This is a story about free will...

Having spent the best part of a month in hospital, I am now convalescing in the Welsh countryside. It's remote, rural, peaceful and therapeutic, which is exactly what I need. Why on earth wouldn't I stay here, when this is the very best place I could be for my health and wellbeing?

If you believe in free will, then I'm afraid you're quite deluded. Every decision we make is heavily biased by circumstantial factors.

Having experienced the stress of moving to new places, getting jobs, making friends and otherwise climbing the greasy pole, I've got nothing to prove - I know exactly what to do and exactly what to expect. I have very little motivation to repeat the same well-worn moves that I learned a long time ago - I'm sick of playing the same old game. Rebuilding my life holds no surprises; only stress and misery.

Thus, I arrived at the decision to die, some time ago.

When you've decided to die, there isn't any fear of failure, shame, embarrassment or any of the other things which would usually predispose your behaviour towards more risk-averse choices.

If you look at my life choices through the prism of depression and defeatism - I have no desire to play by fucked up rules - things make a lot more sense than any stupid over-simplifications. Perhaps you think I'm infantile, immature and irresponsible? In actual fact, I'm not inflicting this shit on children who didn't ask to be born. I'm terminating the cycle of pain: somebody's gotta stand up to the relay-race of human misery, where fathers fuck up their sons.

I'm not critical of parenthood per se, but it would be irresponsible of me to spawn offspring of my own when my kid(s) might ask me one day "if you had a miserable life, then why did you bring me into the world?". Given that my children might ask about my own unhappy childhood, it seems unconscionable to take the chance that I could perpetuate that misery.

In a world of war, famine, climate change and spiralling problems, we are clearly on collision course with disaster. I don't want to add to the world's woes. To be yet another sharp-elbowed parent, concerned with the propagation of my genes at the expense of everything else, does not seem like a good idea when there's another option: to not do that.

I can end the male lineage and bury the surname "Grant" which I inherited from a heroin addict. I can do my bit and act in accordance with a conscience that encompasses more than my animal instinct to rut like a beast and impregnate willy-nilly.

Fucked up ungrateful entitled rich spoiled know-it-all brat says my shattered brain. I think about the people who've tried to help me; who care about me. I feel guilty that I feel so bad; still feel suicidal. Countless opportunities seem to be open to me - am I rejecting them? Am I throwing the 'gifts' that I have received back in the faces of the bearers? If I am ungrateful, so what?

My charmed existence has led me to a situation that's quite wonderful, but also exquisitely painful because of it - this isn't real life I think to myself. I can't stay here. The need to earn money to pay for debt and taxes will force me back onto the treadmill. The misery of the rat race is inescapable, except through suicide.

Tags: #suicide #depression #career

This is a story about picking on an easy target...

Has anybody ever died of shame and embarrassment? I feel horribly exposed all of a sudden, having published my entire psyche into the public domain - all the inner-workings of my mind; every dark secret is out on display.

I'm acutely aware that I've kept writing and publishing throughout periods where I was incredibly unwell. I'm acutely aware that I've published unedited things, despite being exhausted, stressed and unable to make a sound and rational judgement call on whether or not to publicise private matters.

It's quite apparent that my rather strange and questionable mission - to submit my private journal to public scrutiny - has been incredibly costly.

Have I made a mistake?

Clearly, I've made a whole string of mistakes. Every day, I think about millions of mistakes I've made that I could write about. Even the process of exploring all my feelings and admitting my fault, is somewhat of a mistake.

Racked with self-doubt and feeling a mounting sense of vulnerability, I've thought about back-pedalling - haven't I made myself look like a buffoon in front of enough friends, family and strangers? Shouldn't I now clam up with shame and regret that I ever opened my mouth? Shouldn't I bury this blog and hope that nobody ever brings up the matters I've made public?

It would be so easy to press the "delete" button and destroy the digital identity which I've created. It would be so easy to deny all knowledge of ever sharing extremely personal matters. Don't believe everything you read online.

If I loaded a gun with bullets and handed it to you, I turned around and you shot me in the back, would you feel victorious?

I don't understand why anybody would take the ammunition which I give them and use it against me. I don't understand why anybody would take the opportunity to sucker-punch me, when I'm making myself so vulnerable; such an easy target. Is there really any pleasure in picking on somebody who's laid wide open to attack? Where's the sport?

I've started to wonder what happens to the people who pick my pocket, blame things on me or thump me in the face, knowing that I won't defend myself or retaliate. Do they feel pleased with themselves? Do they feel happy and are they able to sleep soundly at night?

If I'm starting to sound like I think of myself as sweet and innocent and free from all sin, that's not the case. There's more than enough admission of wrongdoing on these pages, if you want to go digging. I'm not some butter-wouldn't-melt, holier-than-thou, whiter-than-white person who claims to never have said boo to a goose. I admit that I'm a deeply flawed individual.

I'm struggling with a cloudy brain. I feel like my wits are dulled and my thoughts swim through treacle. I feel run-down; unwell. I feel like I'm not well enough to be writing. I regret things I wrote when I was sick, in the past.

As the truest version of myself - free from drink and drugs - emerges from under a dark storm-cloud, I struggle to reconcile the way I feel now with how I felt when I had the protective armour of intoxication. I'm full of stress, nervous tension and anxiety, while my brain is raw and damaged from abuse - I'll recover, but it's taking time.

I'm defensive, because I can't afford to lose any more opportunities. I can't afford to have my reputation tarnished anymore, even if it appears to be me who's doing the tarnishing. I can't afford to have influential people leaping to the wrong conclusions. Why continue to write so honestly? Why take the risk? Why not shut down this crazy experiment?

The fact you're reading this means that you're either going to use it against me - shooting me in the back with the weapon I handed to you - or you'll dig a little deeper; try a little harder. It's all too tempting to kick a man when he's down though, isn't it?

It's too obvious and easy to shut down; shut up. I've come this far, so why shouldn't I keep writing? What does it matter if I make myself unemployable? What does it matter if I can never return to the part of society that routinely lies and wears a mask of insincerity? Why the fuck do I want to live in a world full of absolute arseholes, who stab each other in the back?

Come; come and beat up on me; come and put the boot in; come and strike me with sticks and stones and whatever weapon you can grab, while I lay battered and bruised, unarmed on the floor, naked, afraid, defenceless, outnumbered and in pain.

I invite you to martyr me.

Tags: #writing

This is a story about slipping through the safety net...

Exactly one month ago was World Suicide Prevention Day and exactly one month ago I was in a critical condition, on life support in intensive care. I was given a 50/50 chance of living or dying, following an overdose the night before. It seems sickeningly ironic that if the emergency services had reached me just a little bit later, I wouldn't be writing this. If I didn't live in the United Kingdom, where we have the best healthcare system in the world, I would probably not be writing this.

It was 9 years ago that I first sought help for my mental health. "Have you heard of fluoxetine?" asked my doctor, within 30 seconds of me explaining my symptoms: suicidal thoughts, low mood, low energy and an inability to get out of bed and go to work like normal. I was disappointed to be offered patent-expired generic medication, without a moment's hesitation. I walked away empty handed.

Clinical depression was where I started my mental health journey. Having the label "clinical" made a huge difference. To add that word - clinical - onto how I was feeling, was necessary to defend myself from anybody who might say "just snap out of it" or "pull yourself together". In my case, having a label was desirable - it wasn't an excuse; it was a diagnosis.

Every time I've gone to my doctor, I've been hoping to receive some counselling, but instead I got referred into psychiatric services as an outpatient in 2010. I was referred for Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) treatment, but by the time I was assessed, my mood disorder had been diagnosed as type II bipolar disorder. The assessment concluded that my mood disorder was too severe to be treated with CBT. I was left with no psychological treatment. "What am I supposed to do?" I asked. "Go back to your doctor" came the reply. It was a devastating disappointment.

By 2011 I was so unwell that I was assessed under the Mental Health Act, to see if I needed to be detained in hospital - what is colloquially referred to as a "section". I begged to be hospitalised as I was suicidal. I repeatedly said the classic cliché that so many people will say when they are desperate for help: "I'm going to kill myself". Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs), crisis teams and home treatment teams must hear those words so often.

With a shortage of psychiatric beds, there's a huge reluctance to "section" anybody. At the time of my first section assessment, my girlfriend and my dad were present, so the assessment concluded that I could be kept safe at home. In fact, I sawed a hole in the back of my shed, climbed over a neighbour's fence and ran away. The police were called to look for me because I was a danger to myself.

Soon after that, I was seen by a private psychiatrist, referred and admitted for 4 weeks of inpatient treatment at a private hospital. The cost was over £12,000.

There was some debate with my medical insurance company as to whether my bipolar disorder was acute or chronic. The insurance company said it was a chronic condition, and therefore not covered by the policy. The consultant whose care I was under, managed to argue - over the course of a couple of nail-biting weeks - that my presentation was acute.

Having to resort to the private sector; having disputes with an insurance company - none of this was conducive to getting better. In fact, having to find my own psychiatrist, get approval from the insurance company to even speak to the doctor and then having the stress of thinking that I might need to spend £12,000 of my dwindling savings, was an awful ordeal when I was clearly very unwell.

At the end of 2012 I got married and 8 months later I separated from my wife. She didn't care about the incredible stress that divorce and selling our house would put me under. I moved to London to live with supportive friends while my life was ripped to pieces. I lost my job.

By 2014, I completely slipped through the safety net. I took an overdose and lay dying of multiple organ failure on the floor. I managed to phone a friend who got me to hospital. After a week, the hospital discharged me to a hotel. I had two weeks to organise my own accommodation because no bed on a psychiatric ward could be found for me. My muscles were horribly damaged by the overdose and I was in agony. With a bundle of documents to prove that I was a priority case for emergency housing, I visited the local council housing department. The officer I saw promptly disappeared on holiday, abandoning my case. I became homeless.

After living in cheap backpackers' hostel, I reached my two week limit, which is a rule that most hostels have. I then started living in a bush in Kensington Palace Gardens. When it became apparent that living in a bush was not a long-term solution, I stumbled into nearby Paddington - St Mary's Hospital - and presented myself at Accident & Emergency. 12 hours later, I was given two weeks respite in a "crisis house". I tracked down the housing officer who I'd spoken to before. At the end of two weeks, I received a one-line email: I wasn't eligible for any help from the local council. Why? What now?

I was homeless on Hampstead Heath. It was very beautiful, but it was still summer. What was I supposed to do when the weather turned bad?

How had this situation come to be? I'd been a highly functional, productive and fine upstanding member of society: I'd had a successful career, paid taxes all my working life, bought a house, gotten married and done all the things we're supposed to do. What the heck was I doing homeless and abandoned by the state when I was obviously a vulnerable adult? My doctor had written a letter saying I was a vulnerable adult, and my psychiatrist had done the same. These letters had been presented to the local council housing officer, but yet it had made no difference. What have you got to do to get help in this country?

Eventually, I came to be living in the North of England, in an apartment which was a perk of a job I'd taken out of desperation. The apartment was miserable, dark and dingy, and I was terribly lonely. On the 9th of September 2017, I took a massive overdose, which I had researched on the internet to make sure it was likely to be fatal. I regained consciousness after having been in a coma, in hospital, on the 11th of September 2017 - I had completely missed World Suicide Prevention Day. A machine was breathing for me and I was put back to sleep. I didn't leave the intensive care and high dependency wards until the 12th of September 2017.

On the 13th of September 2017, I found myself discharged from hospital and left to flounder all on my own. I didn't want to go back to the apartment where I'd tried to kill myself. I've not been back there. I'll never go back there.

I was sectioned - a section 136 - after being taken to hospital by police. I had to make a massive public nuisance of myself in order to get help. The hospital upgraded me to a section 2, which meant I was going to be kept on a psychiatric ward for up to 28 days. Why now? I'd had two near-fatal overdoses, which had hospitalised me in a critically ill condition, but yet I hadn't been considered enough of a risk to myself to receive inpatient psychiatric treatment. Why did it take so long to finally get the treatment I'd been begging to get for 6 years?

The psychiatric ward discharged me from my section after 12 days, and another week later I was discharged from hospital - a good samaritan has taken me into their home. Again I wonder why no temporary housing was forthcoming, given the fact I am so vulnerable - I lost my job and my apartment due to mental health discrimination. I'm being victimised again & again.

I'm in a safe place now, but my food & accommodation comes from a charitable family who have taken pity on me, after reading my story on my blog - we clearly don't have a system that works for the whole of society. We can't all turn to Twitter every time we're having a mental health crisis.

My Twitter followers brought the emergency services to my door, saving my life. Through my blogging and social media presence, a stranger read about my desperate plight, and kindly offered to take me into the family home.

Today, I feel OK, but why have I been subjected to such a horrific ordeal? I very nearly succeeded in ending my own life, because no help was forthcoming when I really needed it - we're locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Using myself as a case study, the safeguards we have in place to prevent suicides are woefully inadequate. My first-hand experience of NHS mental health services, is that they're desperately underfunded and overstretched.

There will be so many tragic preventable deaths if we allow the current situation to persist.

Tags: #suicide #mentalhealth #bipolar #depression #nhs #hospital

This is a story about modesty...

It took 12 days to be "discharged" from my section - that is to say, to be allowed to leave the secure psychiatric ward whenever I wanted. However, it took 21 days before I was actually discharged from hospital: no vulnerable adult can leave hospital without a discharge plan, although I could have discharged myself against the advice of the healthcare professionals who were taking care of me, because I was a free man.

I'd been assessed to see whether I needed to be detained under the Mental Health Act at least 5 times. 6th time lucky.

When you find out for the first time in your adult life, that you're about to be detained against your will, I would've thought that everybody would have a similar reaction: "oh my god, I'm now trapped somewhere I might not want to be, and I don't have any say in the matter" which is distressing.

It's not so much that I didn't want to be in hospital; it's that I couldn't leave even if I wanted to. Although I wanted to be in hospital - because I knew I was very sick and in a dreadful situation - there was still a moment where I thought "oh shit what have I done?".

To calmly accept your plight is not something that would be anybody's natural reaction. Under such stress and shock, it's hard to recognise immediately that any attempt to fight against the system will lead to further difficulties. I was least surprised out of anybody that I got sectioned, having been the one who actually phoned the police to come and get me. Of course, escape is not hard if you're determined enough. I was conflicted - I was safe, but the price I paid was my detention: I lost my liberty.

Running away from a psych ward will result in the police being called to look for you. Britain's most dangerous psychiatric patients are kept in facilities which are far more secure than anything I experienced. I could have escaped easily and the police wouldn't have tried very hard to find me - I was a danger to myself but not others.

Our natural reaction to detention is to panic and start yelling for anyone who can possibly get you out - a solicitor, a social worker, a family member - and to start demanding your rights. There's a process that's got to chew you up before it can spit you out, and once you've just started the rollercoaster ride there's no getting off until the end - scream if you want to go faster.

Despite my messed up state, I knew that I had the right to appeal my 'section' with a tribunal supposed to happen within 7 days. I knew that my dad had the right to request my release, with a decision having to be made within 72 hours. I didn't have much hope that my dad would be helpful, so I requested an appeal.

It's so damn hard to get any treatment for mental health problems, beyond some cheap patent-expired generic medications or a computer-based Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) thing. Inpatient hospital treatment, paid for by the NHS, is only given to very unwell people or exceptionally stubborn & determined people. However, when you have been admitted to hospital once as an inpatient under a section, you might struggle to ever escape the revolving doors.

Many of my fellow patients had the same story - they were released from hospital, stopped taking their medication, went mad and were brought back into hospital, where they were forced to start taking medication again... eventually being released and starting the whole process again.

Note, when I say "forced to start taking medication" I literally mean that they were held down by a whole gang of hospital staff members and forcibly injected against their will.

It would be stupid to argue that psychiatric medication is entirely unhelpful. However, one should be mindful that a perfectly sane person who had been taking powerful antipsychotic medication, would experience extremely powerful withdrawal symptoms if they stopped. Antipsychotic withdrawal symptoms are indistinguishable from the spontaneous psychosis that occurs in a person with a mental illness - how can one distinguish between a madman and somebody who's experiencing the perturbations of a brain that's readjusting to medication-free homeostasis?

As we move towards a world where the majority of us suffer near-debilitating levels of anxiety and depression, and psychiatric medications are dished out like candy from general doctors who have no specialist training in the treatment of mental health problems, are we diagnosing disease when we should be looking at what a person's life circumstances are like?

Ironically, I was diagnosed with adjustment disorder, which is to say that I simply couldn't cope with stressful life events - a clinical label for an intolerable clusterfuck of dreadful stuff which could happen to anybody. There isn't a pill for adjustment disorder, yet, although a bottle or two of wine each night is often chosen as self-medication.

The stress of living with 20+ mentally ill men in a locked psych ward is something that most people would not adjust to particularly easily. The 4 walls of my home were replaced with a curtain, which was opened every 15 minutes by a nurse or a support worker to observe what I was doing.

I think psych wards are necessary and I'd rather have the apparatus that treats mental health problems, than not have it at all. This is not an essay that criticises mental health treatment or the hardworking professionals who care for people with mental health problems. I write merely to reflect on my journey through the mental health system, which finally ejected me yesterday. I'm coming to terms with the fact that I was discharged from hospital, and today is the first time in weeks where I have woken up somewhere I can leave without having to ask permission.

Yes, I think that sums up yet another Earth-shattering overnight change to my life: I've gone from a flimsy curtain and a locked door, to 4 solid walls and I'm free.

Tags: #hospital #nhs #mentalhealth

This is a story about being counter-productive...

95% of my fellow patients smoke cigarettes. There's nothing to do on the psych ward, so I can see why they would. Cigarettes are a way to pass the time; to deal with boredom; to relieve some of the stress of being locked up with a load of mentally ill people; to self-medicate for all manner of problems.

Nicotine is fiendishly addictive and a psych ward is not the right environment to kick the habit. As a non-smoker I'm well aware that I'm not involved in the activity that dominates the lives of my fellow patients - obtaining tobacco, rolling cigarettes and harassing the staff to be let outside to smoke.

There is a small outdoor area which can be accessed via some steps, enclosed in a cage so that nobody can jump and injure themselves, or attempt to escape. Every hour, the door to the steps is opened for 15 minutes, and the smokers all cluster around the top of the steps, getting their nicotine fix. Nobody goes down the steps into the outdoor area - they remain in the cage.

I challenge the staff - why don't they leave the door open the whole time? Nobody could escape from the outdoor area, because it's surrounded by high fences. The outdoor area is well covered by CCTV, and it's no harder to keep an eye on people than any other part of the ward.

The standard response from the staff is that it's "promoting health" to deny nicotine addicts access to the only place they're allowed to smoke. I call bullshit on this, because there's no data to support the hypothesis. "Look around - everybody smokes... nobody is smoking less because of this rule" I say. The staff argue that the NHS can't be seen to be "promoting" smoking. This is a completely ridiculous idea. The nurses and support workers hand out the cigarettes and cigarette lighters - the NHS is intimately involved in the whole process of smoking, far more than if the patients were given the choice as to how they dealt with their addiction.

I'm in a dorm with 3 other men. It's a lot quieter than the single room right next to the TV - the TV blasted out for 19 hours in every 24 at full volume. The noise was unbearable. My fellow patients in my dorm report that they're lulled off to sleep by the rhythmic tapping of my keyboard, as I pound out these words. I was concerned that I was being a noisy nuisance, but they reassure me that it's quite the opposite - it's a kind of white noise that's relaxing, like hearing raindrops falling on the roof or hitting the windows, driven by the wind.

A guy is coming out of my dorm, but he doesn't sleep in my dorm - he has his own room. What's he doing down at this end of the ward? Then, my nostrils are assaulted by the smell of smoke. I push the door to the bathroom open and it stinks - there isn't even a decent extractor fan to get rid of the smell. I write a note and secretly pass it to a nurse, pretending to pass her my laptop to be charged in the office. I scurry away down the corridor but she yells after me "tell XXXXX about the smoking in the toilet" waving the note, right in front of the guy I'm dobbing in. I cringe - does she not know that snitches get stitches?

Another nurse comes to our dorm and she starts accusing one of my dorm mates of smoking in the toilet. I leap to his defence. "Who was it?" she asks, and then bellows out his name when I whisper the answer. The fact that many of my fellow patients have a criminal past and have been in prison, does not seem to concern the staff members. Perhaps there aren't fights in here. Perhaps they never see any violence. Perhaps my fears are unfounded. Am I being paranoid?

The fire escape is padlocked shut, there are no fire extinguishers or sprinklers, the break-glass buttons are enclosed in plastic boxes that prevent the fire alarms from being set off - a fire in here would be catastrophic. Yet, I am certain that there are at least 2 cigarette lighters that are being used in my dorm. The patients smoke openly when the staff are doing their handover between shifts, when there's absolutely nobody around.

I make subtle enquiries with my fellow patients - how do they feel about the restrictions on smoking? Everybody agrees that the restriction on access to the outdoor area is more about control than it is about "promoting health" - they feel that the staff have created a system that allows them to exercise dominion over their inmates. "Smoke time!" demands one of the more aggressive patients, banging on the window of the office. "Calm down! Stop shouting!" yells back a staff member. This is an artificial and avoidable situation - why does it exist, when it's creating conflict between staff and patients, and making people stressed and unhappy?

When I was confined to the ward I would have made use of the outdoor area to walk around, get some fresh air and get some natural light. However, I couldn't get past the gaggle of smokers clustered around the top of the steps. To leave the door open all the time wouldn't create this ridiculous situation, where all the patients are fixated on this controlling aspect of their lives.

It's saddening, to see 19 men all hanging around waiting to be given a lighter and be let out, like they're animals; pets.

In defiance of the pointless draconian controlling bullshit, a handful of patients have smuggled cigarette lighters and tobacco into the ward - it's not hard when some patients are allowed unaccompanied leave from the ward. "Have you got any bottles or lighters on you?" a nurse asks me when I get back from an outing - I'm not breathalyzed or searched, even though I'm carrying a bulging bag.

I suppose the privilege of being allowed to leave the ward could be revoked, as a punishment for misbehaviour. The chance of being discharged early and allowed home is also under threat, for any patient who's troublesome. Most patients are here for a 6-month stay. It's up to 6 months, but it's more often longer, not shorter. The reaction to not being allowed to go home is rarely handled well - can you imagine that people who are unwell are able to remain calm and represent themselves clearly and articulately, when their liberty is at stake?

In terms of mental health, nothing could be more stressful, adversarial and paranoia-inducing, than having doctors and nurses discuss you behind your back, having been peeked at through the curtains every 15 minutes - patients are literally spied on and judged. Life, liberty and free-will are all interfered with in an institutional environment that's a cross between a prison and a school. Notices on the wall tell us they promote "independence and well-being" while also telling patients the very strict times that they need to be at the dispensary hatch to get their medications. At 8:54am I'm harassed by a nurse to go for my 9am meds... I'm well aware what the time is and also well aware that to be early is to be turned away empty handed. At 11:54am I'm harassed to go and stand in line for some food which is not even being served until 12 noon at the earliest, and is often delayed.

I'm aware that I'm lucky to have a sought-after psych bed - many people who are having a mental health crisis will have no access to inpatient care. To bite the hand that feeds me seems churlish, but I do feel sorry for my fellow patients who can't articulate their frustrations effectively.

The only patient I know to have attempted to file a complaint is the guy who's relentlessly trying to get 8mg more Subutex out of the doctors... unwilling to go along with the treatment that will wean him off his opiate addiction and quite determined to sabotage his recovery, perhaps.

Nobody's stopping smoking because of the "health promoting" rules around access to the outdoor area, but I'm certainly missing out on exercise and fresh air because of it.

It all looks rather counter-productive to me.

Tags: #addiction #hospital #mentalhealth #nhs

This is a story about subservience...

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

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

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

"Why don't you just go bankrupt?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm stuck between three things:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why am I still so painfully conscious?

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about being observant...

Where do blue tablets actually come from? Well, presumably they are pooped out by blue fish, like the ones that can be seen swimming here on the pavement and road. Can you see them - the little blue fishies?

With our Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hat on, puffing from our pipe, we might deduce from the proximity of a large hospital and the lack of water, that these are not actually fish. What could they be?

An electroencephalogram (EEG) is a graph of what's going on in our head, quite literally. En kephalé means "in head" in Greek, and the gram bit means "written down". Electro should be relatively self-explanatory.

Were these fish involved in seeing what was going on inside somebody's head? No, I don't think so.

An electrocardiogram (ECG) is a graph of our heartbeat, as denoted by the cardio part.

In order to know what our heart's doing, we are all very familiar with the stethoscope, but there's a more accurate test that doesn't depend on human hearing. The muscles that pump the 4 chambers of the heart never stop unless you go into cardiac arrest or otherwise die. Muscles give off tiny electrical impulses, and these can be measured with highly sensitive equipment - an ECG machine.

So what about these fish? Well, it looks like they're the little sticky electrodes that are put on each of your ankles, arms and across your chest around your heart. When you are hooked up to an ECG machine, you've got a stack of cables attached to you.

One of my fellow patients at the hospital was in such a big hurry to get rid of these stickers, after having the health of their heart measured, that they tore them off and discarded them onto the floor, quite possibly in a fit of rage at having been cared for by one of the finest healthcare systems in the world. It's quite understandable that having received lifesaving treatment that's free at the point of use, this individual should have ripped these electrodes off their body and tossed them onto the road and pavement - that'll teach society a lesson, now that a street sweeper will have to come along and clean up this trash!

We might note that there are only 4 stickers, and we can presume that these are the ones from the person's wrists and ankles, which would have been most conspicuous. Perhaps it wasn't until the person explored their body later, that they found 4 more on their chest - one of which was lurking around on their left hand side and might not even have been discovered until a later date.

Debate rages in the United Kingdom, about whether we should have penalties to discourage people from treating the National Health Service disrespectfully. We could charge people for a no-show to a General Practice (GP) or outpatient appointment. We could charge people for any visit to Accident & Emergency for trivial matters that could have been treated at a minor injuries clinic, or perhaps did not require medical attention at all.

There is evidence that we are starting to allow a two-tier society to emerge where none is supposed to exist. Doctors' waiting rooms have plush leather seats for 'VIP' patients - who are paying for private consultations - while the NHS patients sit on hard wooden chairs. For an operation, paying to go private might mean skipping waiting times, even though it will be the same surgical team, in the same hospital, with the same equipment and in the same operating theatre. Although it's not supposed to happen, surely some of the waiting times are because private patients are queue-jumping?

Those at the bottom struggle with zero-hours contract minimum wage jobs, with the purchasing power of their pay packet decreasing every month, due to inflation. Things are not a lot better on the next rung of the ladder - an NHS Clinical Support Worker's salary tops out at around £15,000. That's £259 a week. Ouch. My rent in London was £480 a week. The wealth disparity is disgusting, isn't it?

While the cost of housing and the cost of energy - electricity and gas - is skyrocketing with double-digit percentage increases, wages barely increase at all. One only needs to look at the use of food banks, to see that the little people are struggling - people who clean your toilet, scrub your floor, wipe your bum, cook your food, stack your shelves and scatter rose petals along the privileged path that you walk. But, these spoiled brats still vote for a ruling elite who care nothing for the wails of distress that are now becoming a deafening scream of pain.

The bulk of the BBC was moved up to Manchester a few years ago, and it's been quite evident that it's had an effect on the mindset of the people who work for the broadcaster. In London, the homelessness problem is inconspicuous in wealthy districts, but in Manchester - where homelessness has soared 1,100% in just 7 years - the problem is inescapable. The BBC has shown a number of documentaries which accurately reflect exactly what I have seen and experienced: there are vast numbers of people in dire need of assistance.

Who wants a McJob that doesn't even pay enough to be able to rent a room in a shit apartment, and have any life at all? Does it surprise you that people are smoking strong synthetic cannabinoids which allow them to escape the stress and hopelessness of a hideous reality that nobody in Government seems to want to address.

There's a crisis that's going on all around us. Pull back the covers and human tragedy is unfolding underneath.

This is not a "wake up sheeple!" alarmist or sensationalistic think-piece, but in actual fact an unfliching and painfully truthful account - I bear testament to what I've seen - of the shocking disparity between London and the South-East, where our wealth is concentrated, and the rest of the United Kingdom where things are very grim indeed.

We talk about the 'Westminster Bubble' and I can attest first hand what it's like. At the beginning of this year I was at the grand headquarters building of Her Majesty's Revenue Collectors (HMRC) and it had been refurbished to an incredibly high standard. I was taken to an extremely grand room, which was capacious enough to hold at least 50, maybe even 100 people, but only had me and the two people interviewing me. Otherwise this space was left empty and unused, so far as I could see - perhaps a metaphor for all the empty homes that have been bought by foreign investors in London.

Meanwhile, it was barely two years ago that I was in social housing apartment (council flat) in London, which was in such a poor state of repair that there was literally 2 inches of water that one had to paddle through, in order to use the toilet or a terrible shower that barely worked. It's quite clear where our tax money is going - tax breaks for millionaires, not houses for nurses.

Bursaries for nursing have now been removed, so our nurses will emerge with the best part of £60,000 of debt when they qualify, which will further reduce their take-home pay. The interest on a student loan of that magnitude is more than 12% of our nurses' starting salary of £22,000, which means they will sink deeper and deeper into debt each year.

Who will mop up your sick, piss, vomit, blood, mucous, pooh, give you a sponge-bath in bed, say soothing things and give you painkillers when you cry out in agony, come running when you press the call button and generally make you as comfortable as possible when you're unwell?

As comrade Corbyn said: a millionaire in their mansion is going to need an ambulance if they have a heart attack, just like anybody else.

Tags: #nhs #hospital #politics

This is a story about winning a prize...

This week's big climber in the UK top 40 is a new single from the National Health Service. This band has been churning out smash hits since 1948 and is loved by tens of millions of fans. Here on Top of the Pops tonight, you'll see a live performance from this sensational act. Keep watching to find out what the UK's number one hit single is, at the end of the show.

Here on this page are the dry words of a deranged individual. How will you choose to interpret them?

Language is a rather crude and imprecise tool to fully express ourselves. Ambiguity creeps in and the thoughts and feelings of the author are not communicated with high fidelity - each reader will arrive at a different impression from the text.

As a software engineer who's been building systems for some of the world's biggest companies for over 20 years, I could easily copy Uber's dastardly tactics of diverting any web requests from a certain region of the country - e.g. a specific city in the North of England - in order to display a different page.

Most of my readers are using smartphones or tablets. Readers who are using Windows XP and Internet Explorer are quite unusual, and it's easy to flag up those anomalies - they stand out in the data that I gather about my visitors.

It's not hard for tech companies and technologists to present something that has been customised and tailored for each visitor. You might think that you'd see the same Google search results as somebody else, for example, given the same search terms, but Google works very hard to identify individuals, even in their anonymised dataset.

Traditional print-media widely reports that we are living in social media bubbles, where we are fed things that we like, because we're more likely to share that content and spread it 'virally'. What is less well reported is how wedded we are to the walled gardens that we live in - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat et. al.

How long are you going to keep reading for? There's nearly 700,000 words here. Are you gonna read it all?

The best defence against anybody who would seek to jump to the wrong conclusions and make silly assumptions, is to present more data than can be reasonably processed - information overload - such that the farcical nature of reducing the complexities of life to some pathetic synopsis, are exposed as pure stupidity.

Of course, we would all love to feel that we understand all the laws of the universe. I've fried my mind with stacks of books and papers on theoretical physics, attempting to understand the fundamental nature of reality itself. Emotionally, I don't want to admit defeat, but digging deeper only seems to reveal even more unfathomable weirdness. Some of the quarks are called strange, charm and beauty. I love that.

Are you bored yet?

Can you not see that my intention is to create a maze of complexity that's impenetrable? It's not possible to know my mind. Even for me, I struggle to understand fully why I say and do the things I do. If it's hard for me, it's going to be impossible for you to dissect or categorise me; to judge me and to simplify me into something that can be captured by written language on a sheet of paper. What are you going to write in your report or your email?

There's mockery and disdain here, but if you dig a little deeper I hope you see that I don't have disrespect for anybody whose intention is to help and support me, and I have no intention of damaging my own treatment and recovery, nor anybody else's, nor cause any difficulty for the hard-working staff of the National Health Service and the ancillary support services.

Today, I'm a free man - an informal patient - but that puts me in an additionally vulnerable situation. I could be discharged from the hospital without a discharge plan - no place to live and no income. I'm sure some pen-pusher somewhere sees the opportunity for a quick win - am I just a statistic on a monthly report?

It upsets me that front-line staff have been cut, while middle managers have plenty of time on their hands to justify their pointless existence. The managers have survived the cull, the pay freeze and the excessive demands placed on the over-stretched people who actually do the damn job. Police, NHS workers, teachers - to name but a few - are getting a bum rap.

The first thing that I'm excited about doing with my newfound freedom is going to a protest at Tory cuts and austerity, to co-incide with the start of the Conservative Party conference, in a certain Northern city. The establishment are coming to me, and I will thumb my nose at them and boo them. A friend suggested that I could throw eggs and if I got in trouble with the police, they'd probably just bring me back to hospital on a section 136... put that in your damn report.

"Risk to the community - possibly going to throw eggs at Theresa May, to protest against cuts to front-line services and damage to the NHS, as well as undue stress on the police and other workers who care for and protect our most vulnerable members of society".

Tags: #hospital #politics #nhs #police #socialmedia

This is a story about customer service...

Amongst a small group of my friends, we have all found that a medication called pregabalin - marketed as Lyrica in the UK - has been useful to us, but also has adverse side effects and is difficult to stop taking. Pregabalin is quite good at combatting anxiety and improving sleep, which are obviously the desirable effects: most of us have stress in our lives, and struggle to get enough high-quality sleep. Personally, pregabalin is an effective treatment for the phantom limb pain I feel, due to damaged nerves - I can't feel my left foot. Pregabalin is far better than the opiate painkillers, which left me sweating and nauseous at times. However, stopping taking pregabalin leaves me feeling anxious and gives me insomnia - what goes up must come down.

Soon pregabalin - "the new Valium" - will be scheduled as a class C controlled substance, which makes it much harder to obtain a prescription, and possession without a prescription could be punished with a criminal conviction.

Here on the psych ward, a man screams for a "blue tablet". Perhaps more blatantly obvious as an addiction, another man attempts to wheedle more Subutex (buprenorphine) out of the staff - he's been droning on about having his dose restored from 8mg to 16mg, because he is being weaned off the synthetic opiate he is addicted to. I can hear this guy, who is obviously no stranger to our prison system, chopping and snorting drugs his room. The man who screams for a "blue tablet" is actually asking for a 10mg diazepam pill - blue in colour - which is Valium. Our screaming friend decides he wants to leave hospital, and the staff tell him he can't leave because he's going to take heroin. "It's my body! I do what I want!" he screams. Then, he starts getting abusive.

Early on in my hospital detention under section 2 of the Mental Health Act, I ask a nurse if she can nip to the shop to get me a 4-pack of beer. We lock eyes for what seems like an eternity. I maintain a completely straight face. Then, we both snigger and she regains her composure. She jokes that we should have a big piss-up on the ward. With a different nurse, I tell her with a straight face that they have forgotten my methadone and she immediately unlocks the cabinet containing the opiates that are so coveted by some patients here... I hastily tell her that I was joking, but she still continues to search my medication chart. Do I look like a junkie? I certainly don't have track marks on my arms or other identifying features of an injecting drugs user, such as abscess scars.

A doctor comes to take my blood. She doesn't shut my bedroom door. Three men, who I know were heroin users, peer into my room and I feel bad that I didn't ask the doctor to close the door or get up and close it myself - surely the sight of a needle going into a vein is going to be a terrible trigger. There's good evidence that addicts' brain reward pathways are activated when they see drugs and drug paraphernalia for just 33 milliseconds, which is less than the 40 milliseconds that a single frame of cinema film is shown for.

Having been detoxed from my physical dependency on benzodiazepines and alcohol, I find that I crave nothing more than a few drinks in the evening - some wine or some beer - to take the edge off the stress and anxiety of my situation and help me relax during what is a fairly dreadful clusterfuck of issues with employment, housing, accommodation and my health. However, I don't want to sabotage my treatment and recovery.

I'm incredibly grateful to the NHS, for accidentally detoxing me while they were treating my deadly deliberate overdose - my suicide attempt. Being physically dependent on a medication is to be shackled to it - to stop taking it would cause seizures and potentially death. There wasn't a 'buzz' that I was chasing with booze & benzos. I was using mind-altering substances to soothe my jangled nerves: self medication.

Am I glorifying drug taking, or making light of serious matters? Don't be so ridiculous.

An epidemic of illicit opiate use sweeps across the United States, with the number of overdose deaths and addicted babies born, skyrocketing in the past few years. An epidemic of mental health issues has pushed the services that are there to support those who become unwell, to breaking point. Only a wilfully ignorant person would turn a blind eye to what's happening all around us.

Carfentanil - a synthetic opioid - is so powerful that an aerosol of it could be sprayed in a packed metropolitan area and cause hundreds of people to die from respiratory arrest. This drug is being sold as an adulterant in bags of heroin, in the United States today. In the UK, carfentanil's less potent - but still deadly - chemical cousin, fentanyl, is quite common now in batches of street heroin. If you're worried about terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, these things have already arrived on the shores of the US and UK, in the form of incredibly deadly chemicals that are available for sale to anybody with the money.

My fellow patients are unrelenting. There's been a 2-day nonstop assault on the staff, as the patients attempt to get a tiny amount more synthetic opiate out of the doctor. There's not much else to do on the ward, and whatever medications the doctor has decided to write on their chart will remain fixed for a whole week. I guess they've got nothing to lose apart from their 30 minutes of escorted leave from the ward. One patient has done a runner, sensing that the doctor's decision has not gone the way he would prefer.

"You've not done anything wrong. You can come back and you won't be in any trouble" a stressed looking nurse is saying down the telephone, to the patient who has gone AWOL. Meanwhile, a patient takes breaks between harassing the staff for 8mg more Subutex, in order to chop and snort lines of white powder in his room - presumably he has a plentiful supply of his own drugs, which he wishes to supplement with a legal prescription.

I try to calmly await my section tribunal, despite the chaos outside my bedroom door.

It should be noted, that the quality of care does not vary with one's behaviour - the staff are supremely professional - but good manners are declared as the number one thing that every staff member wants, on a notice board that tells the patients a little more about the team of people who look after us.

Good manners cost nothing.

Tags: #hospital #mentalhealth #drugs #addiction

This is a story about seeing red...

My dad had a fairly simple moral code for me, when I was a little boy: boys shouldn't hit girls or boys wearing glasses. That's about it. I remember guns were bad and I got in trouble (age 3.5) for looking like I enjoyed myself playing with a friend, who had brought his plastic guns with him. I eat anything and everything today, but I also remember being terrorised into eating rice pudding - which was slimy and disgusting in texture to me, before the age of 4 - so much so that I started throwing up with stress and anxiety, before every mealtime and lost so much weight I had to be hospitalised.

Perhaps it's clear, in retrospect, why I would turn to a hospital to protect me from bullies.

But, perhaps it's me who's evil, and needs to be locked away from the general public? Certainly, now that I've got chance to stop and catch my breath, I'm finding I've finally got time to examine the morality of the way I've acted in the past.

If you hit your kids or generally terrorise them to the point that they need to be hospitalised, trust me, they're not having a brilliant home life. At playgroup and school, I took this pacifism thing that my dad had been very angry about - a.k.a. playing with a friend with a plastic gun - very seriously and I got the crap kicked out of me by other kids... it wasn't until many years later that my dad suggested fighting back, which seemed somewhat odd given that I'd received these hippy lectures about being nonviolent. Anyway, I went down the path of pacifism and that's where I stayed. I was not having a brilliant school life - I was picked on every single day, to the point where, again, it would leave me collapsing in uncontrollable sobbing fits, while on the way to primary school.

Boo hoo! Get the violins out!

My first experience of domestic violence was me crying and being punched in the face, giving me two black eyes and a broken nose. I didn't even defend myself, let alone strike back... why would I need to? I didn't understand why I was being victimised like this, by somebody who was supposed to love me. I had to go into work with a bullshit story about having collided with a buoy while kitesurfing, to explain my two black eyes. It was the male extreme sports equivalent of "I walked into a door". I had to lie to her parents, when we went to see them for a planned visit soon after my face had taken that pommelling.

I'm 6ft tall (183cm), 13 stone (82kg) and I still retain some of my muscle bulk from rock climbing, kitesurfing and wakeboarding, although I'm obviously not in peak physical shape. I've got the mindset of a terrorised 3-year-old, ganged up on by two fully grown adults, but I'm in a body that can do some damage and defend itself now.

The problem - if there is one - is that if I feel bullied and attacked, and you managed to corner me, I'll smash my way out of the situation. I don't hit people - I'm still nonviolent. I don't get into fights. However, very occasionally I will trash something - more often than not it will be my own property - because the insanely horrible emotions just have to come out.

"Do you think that was the right thing to do?" a stern-faced looking policeman asks me. "Do you think there might have been a better way to handle that situation?" comes a second question, as if the first one - which I haven't had chance to answer yet - was not clear enough for me. Of course, I would have loved to handle things differently. Of course, I feel guilt and regret when I snap; when I can't take the onslaught anymore, and I've done something that I wish I hadn't - some property has been damaged.

She's asked me to travel out to the suburbs from the city centre; it's a considerable car ride away, including some travel on a dual-carriageway - the main road South, which turns into the motorway and would safely take me back to London, if we stayed on it. I get the cab to stop at a shop so I can buy some things for a romantic evening. I'm greeted with a hug, we lie on the bed kissing and cuddling... this is all how I hoped things would be; I'm relaxing and enjoying a pleasant evening; this is very nice. Then, she's hurling abuse at me, telling me I'm a terrible person... I'm sitting down while she's standing up, verbally attacking me and generally bullying the shit out of me. She suddenly asks me to leave... alright, no problem. I jump up, grab a rolling pin from the kitchen where it lies idle on the worktop and I smash her laptop to pieces, then I leave immediately. I regret it instantly and text her that I want to replace it, as I make my way to the nearest cab rank, to get a taxi to retrace the journey that I took hardly any time ago. Why had I been summoned to the suburbs for this abuse? Certainly, my loss of temper at the injustice of it all is in no way a justification for destroying her laptop - it was a disproportionate response.

I don't think people really see what's going on underneath the surface, even though I tell them.

Two police officers are interviewing me. It's 2am in the morning. I was just discharged from hospital after a suicide attempt, and my kidneys are still not fully functioning. My body is bruised as hell from where the emergency services had to kick in the bathroom door to get to me, slumped in the dark, dying. My muscles ache from the damage that was done to them by the massive overdose of opiates - prescription painkillers I had stockpiled. I answer the police questions. I admit smashing up that laptop - of course I did it and I want to replace it. The last messages I ever sent while still alive were attempts to get her bank details, so I could transfer her enough money to get a brand new replacement... although of course the destruction of her laptop must have been a shocking over-reaction in her eyes and upsetting for her, and I can never fix that.

Don't people see me as vulnerable? I feel like a 3 year old, being beaten up by grown-ups. I feel vulnerable; scared. People must see me as an easy target, because they certainly don't hold back when they're ripping into me. I find myself back in my trashed apartment at 3:30am on Wednesday morning. How did this happen? Why do people think I'm perfectly fine - OK to chuck out from hospital as soon as my kidneys are working a little bit? Why do people think I'm physically and psychologically indestructible? Why would the massive overdose that I took be seen as unimportant, and that I'm perfectly able to pick myself up and carry on with life?

I feel like I get a double-whammy. I feel that people take advantage of my good nature: my trusting and happy-go-lucky approach to life, where I try to be generous and loving. I take the risks - I make the first moves - and I put myself out there in the hope of getting something back. If I get nothing back, that's fine - let's just leave it there and move on. Why did I have to get dragged all the way out of the city centre and far from my home, simply to receive cruel and unpleasant treatment and be told to get out? My reaction was out of proportion though, so I also get the guilt. I'm guilty of smashing up that laptop. I'm guilty of seeing red, losing my temper, retaliating at the injustice of the situation, in a totally unjustifiable way. Now, I still carry that guilt and I always will - it stopped her hurling abuse at me, but that doesn't make it right. In fact, I can never make things right - I'm always going to feel terrible about her stunned silence, and the fact that it must have seemed like a crazy over-reaction to a bit of 'light-hearted' bullying and abuse in the place she'd dragged me out to, to do it - in the middle of fucking nowhere. If it sounds like I'm conflicted, I am. Where's the sympathy for the fact that I was taken advantage of, abused and left feeling totally abandoned in a strange city? Where's the consideration of the fact that it's obvious that I was on the edge: I very nearly succeeded in killing myself, as the very next thing that I did.

This whole traumatic episode has forced me to dredge up every 'bad' thing I've ever done, and reconsider whether I could have handled things better. What the fuck am I supposed to do? Turn down friends and girlfriends when they cross my path? Am I supposed to be negative and untrusting? Am I supposed to shut myself away, isolated behind closed doors and be anti-social, because I always end up just feeling like a mug... financially taken advantage of and cleaning up after my 'guests'. Should I not give people a chance? Should I be closed and negative, assuming everybody's out to get me? Certainly, everybody's come and picked my fucking pocket, quite gleefully.

I'm no angel. This is certainly not a piece that argues things in black & white. If you want to talk about black & white, then you have it in black & white: I smashed up her laptop with a rolling pin in a sudden fit of rage. My regret and remorse is meaningless - I did it, so that's that. I'm guilty of being an "angry man" right?

I wonder what percentage of my life I've been angry for. Certainly, most people who've known me for any length of time would not think "angry" as one of the first words that sprang to mind. Perhaps I just hide it very well. It's not really for me to judge anyway, what my personality is in the context of this tale and the wider issue of whether I'm some kind of crazed nutter, intent on smashing up the entire world.

I guess you could consider the nature of a dog, as an analogy. How much can you abuse the dog, before it bites you? Are the best dogs the ones that just whimper and maybe even shit themselves? Does a dog - even though it has sharp teeth and powerful jaws - only qualify as a good dog if it never turns on somebody who's abusing it? If you can answer that question, you might have gone some way to answering the question that fills me with doubt at the moment: am I a bad person; am I evil?

Frankly, I think we're all capable of saying and doing regrettable things, in the heat of the moment. The question is, how do you feel about what you did? Do you do horrible things on a regular basis? What's your predominant personality - are you a victim, victimiser or something in-between?

I don't want to fall into the trap of feeling too sorry for myself; feeling too victimised. I've said and done things I wish I hadn't. Also, why can't I stick up for myself? Why can't I avoid the people who think it's OK to pick my pocket? Why can't I tell those who would take advantage of me, to fuck off, before they bleed me dry?

I've seized upon this word "vulnerable" which neatly sums up me and my situation. I trust when I shouldn't; give when I shouldn't; take a chance when I shouldn't and generally end up fucked. Surely nobody would argue with the facts: I'm the one who ended up isolated and alone, dying of an overdose, losing all my property, losing a lucrative consultancy contract and an employment offer. I'm an example of the person that lawmakers had in mind, when they created laws that protect me from mental health discrimination and prejudice based on confidential matters.

There's a line in a song I've probably never heard, but I know the lyrics because my guardian angel told them to me. The song talks about how bullying a kid every day created a monster.

Am I a monster? I certainly seem to fight with monsters. Perhaps I would be wise to remember the words of Nietzsche, and be careful that I do not turn into a monster myself, if I continue to fight monsters.

It's not my instinct to fight. It's my instinct to be nonviolent. I only fight^* when I've got nothing left.

Tags: #bullying #relationships #suicide

* - I don't mean fight her. She's got the money to replace her laptop now, I hope, and I really hope we can move on with our lives as best as we can, although I do appreciate that it was traumatic and seemingly an over-reaction from me. I feel very bad about what I did.