions and debate in my team. It might sound horribly autocratic, but it certainly seems to get the software built and my team report a high level of job satisfaction. There is actually a great level of teamwork and mutual support in my team. The language we use with each other is very positive and complementary. We spend time applauding each other's efforts and celebrating our achievements.

So, I'm torn. Clearly I'm doing something right. It just feels so wrong.

Imposter syndrome means doubting your skills and abilities. I feel like a double imposter, because not only do people tell me I'm doing a good job, but I know that I spend most of my time writing my blog.

Things are coming to a head even more in my final week. My team are pulling together pieces of work that I asked them to do as part of a strategic plan, and it's working. In the final analysis we will finish up with a piece of software that's amazing quality and yet neatly packaged up to be thrown in the garbage. My team will all go off to new projects, knowing how to follow industry best practices and having seen them successfully implemented.

So many things in software get hopelessly botched: Agile project management, test-driven development, code quality, technical debt, continuous integration, release management, production stability, automated regression testing and intuitive user interfaces. Even for me, it's felt like a dream to see that some of these things can be achieved in a corporate environment.

My usual attitude of agreeing with bosses - "yeah yeah yeah" - and then just doing things the way I was going to do them anyway is unchanged. The only difference this time is that I've used my spare capacity to work on a personal project - this blog - instead of trying to think about the wider project.

It's quite exhausting - faking it, looking busy, watching out for anybody who might look over my shoulder - while also attempting to alleviate the boredom and fight the uncomfortable feeling of knowing that you're being unproductive, wasting time.

On the face of it, it looks like a good prescription for stability, financial success. I've turned up to work every day. I got paid every week. What more could you want?

However, how sustainable is it really, to live such a lie?

Tags: #bipolar #career #agile #writing

This is a story about quotations...

I live a fairly isolated existence. Work, sleep & eat. None of my friends live very nearby, and I'm in a strange part of London that you'd probably only visit if you were working in Canary Wharf.

Of course, I'm not short of ideas for what I could do with my leisure time - if I had any - in order to get a bit of a social life going again. If I had the time and the money, I could be having plenty of fun. It's just that it's hard to do that when I'm so drained from working a full time job that's utter bullshit. Most of the time I can't even handle speaking to people on the telephone. I just want to be left alone to compose my thoughts and try to unwind, in the few waking hours where I'm not trapped at my desk.

On a Wednesday night, I go to the pub with a friend. We have 3 pints of weak continental lager and put the world to rights, sitting in the beer garden. It's lovely.

Every so often, a friend will chat to me on Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp. That is also nice. I stayed up chatting until 3am on Friday night / Saturday morning.

From these chats, I often take away lovely things that were said, to treasure.

A psychiatrist once said to me "we can only play the cards that we are dealt" and when I was struggling with accusations that I was weak and that I was making up mental health problems, attention seeking and all kinds of horrible blame and stuff being thrown at me, it was a lovely nonjudgemental thing to hear.

Having been labelled as some kind of devil child by my parents, or subjected to relentless abuse by my ex-wife, it's been such a relief to have some kinder points of view at long last.

"Anybody who has a second kid after a 10 year gap is just looking for a free babysitter"

I love my sister to bits, but I could never understand why we couldn't be siblings. Why did I have to be so mature? Why was I - a child - chided for being childish? So fucking ridiculous.

My friend who pointed out how ridiculous it is to have such a big age gap between kids, also pointed out that it's healthy to have your kids play together, keep each other company. It's really boring and lonely playing on your own while your parents are getting drunk and taking drugs. Sure, I can entertain myself. Sure, I have a good imagination. Sure, I can sit down and work on a project in total isolation from all social stimulation. However, those first 10 years of my life shaped me into somebody who assumes that I never get to keep any friends, because my parents kept yanking me out of school to go traipsing all over the fucking place. Parents, I assumed, were just people who sat around lazily - off their fucking heads - and never wanted to play with me.

I ingratiated myself with other families, and spent far more time immersed in their family life than my non-existant own. I knew that something was inherently wrong at home. I could see the differences in our home lives. I could see how things were supposed to be: brothers and sisters playing together, being kids, but I was always just a visitor in those lives.

There's a lot of important social development that goes on in the first 7 years of a child's life. It's hardly like I'm selfish and never learned how to share or play nice with others, but I certainly don't feel any security in relationships. I'm completely mistrustful of all friendships. I assume that everything is just transitory, fleeting, superficial.

"[Your parents] have to protect their own self image. No way will they say [they] fucked up.

[Your mother] will occasionally drunkenly exclaim "oh it's all my fault!"

But it's attention seeking and the response sought is "of course it isn't".

They just get so entrenched in their own self serving view of what happened"

It's exhausting, being expected to prop up your parents bullshit view of the world. I wondered why I would feel so drained from a visit to see my parents, or a phonecall, and it's because they've not been working to raise a healthy happy child. They've been working to try and cover up and bury their guilt for being drugged up alkie fuckups.

I've been expected to work so hard on keeping up appearances. It's bullshit. It's ground me down. I've had enough. Hence this blog, and the full disclosure of the bullshit I've put up with.

It is remarkable how many people have gotten in contact to say their mothers are/were functional alcoholics too. It's remarkable how many parents there are out there who think they're some kind of aristocracy who get to palm their kids off on the hired help, and then swan off doing their high society bullshit. Except that they don't have any hired help so in fact the kids simply get palmed off on the state schools and other families that are more loving and welcoming.

Sure, you could accuse me of being a manchild. An overgrown baby.

I refuse to just bottle this shit up. Sure, it might be a case of arrested development. It might be a case of a bunch of stuff that supposedly I could just get over. How? How am I supposed to move forward?

I got to today, and to some outward appearances it looks like I've got my shit together, but clearly all that happened is that I did grow up, man the fuck up, put a brave face on stuff and generally just get on with it. However, it doesn't seem to have taken away the need to actually feel loved and cherished for a little bit. Maybe this is a bit spoiled princessy, I don't know. I'm just trying to purge these feelings and get to a point where I want to go on living.

It was super nice when a lovely family in Ireland took me in for some desperately needed shelter from the disintegration of my life. Just being in a loving family home - even if it wasn't my own - has kept me going.

Actually, thinking about it recently, I thought how much it would upset that lovely Irish family, to know that they helped me and that I ended up taking my own life anyway. Even if it was only a few weeks that I spent in their home, I'm still acutely aware that they deserve better than any implied ingratitude for their help.

But, I'm still missing enough regular social contact. What I get is great, and I'm super grateful to those friends who drop by, suggest meeting up, email me and contact me on messenger. It does keep me limping along.

My hope is, that as I start to get on top of the debts I ran up just staying alive, I will loosen the purse strings and start to take a risk in thinking about some work that might be more rewarding. There's no way that I can dare to dream at the moment, because I simply have to knuckle down and put money in the bank, even though it's soul-destroying and I hate it.

To reach November sounds like no time at all, but I think that only takes me to zero. It'll be the depths of winter. Perhaps my work contract won't be renewed. I'll have 11 months left on a 12 month rent contract, with my flatmate already 4 months in rent arrears and not having paid any bills for as long as I can remember. It's quite a lot of pressure.

I'm setting myself these little goals and breaking up the blocks of time. It was friends who encouraged me to take some time off here and there, but it prolongs the suffering.

It's easy to dream up a million different things I might do when I reach breakeven, but it feels so far away, even if it isn't when you're happily just chugging through your healthy fulfilling and stimulating life.

I'm loathe to upset the apple cart. There are a couple of bridges that are worth leaving unburnt. I'm probably not even in debt enough to declare bankruptcy at the moment, but it doesn't take long for the circling vultures to put you in the shit again. You have to run just to stand still. I just can't stand the bullshit of the rat race. I just can't stand the relentless pressure to pay money just to be alive, breathing.

I'm trying to string together all the sporadic social contact I have, and use all the little messages of support, to limp myself along.

At some point, I can imagine that I will look back and laugh, while also cringing with embarrassment, about just how much I've moaned and complained. In retrospect, the pain and discomfort will be quickly forgotten, and I'll wonder why I was making such a big fuss. Either that, or I won't actually make it.

It has been a long time that I've been dealing with depression. It has been a long time that I've been dealing with suicidal thoughts. I'm grateful when my friends give me a reality check, but also, I do have to still go home at some point and face facts. It's great to talk about this or that amazing venture, but the fact is that bills still have to be paid, debts have to be serviced, people still want their pound of flesh.

It must be hard on my friends, because I have good physical health, skills that are in demand, no dependents and plenty of other advantages in life. I'm quite pleased that only a very small handful of my friends have trotted out the old adages of "be grateful you have a job" etc. etc.

I get quite a lot of "chin up" and "look on the bright side" which is OK because I know people mean well when they say it, and it's a common mistake to make. It's not even a mistake, because it does show that people care, which is nice and helpful.

Probably the most fruitful discussions I'm having at the moment have been around how it's OK to be upset about things. We try so hard to put a brave face on things and pretend that everything's OK, that we perhaps don't even admit to ourselves how close we are to snapping. "A right to be angry" is something I never explored before.

There's just all this societal pressure to be grateful. But that whole gratitude argument breaks down when your life becomes sheer depressed misery. What am I supposed to be grateful for, if life is miserable? Am I supposed to want more misery? Am I supposed to be excited to have another 30 or 40 years of misery to look forward to?

It's easy to extrapolate from my position, today, trapped into a horrible corner. But, what's the alternative? The 'dream' job that will lead me to financial problems and bankruptcy because I can't afford the cost of living and I can't repay my debts? Quitting the rat race, that will lead me to social exclusion and being spat on in the street by people who think I'm a worthless bum? A life on benefits where I'm despised by ignorant mean selfish shits, who tell me to "get a job" and think I'm a scrounger?

It's actually pretty hard and pretty scary, thinking about starting over again when you're not in the first flush of youth. It's pretty challenging, rebuilding your social life and getting the people around you again that give you enough love and support to make your life liveable again.

I know I need to try harder to reconnect with friends. I need to travel to see people. I need to put myself out there. I need to invite myself into people's lives.

Perhaps things will be different once I've broken through the psychological barrier of this work/debt problem that I'm suffering at the moment.

Tags: #friends #parents #childhood

This is a story about clock watching...

In 3 weeks' time I celebrate a year of blogging [almost] every day as well as 6 months 'clean' (whatever that means). I'll have pretty much proven my point that stress, anxiety, depression, hypomania, addiction, homelessness, destitution, social isolation and every other ailment that threatens every single one of us, can be swept under the carpet.

My life is hideously painful: basically, Fuck My Life.

Nothing has any purpose or any meaning. To volunteer at a soup kitchen makes a mockery of everything, if the vital exercise of feeding the homeless is seen as a fucking hobby. To spawn children because it's fulfilling to nurture things, is to ignore the fact that there are already plenty of hungry mouths, the planet is fucked and existence is pain and suffering.

I'm going to continue until the 21st of September, keeping everything the same, in the hope that my depression will somehow lift. I doubt that my mood will improve without medication, or impoverishing myself by setting myself on collision course with destitution and homelessness again. Who wants to be functional in a dysfunctional society?

On the 21st of September, I have to make a choice: whether to continue for another couple of months, to possibly reach financial security and wealth again. Would loosening of the purse strings and retail therapy make life more palatable? It's distasteful to say that money brings happiness, but it's obvious that lack of money brings stress and anxiety.

Through comfort eating and alcohol, I'm limping along. My waistline is suffering and I'm getting quite depressed about my physique too. It's a vicious cycle, because depression is one of the reasons why I feel so drained and unable to stay active. You might think that a boring day at work should leave plenty of energy to do other things, but in fact quite the opposite is true: it's so draining being bored all day.

It doesn't make any sense that I'm so exhausted and depressed. I do all the right things: good sleep hygiene, good diet, good routine. I do a lot of walking, some cycling. I occasionally see friends or have a little more interaction with my work colleagues than the bare minimum. I'm working my job, saving my money, paying down my debts. I'm a model fucking citizen.

Yes, a lot of people find their lives mundane and boring, but if those people are as desperately suicidal as I am, then society is about to collapse at any moment, because I'm always just on the brink of either drawing the curtains and going to bed for 2 months, killing myself or running away, where nobody can send me a fucking bill or harass me on the telephone. If there are vast swathes of people who think like that, because they have a modest dislike of the rat race, society is utterly fucked and why the hell aren't they speaking up?

I had no choice but to speak up. I could have died in silence, misunderstood, and with people keen to mis-label me. At least by recording my thoughts and feelings in great detail, I have a fighting chance of dealing with hateful people who would wish me buried as a madman and an addict, even though I can clearly be neither if I'm holding down a highly desirable job, paying my rent, paying my bills. Can't anybody see that the attempts to pigeon hole people are ridiculous, insulting and desecrate the memory of those who can't stand the bullshit any longer?

I steer clear of talking about conspiracies, because that's the hallmark of somebody who has succumbed to paranoia. When a mind implodes, the vultures of organised religion swoop on the poor fool, and fill their head with all kinds of falsehoods about deities and miracles. Sometimes, when a person's grip on reality is loosened by the relentless hardships of life, they will start believing that the universe is conspiring against them. Even though we are ruled by cruel and evil plutocrats with insatiable greed, no conspiracy could really work successfully to control 7 billion people.

Instead, we are collectively the architects of our own demise. Every time we say "I was just following orders", "I was just doing what I was told" and "I was just doing what everybody else was doing" we illustrate the fact that we hide behind pathetic excuses for behaviour that is to the detriment of the greater good. In the relentless pursuit of the impossible dream that we might one day be elevated from struggle and poverty, we actually collectively enslave each other.

My aim is to play by the rules, so that I can die with integrity. I aim to cut away from the mainstream as soon as I have reached the point of break-even. To become fixated with the unattainable goal of 'getting ahead' is to make myself a lifelong slave. Who gives a shit if I can retire fabulously wealthy, if I gave away my youth and my health so cheaply?

And so, I watch the clock tick down. I'm just killing time. All I'm doing is waiting. Waiting for the day that I can show that my point is proven: yes, it's possible to look like a fine upstanding member of the community, wearing my smart suit and going to work in a fancy office. It's possible to be valued immensely by the capitalist system, and very well remunerated. It's possible to do without drugs & alcohol. It's possible to do without doctors, medications and psychotherapists. Then, with everything we supposedly hold dear in life, I reject it all because I think it's morally wrong to prop up a corrupt system that enslaves so many.

The end of the collective insanity can only come to an end, when individuals are brave enough to vote with their feet and risk their lives and their livelihoods.

So many poor fools are buying lottery tickets and working dead-end careers hoping for a promotion that will elevate them from a position of financial insecurity, into a tolerable situation. This mistaken belief that there's some pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is akin to the donkey that keeps trudging along to try and get the carrot that's suspended just out of reach... always just out of reach.

You've got to pay to play, and you have to run just to stand still. Even the homeless are criminalised. Anybody who doesn't conform is bullied and tortured. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

At some point, it's time to give up.

Tags: #writing #suicide #depression

This is a story about brain hijack...

Who's in charge around here? Do you believe in free will? Do you believe that your choices are completely unbiased? Do you believe that every decision that you make is based on rational thought? Do you believe in willpower?

Addiction is a terrifying thing. Most of us have a fear of needles. When we hear the word "addiction" we wince with anticipated pain, as if somebody had stuck something sharp into our sensitive flesh. We squirm with the idea of the pain, which is associated with memories of every time we cut ourselves, hurt ourselves on thorny plants and visited the doctor's surgery for inoculations.

There's a widely held belief that if you so much as look at a syringe filled with heroin, you will immediately be compelled to murder your grandmother and steal her valuables. Just being in the same room as some cocaine will compel you to steal a car or rob a bank. It's an automatic reaction. The drugs will take over your mind, and turn you from whoever you are today into some kind of monster, the moment that poisoned chalice touches your lips.

In reality, you are probably completely unaware that some of your friends are popping one too many opiate-based painkillers. You are completely unaware that a bunch of your respected work colleagues are out partying at the weekend, high as a kite. You are completely unaware that a huge proportion of everyone you know, has used marijuana on a regular basis, at one time or another, and somehow managed to resist moving onto crack cocaine.

We need to be careful, because drugs impair our judgement. Just because most of us don't die when we try weed, cocaine and ecstasy, we can then be convinced that we're in no way exhibiting addictive behaviour. Some of us will be emboldened to try 'hard' drugs.

People are finding out that drugs are not actually instantly addictive, and those who experiment with drugs don't immediately jettison their morality and go out on a crime spree. This creates complacency. This creates a culture where we mistrust the warning messages, because they are full of lies and over-exaggerations.

However, drugs do dull your wits. You probably think that you're super smart and you're saying some really profound stuff. You're probably think you're taking a walk on the beach with your girlfriend, watching the sunset, until the drugs wear off and you realise you're dragging a mannequin around a car park.

Children are particularly receptive to subtle changes in their parents' behaviour and mood. You might think that getting stoned in front of your kids makes you a cool parent. "Yeah! I'm a hippy!" and "Yeah! I'm fighting the power! Counter-culture revolution! Yeah!". In actual fact, you're just turning yourself into a dribbling wreck, emotionally distant from the subtle cues that tell you to hug your kids and otherwise pay attention to what's going on. There's a reason why a nursing mother's senses are heightened after the birth of a child, and it's not so you can find those crumbs of crack that are hidden in the carpet.

Even smoking is super selfish. The health risks of passive smoking are well known and understood, but consider the weight difference between you and your baby. Let's say your kid weighs 7kg (15lbs) and you weigh 70kg (154lbs). That means that you weigh 10 times as much as your child. If you're inhaling 2mg of nicotine from your cigarette smoke, your child is inhaling 20mg. If you smoke in your car with your kid, you're making them smoke the equivalent of packs and packs of cigarettes. You are addicting them to nicotine and making them quit smoking, over and over and over again.

We were always driving places, when I was growing up. Small car. Both parents smoking. They call it 'hot boxing' now, when stoners are keeping all their dope smoke in a confined space, so that everybody gets really intoxicated on the chemicals. That's what selfish smokers are doing to children. I'm super glad that there are now laws in place to protect children from their selfish parents' addictions.

And so, I arrived in adulthood with a brain that was no stranger to addiction and withdrawal. I have far stronger willpower than either of my parents, because I have been able to resist the urge to smoke, and I have quit many addictive drugs cold turkey. I've got more will power than my parents could even dream of: they would not even give up smoking for the health of my sister and I, despite the obvious damage that it was doing and the financial consequences.

This is the power of addiction: even though you are destroying the health of your children and putting them through a horrible experience, you tell yourself that it's somehow OK to do that, despite an unambiguous message from doctors and other healthcare professionals. The only reason not to comply with the necessity of doing the best by your children, would be pure bloody-minded selfish stupidity... which is the addiction part.

I find it very hard to respect somebody lecturing me on addiction, when they're puffing on cigarettes and drinking tea, coffee & alcoholic drinks.

You may be surprised to learn that rich addicts do not become homeless junkies, destitute and forced into a life of crime. You may be surprised to learn that, given the opportunity to quit drugs on their own terms, most people's addictions will just fizzle out.

The brain is a homeostatic organ, and whatever chemicals you put into your body to get a buzz or a high will soon lose their potency. Pretty soon, the pursuit of drugs gets boring. Addictions are naturally self-limiting.

Rats who live in sterile cages with no stimulation, socialisation, sex or interesting food, will kill themselves with drugs. Rats who live in a pleasant environment will shun drugs, because they're getting everything they need in their happy ratty little lives. It's shitty lives that create the conditions where addiction can exist.

I work my arse off in a shitty boring unstimulating job, with no disposable income to be spent on fun and socialising. I go to work, I come home, I write because it doesn't cost any money. I don't spend any money on extravagances. I just buy basic food. I eat, sleep and work. And where's it getting me?

Of course thoughts of addiction are present. The thought process goes like this: my life is shit; I want to die. Then I think I could just run away and become a hobo. Then I realise that will soon lead to the stress of being cold and hungry and dirty; with people thinking that I'm worthless scum. This is how a person arrives at the idea that addiction takes care of both the short term need to feel better, and the long term view that you're going to die anyway. So much easier to have a brief period of happiness and then kill yourself, than to have a long period where you slowly starve to death and suffer the health consequences of living on the street. It's better to burn out than fade away.

Abstinence is easy. Living a shitty hopeless life is hard.

Because I've mastered abstinence so easily, I can get a little complacent about the appeal of simply relapsing and quickly reaching death's door. If this year has taught me anything, it's that the struggle isn't really worth it. All my hard work has yielded so little improvement in my mood. I'm so depressed all the time, and things really aren't improving. To go to the doctor, chasing happy pills, is just on the same addictive continuum. When the happy pills wear off, I'll have to go back for stronger and stronger drugs, until I end up in exactly the same place. Skip to the end. Cut out the pointless bit in the middle.

I had thought that because I obviously can't be going through any kind of drug withdrawal or comedown, and abstinence is a simple and easy thing, that I had gotten on top of addictive thoughts, but actually they just went into my subconcious.

Last night I had a nightmare where I had obtained some drugs, and nobody would leave me alone. I was just being chased and harassed. I never actually got to use the drugs, which is maybe what made it such a stressful nightmare, but it's interesting how badly I did want to use those drugs in my dream. I expect the whole thing was triggered by the fact I'd been looking at a website selling drugs, the night before.

In actual fact, I'd rather just kill myself. It's been long enough to show that addiction, abstinence and willpower are just utter bullshit. I'm completely "clean and sober" as fucktards like to say. Addiction has nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with unbearable lives. I'd rather kill myself in protest at an unliveable life, due to unreasonable demands to work a bullshit job with no hope of ever doing anything fulfilling or purposeful.

The coroner can take samples of my hair and blood, and see not a single trace of any drugs in my system.

Only a fool does the same things expecting different results. Why would the conditions that created an addiction, not also keep somebody in an addiction, if they were still the same?

It seems logical that I should kill myself, as a protest about how unbearable a meaningless life of wage slavery is.

It doesn't seem selfish to want to commit suicide. It doesn't seem like depression is telling me lies. It seems like a brave thing to do, to stand up to an oppressive and miserable life and take a stand against exploitation by the ruling class. It seems like a brave thing to do, to refuse to be told I'm weak, broken, faulty. It seems to be a brave thing to do, to show that I'm not OK with turning my back on the suffering of humanity.

Lots of people impoverish themselves in their attempt to help other people. Lots of people will make mistakes, despite being dedicated to trying to improve the lives of others. It seems better to simply reach a point that is beyond reproach, and then kill yourself.

What's the difference between a saint and a sinner? Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

It's not a case of "once an addict, always an addict". It's simply the case that anybody can fall from grace at any time. Anybody can make a mistake at any moment.

If you have money, kids, a lovely home and a loving family, you are probably safer than most because you have some security, purpose, happiness. However, one slip and you're fucked.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #suicide #depression #capitalism #parents

This is a story about being on the run...

When you're no fixed abode, the systems can't really cope. It's hard to even rent a VHS video cassette without two forms of identity that prove your address, let alone get a job or in any way re-enter civilised society.

Nowadays, when you come to rent a house or a flat, you will need to do a credit check. How are you going to pass a credit check if you don't have two recent utility bills? How are you going to pass a credit check if you're not on the electoral roll anywhere? Often times, even jobs require a credit check.

Can't get a job and a place to live without a home, and can't get a home and an income without an address: Catch 22. Game over.

I'm now on the electoral roll again. I'm now the bill payer for council tax, electric, gas, water, sewerage, telephone and every other service that leeches away your hard-earned cash every month, along with your rent or mortgage. Interestingly, you can't even get electric & gas without a credit check sometimes. Sometimes you have to buy electric & gas on a key meter, so that you don't rack up big bills that you're in no position to pay.

When I went off grid, I disappeared out of the system.

Without the system knowing that I was paying utility bills somewhere, the system assumed I was a no-good worthless piece of shit. I would have been unable to rent my apartment, except for the fact that I'm a blagger and a hustler, and I kicked off a big stink with the letting agent about being a non-dom and wanting to keep my financial affairs private. They seemed to buy it and let me get away without doing a credit check.

Interestingly, I just about managed to sneak onto the HSBC contract I did last year, because the system hadn't quite caught up with the fact that I'd disappeared off the grid. HSBC is not in the habit of employing homeless junkies and giving them the opportunity to improve their lives and get ahead. Thankfully they are also truly appalling at due diligence, which was the project I was there to work on, ironically.

This year, I'm now security cleared to a level that would allow me to get onto nuclear sites, most probably. That's not unusual for me. I signed the Official Secrets Act when I was 17, and I've been on several nuclear submarines, as well as working on some highly classified projects. God only knows how the vetting works, but they didn't seem to pick up that I have 3 criminal cautions from the police, or the fact that I've spent the best part of the last 3 years hustling like hell to try and save my own life.

The system has very much worked against me, to try and keep me trapped into poverty and homelessness, but the tide has turned.

Today I received a letter. On the back it was marked "ProSearch". I thought "oh no! what horrible thing from my past is now rearing its ugly head to come and bite me on my arse?".

Upon opening the letter, it appears like ARM Holdings Plc - which is a company I invested in back in the 1990s - has been trying to track me down to give me some money. The last address they have on file is from 10 years ago. They spent some money trying to find me, so they can give me some money. That's quite cool.

People don't generally track me down to give me money. In fact, a lot of the people who owe me money tend to go out of their way to avoid me. Not because I would ask them for the money back, but because they probably don't have any intention of paying me back, and perhaps they feel bad about their debt. I expect a few people who owe me money would pay me back if they could, but they're never likely to escape the grinding poverty that they're in. I'd rather write the money off anyway. I can always earn some more money, but making new friends is hard.

Anyway, this is quite a nice change. Instead of bloody bean counting idiots chasing their pathetic paltry sums of money that apparently I owe because somebody sold me into slavery before I was born, I'm now having people trying to find me to give me money.

I don't feel owed this, you understand? I don't feel entitled. But it's good when the tide turns and it feels like hard work is actually getting somewhere.

I wasn't born to just pay bills and then die.

Tags: #capitalism

This is a story about fact vs. fiction...

It's hard to defend yourself when you're sick. It's easy for people to take advantage of a soft target, and invent their own version of events. It's easy to discredit somebody, when you've left them dead and buried. The dead can no longer speak up for themselves.

I needed to break up with my abusive ex-wife and rebuild my life in London. London is where all the good IT contracts and jobs are. London is where I have a good chance of reconnecting with significant numbers of friends and business contacts. London is where good stuff happens.

I had an excellent credit rating. I was going to arrange for a bridging loan to cover the expenditure of relocating back to London from Bournemouth. The loan was risk free, because I had such a large amount of equity in my house. The credit risk was underwritten by the fact that as soon as the house was sold, the loan could be repaid.

I was going to arrange credit with a commercial lender, so that I had the security of knowing that I had the funds to cover me until I got a new job back in London. However, my parents insisted that I could count on them. My parents told me that I didn't need the extra stress and hassle of arranging credit, and worrying about money and administrative affairs, when I had the extremely upsetting task of leaving my home and setting up life again in London.

However, when I then said that I needed to borrow the money - secured against the large lump sum of equity tied up in my house that was being sold - they then reneged on their promise. They left me high and dry. They dumped me in the shit. With no excuse, they fucked me over. Unacceptable.

Don't make promises you have no intention of keeping.

Don't offer to support vulnerable people, and then screw them over.

It's not a fucking joke.

It's not fucking funny.

It has consequences.

Far reaching consequences.

I never got an apology or an explanation from my parents for fucking me over like that. I can only assume that they liked the idea of sounding like real parents, but actually they don't have a single shred of decency. They don't have an ounce of honesty. They are untrustworthy. They are liars. They are utter c**ts.

It wasn't like I'd asked them for support. I was putting my own commercial borrowing arrangements in place to cover my relocation. My parents insisted that I could count on them to bridge the gap. It made sense... there was no risk, because the debt was underwritten with the equity in my house, which was vacant and being sold. It made sense that they should profit instead of a commercial lender. I was doing them a favour, because they would earn a better rate of interest off me than they would from any savings interest.

But.

Let's assume that they decided I was going to blow all the money on drugs.

My drug of choice - the one I got mixed up with by accident during the agonising destruction of my relationship and my business - is something that I've jokingly nicknamed "supercrack". As the name suggests, it's highly addictive. It used to be legal, not so long ago.

A strong dose of supercrack is 15mg. That's 0.015 grams.

The length of time that a dose of supercrack will last is about 18 hours. It's an incredibly potent stimulant.

On the dark web, you used to be able to buy 5 grams of supercrack for $150, including postage. That's enough to last 333 days, assuming you sleep 6 hours a night.

If you take supercrack around-the-clock you will not sleep, and therefore your immune system will get very low and you will soon die. The longest I ever took supercrack in a round-the-clock binge was 10 days. That's 10 days without sleep or food. I don't think you could go much longer without dying.

When I moved back to London, I was no longer using supercrack.

If I was using supercrack, from the day I moved back to London to today, I would have spent the princely sum of $450.

In fact, to use supercrack for 50 more years - long past my natural life expectancy - would only require 274 grams of the dangerous drug, which would easily cost me less than $10,000. In fact, I could probably have bought 1kg in bulk for $5,000, which would have been enough for 200 years of drug abuse.

So what did happen to all my money?

Well, I made it to my first Christmas back in London by buying Bitcoins on my credit cards and with my overdraft, which then increased 1,200% in value. I hadn't been able to work, because the stress of not having any money, and having your parents and ex-wife completely dicking you over, while also having to move the contents of a 3 bedroom house into storage and rebuild your life again, was rather too much to ask.

My parents expected me to go to their house for a jolly fucking family Christmas, when they had royally fucked me over. What a joke.

December was all too much, and by the 27th I was in full-blown relapse (which only cost a few dollars in drugs).

However, rehab doesn't come cheap... and guess who was going to pay? ME!

I've paid around £30,000 for private treatment. Guess what? It doesn't work.

Unless you have a supportive environment, treatment doesn't work. Don't bother going into rehab, unless you're going to get rid of toxic people, toxic places and toxic jobs from your life.

My first stay in rehab (The Priory) was long enough for me to see that I was being abused by my ex-wife and we needed to break up. My next stay in rehab was long enough for me to get over being dicked over by my parents. My last stay in rehab gave me just about enough strength to make a plan to cut my toxic parents out of my life altogether.

Since then, I now know the knack of quitting drugs.

Amino acids such as 5-HTP, L-Tyrosine and Phenylalanine replace the depleted neurotransmitters in your brain. Bupropion and amphetamines (like dexedrine) can cushion the cravings and depression, lack of energy and cognitive impairment.

Benzos and Z-drugs are a great way to amplify an addiction. Sleeping off the comedown by taking 'downers' to take the vicious edge off the 'uppers' means that you start to believe you are able to get all the upsides without any of the downsides. However, all you're doing is storing up the mother of all comedowns for a later day.

Coming off benzodiazepines is the single most awful thing you are likely to ever experience in your life. I'm not sure if you've ever had a panic attack or insomnia. Certainly, you must have experienced stress and anxiety. Imagine having a round-the-clock sense of horrible unease, fear, dread. If benzos calm you down, the payback is in rebound anxiety. What goes up must come down, and living with anxiety is terrible.

Something like diazepam is very long acting, so you find it's in your bloodstream for ages even after you stop taking it. The withdrawal from it lasts weeks: insomnia & anxiety.

Coming off stimulants isn't that bad. You're exhausted, suicidally depressed, physically weak, uncoordinated, slow witted, and cognitively impaired. You might be in terrible physical shape from lack of food, lack of sleep and over-exertion. It's nothing that a month in bed can't fix.

Obviously, coming off all drugs at the same time is a clusterfuck, because you'll have anxiety and insomnia, keeping you awake through your exhausted suicidal depression. But, this is the payback for polydrug abuse. What goes up must come down.

In September 2013 I escaped addiction by swapping from supercrack to dexedrine and then tapering my dose down. I further cushioned the blow by using zopiclone to get my sleep back on track. It was relatively easy and painless, especially as I also completely changed my whole environment by moving to London and reconnecting with old friends. I got a new girlfriend and started helping my homeless friend, Frank.

Drug addiction is a teeny tiny bit about the brain chemistry, and it's a whole lot more about toxic environments. Believe me, the more stress, disruption, isolation and mistreatment is perpetrated against me, the more I'm itching to pull the "fuck it" trigger.

Drug addiction is both an easy and a difficult existence. If you haven't got the guts to actually end your life quickly and cleanly, it will get you to your grave faster than you think. I think every addict knows where they're headed, but they don't give a fuck because everybody else is pushing them down that road too.

You would have thought that addicts would be our most cared for and nurtured members of society, because they're pretty much walking around with a noose around their neck, advertising their intention to kill themself. However, my experience was that my own parents and ex-wife couldn't wait to see me dead and buried.

When I eventually accepted that experimentation had become addiction and I needed professional help, I said to my ex-wife that I needed a 28-day detox. She said she would rather that I died. She actually categorically said that she would rather be a widow. These were her words. This was not a general comment. This was her saying that she would prefer it if I didn't have 28 days treatment and get better. This was her saying that what she wanted was for me to die, not get better.

When I got clean and moved back to London, my parents essentially made the same choice. Rather than honour their unsolicited offer to profit from my need for a bridging loan, they saw the opportunity to pull the rug out from under my feet and plunge me back into chaos, stress and destruction.

When things are going wrong now, I assume that I'm totally alone, and that everybody is totally hostile. I assume that doors are going to be kicked in by an abusive and violent ex or parent. I assume that treatment is going to be withheld. I assume that people would rather that I was dead.

Abuse leaves psychological scars. Calling somebody a liar, and treating them disrespectfully denies them any self esteem. Pulling away a person's means of supporting themself, and generally attacking their opportunities to escape and recover is not proof that the person is a failure and vindication of your decision to fuck them over. Let's take a look at cause and effect.

Drug addiction is a place that a person turns to when their life is unliveable. The more you mistreat a person and deny them any opportunity to recover, the more they're going to say "fuck it" and go back to killing themself slowly.

Recovery can be quick and painless if action is swift, decisive and early intervention is taken. Addiction is like a house on fire. The sooner you put out the fire, the more of the house you save. There's no point sitting around to see if the fire goes out, and then putting out half the fire. "The fire is mostly out" or "we'll just put a bit of water on the fire and see if things improve" is just utter bullshit. You're looking for an excuse to fail that person if you act like that.

I'm angry.

I don't know if this is coming across. I'm really fucking angry.

I'm spinning everything like I'm a victim. Well, that's because I'm sick of victim blaming. I know that taking the position of the victim is not a good place to start, but it's maddening because the facts are clear: the strong have exploited the weak, and tried to kick a vulnerable person into an early grave. Secrets die with a person, and it's a lot easier if a victim is dead.

I made plans for my business and my future based on the idea that I had a loving, supportive partner. I made plans based on a "for richer, for poorer" and "in sickness and in health" marriage vow that we made to each other. I made divorce and recovery plans based on an unsolicited offer of support from my parents. Parents are supposed to support their children. People are supposed to honour their word. Plans are based on agreements.

How can you make any plans or do anything if nobody keeps their word? How can anything function without people acting with a shred of integrity.

I paid for nonjudgemental reliable support, at great personal expense. The rest I did on my fucking own. Who the fuck got me out of the park and into a hostel? Who the fuck got me out of the hostel into a contract and a hotel? Who the fuck got me out of the hotel and into a flat? Who the fuck got me more contracts when the previous ones didn't work out for long enough for me to get ahead?

Recovering from depression, bipolar disorder, the destruction of your business, ruining of your career reputation, divorce, the selling off of your home and the giveaway of many of your precious possessions, having to relocate across the country, having to re-establish your life again. You think that comes easily? You think that comes cheaply? You think that can be done all on your own? You think that can be done while people jeer and take the piss from the sidelines, calling you horrible names and creating additional obstacles for you?

Now, sprinkle in substance abuse.

Drug addiction is the easy part. I should be getting a fucking ticker-tape parade for what I've been through. I should get a fucking gold medal. I should get my picture in the motherfucking paper, with lots of quotes from all my adoring fans.

Some drug addicts are driven to lie, cheat and steal. We are told that addicts leave dirty needles in children's playgrounds and try to sell drugs to your kids to get them hooked.

What exactly could anybody's problem be with me? I've paid for all my own treatment. I've never stolen any money to buy drugs. I never even bought drugs from anybody who could conceivably be accused of putting money into crime and terrorism. All I've ever wanted to do is get back to London, and restabilise myself.

What does stability look like?

Like this:

• Place to live
• Income to pay for food & accommodation
• Social contact
• Free from debt and financial stress

And I've come to realise it also means:

• No more toxic people in my life: especially my parents
• No more klingons: I can't carry any dead wood
• No more arbitrary measures: being teetotal is unnecessary. I'm going to do whatever works.
• No more shame: I've got nothing to be ashamed of

The compromises, sacrifices and things that I put up with to keep hope alive are not inconsiderable. My adherence to integrity and personal standards means that I am taking on additional challenges that I could easily circumvent by simply declaring bankruptcy and depositing myself in the care of the welfare state.

I've paid an absolute fucktonne of tax in my life, so I should feel entitled to a handout, but I don't. I don't want a life that's dependent on the state giving me a small amount of the money back that I've paid into the national purse. I'm proud and I've worked hard all my life. I've worked hard to dig myself out of a very deep hole, and I deserve a fucking break.

I'm writing this now, completely free from any drugs. My mind is my own. I have let my brain recover, and now I have nothing but pure rational thought.

Where's my money gone? It's been spent on surviving. It's been spent on keeping the possibility of recovery alive.

Recovery from drugs?

No.

Recovery from the shit that drove me into the arms of addiction.

Will I be able to recreate the past, and get back the things I lost? No, never. Of course not!

So, am I bitter and full of regret?

Actually, I'm working my bollocks off just as hard as I've always done throughout my life FOR THE FUTURE. In 4 or 5 months I could be back in the same financial position that I was in before everything imploded, except I will be in pole position to continue at a much accelerated pace. I have a much greater chance of building a happy new life, now that I am rid of the toxic people who sabotaged everything I had worked so hard to build.

Every day in the rat race is an unpleasant reminder of the fact that I got screwed over, and this is the source of my bitter rants. I am tired. It has been exhausting to rescue things.

But, it's in my nature to build and repair. It's in my nature to look to the future, not look to the past. The only reason I do look to the past, is that I'm saddled with the consequences of being dumped in the shit by people who let me down and broke their promises.

In the world of startups we talk about a pivot. Take your lessons learned from going in one direction, and take them in another to find your sustainable competitive advantage.

Through this fucked up world of pain that I've been through, I've found several important stories that need to be told.

There is the story of the people who are disadvantaged. Those who are discriminated against because they have mental health problems or who have struggled with addiction. There are society's undesirable members. There is the issue of homelessness, and the harsh and uncaring world that waits for single people who fall on hard times. There is the arms race in the war on drugs, with legal highs and the cat and mouse game between chemists and governments. There is the battle that rages inside our heads: mania and depression. There are the differences in perception: who is mad and who is sane.

A rich white middle class investment bank employee, IT consultant, software engineer, homeowner, husband and neatly presented boy with good manners, well educated and well behaved. Young, fit and active. Adventurous, outgoing and gregarious.

If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.

The stories have got to be told.

Tags: #addiction #drugs #divorce #parents #legalhighs #mentalhealth #homeless

This is a story about the future of your children...

We are living in the age of anti-vaccine parents, who willingly risk their children getting polio, diphtheria, mumps, measles, meningitis, rubella, chicken pox/shingles and a whole heap of other diseases that were just about wiped out, but are now on the rise again.

There is also a health epidemic that hardly anybody is talking about, even though it's a big killer, and has a devastating impact on the quality of life of so many of us, our friends, our families, our children.

Without further ado, let's get started with the list...

* * *

5. One in five boys will be diagnosed with an Attention-Deficit disorder

Yes, that's right, by the age of 17, a full 20% of boys will be diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. Not only are our boys drifting further and further apart from girls in their school exam grades, but they are also now being diagnosed as suffering from a serious mental illness, in their droves.

Treatment for attention deficit disorders is often a stimulant akin to cocaine or amphetamines. Ritalin is the trademarked name that Methylphenidate is marketed under. Ritalin shares the same mechanism of action and is structurally similar to cocaine. Adderall is the trademarked name that mixed amphetamine salts are sold under. Adderall is almost identical to street 'speed' that you might obtain from a drug dealer.

Attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder diagnoses have risen over 50% in the last decade. Over 6 million American children are prescribed a powerful and addictive stimulant, every single day, just so that they can concentrate at school and get good grades.

Do you think we've got our school system right, if we're failing boys so badly, and they are reaching the age of 17 with a serious mental health problem and a drug habit, all of which is medically sanctioned and is trumpeted as a success by our education ministers?

4. 37% of teenaged girls suffer depression and anxiety

Even though alcohol and drug abuse is falling amongst teenaged girls, as they apply themselves to their studies more diligently to get better and better exam grades every year, this seems to have come at the expense of their mental health.

Hospital admissions for self-harm in under-16s are up 52% in a 6 year period. That's just the kids who need to go to hospital. So many others will cut themselves in areas that nobody can see. I've been in hospital and seen whole arms that are just a tattered mess of scars. Clearly, these vulnerable children are under extreme pressure, stress and dealing with intolerable anxiety.

No matter what you might think about how loving and supportive your home environment is, there is so much expectation placed on children to reach their fullest academic potential, and the statistics show us the consequences of this league-table over-competitive toxic educational environment.

3. Antidepressant prescriptions double in a decade

Ok, assuming your kids chain themselves to their desks, do all their homework and their extra-curricular activities, do all their damn exams, get into university and make it though their finals, what kind of life can they expect to have?

Well, how's about a zero-hours contract McJob?

It's pretty clear that the outlook for your offspring, having lost their entire childhood to their diligent studies, will have no job security, no prospect of ever owning a home and will inherit a planet with a totally fucked up climate. Is it any wonder that depression has reached epidemic proportions?

If over 1/3rd of our teenage girls are now suffering from depression and anxiety, which are treated with these powerful psychoactive medications, is it any wonder that we are seeing prescriptions ballooning in numbers.

Remember, not every person who suffers from a mental health problem will seek treatment, and not all those who consult their doctor will be prepared to accept the side-effects of medication. We are seeing only the tip of the iceberg when we look at the NHS's prescription statistics.

2. Suicide: a quarter of deaths for men aged 20 to 34

Yup. You read that grim fact right.

Leaving university with a huge student loan debt, no job prospects, no chance of being the "provider" or otherwise fulfilling your role as a man, suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 45.

While women feel huge pressure to be obedient parent pleasers, men feel huge pressure to be economically active and to seek their fortunes. Undoubtably, the economic depression caused by the reckless actions of the banks and the credit crunch of 2007/8 has claimed many lives.

Many bankers received golden parachutes. High salaries and eye-watering bonuses are still being paid throughout the Square Mile and Canary Wharf. If you're part of the club, you're still making a killing. Bad luck, if you're in the 99.9% who didn't get an invite to the party because your face doesn't fit.

The number of suicides in England and Wales is at a 20 year high. The numbers shot up due to the financial crisis, but they have continued to rise as the Conservatives - the "nasty party" - sought to look after themselves and their rich donors at the expense of the mental health of the entire country.

Living within our means is one thing, but frankly it was the bank bailouts and corporate charity that we couldn't afford, and it's costing lives.

1. One in four university students suffers from mental health problems

These are our very best and brightest people. These are our future captains of industry. These are the cream of the crop.

What the hell are we doing when our burning bright hope for the future of humanity, are even afflicted with mental illness that drastically affects their quality of life?

Our curent batch of uni grads are expected to solve climate change, the energy crisis, the pensions crisis, the collapse of the global economy and the end of capitalism, as well as figuring out what the hell the underclass are going to do now that all the factories and farms are going to be run by robots.

Young women are carrying not only the hopes of their family, but also the pressure to succeed that drives fully 1/3rd of them into anxiety, depression and other mental disorders. Is this what they worked so hard at school for?

Think about the relentless pressure, from the age of 4 or 5 to the age of 21 or 22... endless exams and essays and projects and being driven to achieve academic excellence.

Is it any wonder that vast numbers of young people are having nervous breakdowns, or having to take powerful sedatives to calm their nerves?

University students are pressured into taking drugs like Modafinil in order to stay awake during revision binges, and take other stimulants and concentration aids like Adderall, in order to retain facts.

Our desire to constantly sift and measure young people using examinations and grading, leads to nervous exhaustion from the unrelenting pressure. One slip, and your future could be ruined, we tell our children. Of course they're going to be terrified, thinking that they might have a bad day and be cast into the seething mass of unemployable unskilled labourers who have been chucked onto the scrap heap.

* * *

Psychological distress is evident everywhere we look. We all have a friend or a relative who is suffering, even if we ourselves feel that we have been lucky enough to have escape unscathed, but also do we really know?

Some of us are very good at hiding our feelings, and there is a British culture of stiff upper lip, and men are especially discouraged from talking about emotional issues.

The statistics paint a grim picture that is undeniable. Mental health issues are a full-blown epidemic that should be the number one priority for policymakers, because it's at the root cause of all human wellbeing and quality of life.

We have vast amounts of medications, but they are making very little difference against the rising tide of problems which are mostly of economic and social origin.

Without giving the population meaning and purpose, and a sense of community, we are racked with fear of failure, fear of terrorism, anxiety over our job security, depressed about our prospects of owning our own home or having a financial safety net.

Our lives are a toxic brew of issues, where we are forced away from our families to work and study. Our jobs are unfulfilling and exploitative, and our education system puts undue pressure on young people and children, who are vulnerable and at a delicate developmental stage.

Without urgent social reform, quality of life is going to fall dangerously low and political unrest will follow.

Tags: #mentalhealth #suicide

This is a story about euthanasia...

I need to cover what I'm about to write with a hefty preamble, full of caveats and other disclaimers, because there are so many considerations with this issue, but it's an issue I need to tackle.

Firstly, let's consider this: nobody really wants to die.

For people who are in pain and other kinds of physical discomfort, or are otherwise afflicted by diseases, injuries or genetic problems that mean their quality of life is terrible, or certainly going to end up terrible: these people do not want to die. Those people would dearly love for a cure or some kind of relief from their symptoms that doesn't come with intolerable side effects.

Clearly people who want to prematurely end their lives in a dignified manner, have exhausted all treatment options, and their future looks bleak: pain, discomfort, infirmity, senility and disability.

Alzheimers and other kinds of incurable degenerative brain diseases carry the added worry that the sufferer will no longer be of a sound and rational mind when the illness reaches its late stages, and they will burden their carers, while perhaps not even being able to recognise their loved ones any more.

Let's also consider this: some people have hope, while others do not.

Yes, there's always a chance of a miracle cure. Yes, there's always a 1-in-a-trillion shot that God might personally intervene to remove the horrible afflictions that he originally cursed you with.

Most people love life and can't bear the thought of being torn from the arms of their loved ones. Most people cry out in fear, when they think they're about to die. Most people fight to survive.

There are people who have gone through many bouts of surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, transplants and who take bucketloads of medications with horrible side effects, and generally battle through awful sickness and pain, holding out hope that their ailments will be at least treated well enough to prolong their lives a little longer.

Some people might spend a long time on a transplant list, barely surviving, while oxygen and dialysis just about preserve them while they wait for a donor match. An agonising race against time happens: will a donor arrive before the illness kills the poor helpless person who can only sit and wait?

I feel like I should use softer language, to cushion the blows for every person who's lost a child, parent, friend, partner, relative. Death is painful, and all the more so knowing that a person had so much more life left in them. Death can be so cruel. People so deserving of more life can be snatched away, while others who are seemingly careless with the gift of life can seem so selfish and ungrateful for their good fortune to have been spared by the gods.

And it's the ungrateful ones I want to talk about.

What do you do with the alcoholic who 'wants' to drink themself to death? What do you do with a suicidal person?

The footballer George Best famously received a liver transplant, and then proceeded to court controversy when he was caught drinking again. Instead of demonstrating his gratitude for his stay of execution, by becoming teetotal, he was clearly the same person - ungrateful for life some might say - as he was before he received an organ donation.

What do you do with somebody who is determined to kill themself? Do you put them in a straightjacket and keep them in a padded cell indefinitely, just so that they can die of old age in an asylum?

It might be the case that a suicidal person is in perfectly good physical health and does not abuse drugs or alcohol, but they are nonetheless determined to end their own life prematurely.

There's a general belief that telling people that their lifestyle is much akin to suicide, will curtail their health-damaging behaviour. Doctors mostly seem to take the route of saying "if you keep drinking, you're going to die young" to alcoholics. While most people would think that this would shock somebody into cutting down their drinking, in fact there's little evidence that it has any affect at all.

Similarly, telling suicidal people "you've got so much to live for" and "it's just your depression telling you lies" and other statements that make perfect sense to people who are not suicidal, is also ineffective. The only thing that has proven somewhat effective - as far as short 12-week studies paid for by pharmaceutical companies can tell - is psychoactive medication.

Smoking causes many preventable diseases, and is a big killer, but yet people still choose to smoke even though it's expensive, makes you smell and stains your teeth. You would have thought that the large "SMOKING KILLS" health warnings on packets would cause people to stop smoking immediately, but no.

You know what one of the most effective smoking cessation treatments is? It's the antidepressant called Wellbutrin (marketed as stop-smoking drug Zyban and generically known as Bupropion).

Why would an antidepressant be a good treatment for smokers? Well, let's consider two things: firstly, people smoke because they're missing something. Take smoking away, and a smoker's life is now incomplete. Removing nicotine and the habit/ceremony of smoking leaves a void in that person's life. Also, you've got to be fairly depressed to do something that's clearly a threat to your health, and possibly your life.

Wellbutrin is a fast-acting antidepressant, unlike anything we can get on the NHS. Instead of making people feel sleepy and emotionally numbed, Wellbutrin has been proven to offer a number of improvements in the lives of patients, including their sex lives. Wellbutrin is France's most popular antidepressant.

What do you really want from an antidepressant, other than to relieve your symptoms of depression now when you're feeling it? Being told that a medication might take 6 to 8 weeks to become effective, and then having to suffer your symptoms that whole time while you're waiting is no use at all! Some depressions will lift naturally after a month or two anyway.

But what goes up must come down. After some weeks or months taking Wellbutrin, many patients experience panic attacks and insomnia. Plus there's the obvious problem of having to stop taking the medication at some point, and suffering the comedown (sorry, I mean withdrawal syndrome).

Yes, the difference between 'drugs of abuse' and 'prescribed psychoactive medications' is precisely zero. Every medication that has an upside also has a downside. Addiction and habituation with prescription medications is just as much of a problem as with street drugs. The only difference is medical oversight and quality control.

And so, I arrive at the situation where I'm perfectly well aware that I can get short-term relief for the symptoms of my depression, in the form of a pill from my doctor. However, I'm equally aware that to go down that road is to have a lifetime dependence on medication for my sense of wellbeing. Basically, do I want to be a medically sanctioned drug addict? None of the stigma, but all of the same behaviours.

You're right, I wouldn't have to lie, cheat or steal to feed my habit. I can wander into my pharmacist, and get my uppers over the counter, and carry on like I'm a fine upstanding member of the community. Did you know that even heroin addicts are completely functional members of society, when they can get a clean high quality supply of the opiates they need? When doctors in the UK used to prescribe heroin, there were none of the antisocial problems that we instinctively associate with drug abuse today.

Of course, I'm not advocating drug abuse, but then I'm also pointing out that the flaws that afflict a smoker, a drinker, a junkie and even a depressed person... they're all rooted in the same psychological need to cure an invisible illness.

Pretty soon, I will have spent a year where over 75% of the time I was using no psychoactive substances at all, except for alcohol. A period of 115 consecutive days - 32% of the year - I was completely teetotal. For the whole year I had no tea, coffee, cola, energy drinks, or caffeine containing headache pills (more common than you think). I'm completely unmedicated.

How do I feel? Awful.

It seems to me like I have a choice: suicidal depression, or drugs (i.e. medication, coffee & alcohol etc.)

I know that a scientific study with one participant tells us nothing, but equally I'm not a group, I'm me. You can't dismiss my individual findings, that are true for me. I've gathered the data during a 20 year career, and I've come to the conclusion that my life is unliveable in its current form.

When you are conducting a scientific study, you have to control the variables. Thankfully, I'm an ideal test subject for this.

Since the age of 17, I've been a very well paid software engineer. For sure, during the first couple of years it took me a while to get my salary up to a decent level, but since the age of 19 I've never had to worry about money. Also, I've done pretty much the same thing for all my career: sitting at a desk, tapping on a keyboard, making software.

I've had the same running crisis my whole career. When I was 19, I was bored so I applied to university and was offered places at some very prestigious institutions to study psychopharmacology. I decided to stick with the money, and keep selling my soul to the highest bidder.

When I was 28, depression had crushed me to the point I was on my knees and unable to turn up and do the same office bullshit anymore. I retrained as an electrician and started my own company.

As a self-employed tradesman, I loved what I did, but I was grossly underpaid for the level of responsibility I had. Ordinary members of the public think that tradesmen are out to rip them off. In reality tradesmen are highly trained professionals whose job it is to stop houses burning down and families being electrocuted or poisoned by carbon monoxide.

The freedom of not having a boss, not having a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday routine, and not having to sit in the same damn chair at the same damn desk, pushing the same damn 102 keys on the same goddam keyboard... all of those things are just as great as they sound. However, getting paid peanuts to do dangerous dirty work is also not great either.

And so, I returned to what I'm experienced and qualified to do.

I earn staggering amounts of cash for moving my mouse around and looking busy at a desk. However, I used to earn £470 per day when I was 20 years old, doing computer programming for Lloyds TSB back in the year 2000. My job is exactly the same today, doing the same damn computer code for HSBC, JPMorgan, Barclays or any other damn bank.

But maybe the problem's banking? Nope. I've written computer code for nuclear submarines, torpedos, school computer networks, trains, parking ticket machines, busses, security guards, shop assistants and just about every other weird and wonderful industry you can think of. I've written in dozens of programming languages, for dozens of operating systems, on dozens of form factors. It's all the fucking same binary 1s and 0s and boolean algebra under the covers. All code is made from the same nuts and bolts. It's fucking boring.

And so, I can be a miserable exploited worker on a low wage, doing something I take pride in but knowing that I'm undervalued. I can be an overpaid and underworked software developer / scrum master / development manager / IT director. I can be a stressed out startup founder working my arse off to line the pockets of the venture capitalists who are going to get filthy rich at the expense of my health. I can be a destitute bum, a tramp, a hobo. Which would YOU choose?

I particularly object to the idea that I have to drug myself up, just to fit in with the bullshit jobs economy. I object to having to be high on antidepressants just to be able to cope with the same bunch of fucktards making the same fucking mistakes I've seen a million times over, in the job that I've mastered and brings in obscene amounts of cash. I object to having to be high on anxiety medication, to cope with the insecurity faced by the underpaid and undervalued front-line members of society who build your houses, look after you in hospital, grow your food and perform every other truly useful function that we need.

Even to work in civil engineering would frustrate the hell out of me. Crossrail, the multi billion dollar project improve London's cross-capital transportation, is rather pointless because it will be at full capacity on the day it opens, because London is already packed full of idle fucktards like me, clogging up the world with pointless makework jobs. Do we really need any more offices and office workers? Do we really need any more service sector jobs? Do we really need such a bloated financial services sector, with its equally parasitic support industries of corporate law and accounting? It's all such utter bullshit.

And so, I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't.

In my 20 years of full time work, I've become worn down with it all. I'm exhausted. I've tried a number of things, and I find that bullshit prevails everywhere I look. My heart is broken by all the bullshit that trumps everything else.

I'm exhausted, and I'm depressed and I'm suicidal.

Yes, I know some people are grateful for their lives and what little quality of life they can squeeze out of their existence. Yes, I know that I have good physical health and I'm reasonably young still. Yes, I know that there'd a queue that stretches around the planet, of people who would love to have my job.

So, if I choose to reject all that and end my life because I feel like I have no quality of life, is that morally wrong?

You can't even level the accusation of me that I don't know suffering, and I don't know poverty. I've lived homeless in a park, destitute, penniless and surviving on charitable food donations. I've woken up in hospital numerous times in pain and discomfort. I've had numerous scrapes with death. Shouldn't all that stuff make me grateful to be alive? Guess what? You have absolutely no idea. Guess what else, I have a very good idea, because it's already all happened to me.

I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I went to state comprehensive schools. I wasn't gifted jobs by any friend or family member. I had no head start in life. It's true that I have no obvious disability or disadvantage either, unless you count a couple of drug addict alcoholic parents, but I still had other family members, teachers and friends who were nice to me. It's not a fucking competition. The point is that the variables are controlled. I neither had advantage nor disadvantage, but yet I arrived at this point, here, now, today.

It's not like we can say this is just a short-term crisis. Like this will fucking blow over.

It's not going to blow over. For 20 fucking years it's been the same. The same shit, different day.

Yes, there were times that were actually pretty good, but guess what... they weren't sustainable. I liked living in a hostel with a bunch of other homeless people. I liked not having a job and being a bum. I liked having no responsibilities. Who wouldn't? But that's not real life. We don't get to have a freebie just because 'real' life is killing us. It still cost £120 a week for my bunk bed in a dormitory that slept 15 people, with one fucking bathroom between us all. My current rent is only £240 a week and for that I get a double bedroom, an ensuite bathroom, a kitchen, a dining room, a dual-aspect lounge with panoramic views over London and a balcony overlooking the river Thames.

I should be happy, but I'm not. Happiness is not a choice, no matter what you read on some bullshit Internet meme inspirational quote.

All the right pieces are in place. My doctors are chuffed to bits that I don't drink, smoke, abuse drugs or in any way engage in health damaging behaviours. My blood pressure is amazing. My cholesterol is low. My eyesight, hearing, teeth, joints... all of it is perfect.

And yet, my mental health is in ruins. I'm so depressed. I'm so suicidal.

I'm doing everything right, and yet everything feels so wrong.

Of course I feel guilty for feeling like this. What the fuck am I supposed to do though?

Honestly, I feel like I want to spend the next 30 days convincing people that the most humane thing is to let me end my life. Honestly, despite the things that should be really great in my life, nothing feels great. Nothing feels good or nice. Nothing works. Nothing is working.

There's still the possibility of just running away and absenting myself from all responsibility, but then when I'm dirty and sick from a life of destitution... when I die then, will anybody understand? A tramp, a bum, a hobo, a junkie, an alkie... these people are all too easily dismissed by society.

What happens when highly paid banking IT consultants start dying? Well if they're white middle class thirtysomething men... not much. Who cares? Probably just a selfish socialite, having a tantrum because they can't do whatever they want, one newspaper article basically said, in the wake of one death.

What the fuck is anybody supposed to do about this fucked up life that we're supposed to live?

I really don't feel like I can live this bullshit rat race anymore, and the alternative is a long slow death, shunned by society and marginalised.

In the long run, we're all fucking dead anyway.

Apologies if I'm triggering raw and painful feelings about your beloved family member or friend who is busily fighting for survival, or who lost their battle. I really don't mean things disrespectfully, but I can't lie anymore. I feel this stuff and it's undeniable.

Call me narcissistic needy spoilt white middle class brat if you like, if it'll make you feel better. It certainly won't make me feel any worse, but isn't that so terribly melodramatic and attention seeking?

Can you understand, how exhausting it is, having to justify your feelings and apologise for wanting to be dead the whole fucking time?

It's a one-way ticket and for sure it needs careful thought, but aren't we being a bit unfair, shutting down the conversation by guilt-tripping people into hiding their feelings? Perhaps suicide is a smart choice for people who feel that they have no quality of life.

Tags: #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #addiction #alcohol #drugs #medication #nhs #hospital