This is a story about leading an insulated life...

Just in case you think I've been sniffing solvent-based glue, I'm not advocating giving booze or fags to newborn babies. I am - however - suggesting that our academically gifted, with their busy lives of music practice, homework, extracurricular studies, cultural, museum & historical sight visits, mock exams pretending to give a shit about charity & community service and being dragged off to France or Germany in the interests of practising for their exams: all in the interests of an immaculate university application... this has created vast numbers of insulated children who know little about narcotics except one lesson they did where they wrote names of drugs on a blackboard, when they were 13.

Let me disabuse you of a myth. There has not yet been a drug invented that is instantly addictive. If a doctor was to give a child an intravenous injection of diamorphine (heroin) - as many paediatrics will do in hospital - then it's certain to be an experience that the child will vividly remember with reverence. Ok, so the dose is selected carefully, but this is mainly so that the child doesn't vomit, experience unpleasant itching or suffer a respiratory arrest.

Now, let's disabuse you of another myth. Cannabis is harmless. The most insulated child's first opportunity to try drugs will be at university. I was so insulated that I thought "spliff" was a drug. It's spliffs - cannabis cigarettes - that are so dangerous, because they are often mixed with tobacco, leading to nicotine addiction and death through smoking-related diseases. Nicotine addiction is widely regarded as more addictive than heroin addiction.

Now, let's study two drugs, and compare why their chemical similarity is the polar opposite of their potential for addiction. Crystal meth, known more correctly as methamphetamine, should be well known to you as a highly (but not instantly) addictive drug. Ecstasy, known more correctly as 3,4-Methylinedioxymethamphetamine (a.k.a. Molly, Mandy, Adam) is taken by millions of party-going young people throughout the UK, especially at university where a night of drinking could cost £20 to £40 and upwards, but a dose of Ecstasy will cost around £3. You would have thought that the drug's low cost would create an addiction epidemic, but taking a drug with friends on a Friday or Saturday night, to attend a nightclub for little more than the price of the entry fee, is a far more enjoyable experience than living homeless smoking a meth pipe. There is also a peer group at school and university, who identity problem drug users and try to help them in a peer-to-peer manner.

The most dangerous group of drugs in the world are prescribed medications: benzodiazepines. Prescribed for acute stress or anxiety disorders, within 3 months, the body is physically dependent on the medication and stopping taking it will cause seizures and even death. If we're educating our children properly, we need to teach them that medicines are just as dangerous - if not more so - than street drugs.

While we're on the subject of prescribed medications, Adderall and Ritalin are prescribed to children for ADHD. Ritalin is more addictive than cocaine. Adderall is amphetamines.

Furthermore, Oxycontin and Oxycodone are prescribed for pain management, but these are powerful opiate medications - like heroin, morphine and opium - and the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) has not given a license for these medications to be prescribed on the NHS. NICE's decision saved the UK from a widespread disaster. Just because you get nicely packaged pills from your pharmacy, doesn't mean they're safe to eat like candies. Americans who became hooked on Oxy quickly figured out that heroin is far cheaper, which has given rise to the tragic opiate epidemic in the USA, which knows no class boundaries. Honour roll students are dying in similar proportions to suburban hoodlums.

What about cocaine? There's a reason why dealers market cocaine as "social" or "sociable". Cocaine tickles the reward centre of your brain, but it still needs external stimulus. On a night out on cocaine, every attractive girl/guy is looking at you, everybody thinks you're witty and funny, you're controlling the room with pure charisma. In fact, in a room full of people on cocaine, everybody is talking over each other but they only hear what they want. That drug-induced self-confidence might sweep somebody off their feet, or it could even stray into the realm of sexual harassment because your brain converts "no" into "yes". Taking cocaine in isolation is insanity... it's not a solo drug.

But what about crack cocaine? School kids should definitely learn about crack so they don't at least waste it. Cocaine is water soluble, so it can be drunk, swallowed, snorted, plugged (look it up) or injected. Crack can only be smoked and doing any of the aforementioned will have no effect. But seriously though, crack is one of only a handful of drugs that can lead to isolated drug-taking, which I explain the dangers of later on.

Of the mind-altering trippy drugs, ketamine is the main one to avoid, given that it's addictive and gives you bladder ulcers. LSD, mushrooms (psilocybin), DMT, Salvia and Peyote (mescaline) have very limited addictive potential.

The drugs that kids should be quite rightly scared of are the ones that can be quickly habit forming and are enjoyable in a non-social context. These are:

• Nicotine (inc. cannabis as gateway drug in spliffs)
• Heroin (inc. Oxycodone/Oxycontin as gateway drugs)
• Crystal meth (inc. Adderall & amphetamines as gateway drug)
• Benzodiazepines (when procured on the black market in large quantities)
• Ketamine
• Crack cocaine
• Supercrack

That's not a very big list, is it? You would have thought that drug addiction would be much less of a problem if that list was correct, but the story goes like this:

Good little Oscar went to a top university, fluent in French, Grade 8 piano and having given up every Saturday to helping little old ladies cross the road. Being able to name any piece of chamber music within 2 notes, and having memorised every placard of every museum, National Trust and English Heritage sight, plus recite the kings & queens of England backwards while holding his breath, he failed to make Oxford or Cambridge who don't want rote-learned fact regurgitators with mild speech impediments where their natural accent has been beaten out of them by a home environment so sterile that it could be used as an operating theatre. With 30 GCSEs (all A-stars) and 10 A-levels (all As) Oscar went through clearing in order to study underwater basket weaving at Luton former polytechnic, where he nearly choked on his own vomit when he saw a fellow student with tattoos, piercings, an ironic T-shirt and smoking a cigarette. She was female, and he later realised he had ejaculated in his underwear, having been forbidden from talking to girls, watching TV or unsupervised Internet browsing.

Finding his shyness and good manners endearing, and slightly out of pity, Oscar received an invitation to a party that evening.

Providing much merriment for the partygoers as he spluttered on a spliff. He then started giving everyone hugs in his deeply unfashionable clothes, when he was seduced into taking Ecstasy by a girl. The ejaculation retarding effect of the drug helped him to lose his virginity in an not-unrespectable time of 80 seconds, having penetrated the girl who he felt certain - at that moment in time - was the most beautiful in the world, and he would marry at the first opportunity. When the drugs wore off, he was surprised to discover she was 18 stone and missing several teeth.

By the end of his 3-year degree course, Oscar no longer had a healthy respect for drugs and died young, because of blood-borne diseases, transmitted through shared needles. His family did not attend his funeral, feeling they had given him the best possible start in life.

"Drugs are bad", "just say no" and other messages that suggest that sudden death or addiction may occur from drug experimentation, are pedalled in our 'better' schools, which has created generation upon generation of politicians who perpetuate the "punishment, not treatment or education" policies. Now with the advent of the Dark Web, a curious person like myself can find themselves with an addiction that never would have happened, had I been allowed to experiment with drugs in a peer group who were not equally insulated.

If we really wanted to curtail the tragedy of young lives cut short by drugs, we would end the two-tier strategy, where some children are streetwise while others receive an education that has limited use except to further an insulated academic career.

My [then] closest male friend who I've known since 2001, been on holiday with 3 times and even rubbed sun cream on his back, treated me like a completely different person - as if we had never even met and I'd spat in his soup & tipped his drink on his head - when I admitted I had a drug problem. This is what the private/independent/public/grammar schools and the league tables are producing: dangerously insulated and prejudiced children.

It's a pipe dream, to introduce schoolkids to the first-hand effect of drugs in a controlled environment - but the rate of psychoactive medications and drugs we consume shows no sign of abating.

Who do you trust? The doctors dishing out the pills that have created a heroin epidemic in the USA, the guy who's 10 years older than your 15 year old daughter who says "this won't hurt a bit" as he injects her with heroin, or the education system that can empower your children to make their own informed decisions?

Tags: #drugs

This is a story about decisive weapons....

Would I rather have the pilot of my plane, the driver of my bus, taxi or train, as a completely drug-free 'clean' individual, or would I rather that they had taken 5mg of dextroamphetamine before our journey? The answer is the latter, obviously, because they will be more alert, have improved ability to concentrate and faster reaction times.

US fighter jet pilots routinely use 'go' pills before a mission, which confer the abilities above, as well as allowing them to fly longer missions with less risk of dangerous sleepiness. Many road accidents are caused by people falling asleep at the wheel. Coffee will only give you a tiny fraction of the benefits of a 'go' pill.

Do you find that after a really important day at work, where you had to be at the top of your game, and you were firing on all cylinders; perhaps you had a bunch of coffee to keep you sharp.... do you find that you're still buzzing when you get home, and you have trouble switching off and going to sleep?

Coffee - especially the super-strong stuff we seem to drink in London and New York - can contain up to 300 to 400mg of caffeine, in for example a Pret-a-Manger strong cappuccino.

The problem with caffeine is that it's a bit of a crude stimulant with lots of extrapyramidal side effects. That is to say, as you increase the dose of caffeine, most people can't tolerate the way it makes them feel. Interestingly, intravenously, amphetamine addicts can't tell the difference between amphetamine and caffeine. Also, most intravenous amphetamine users believe they are being chased by 'them' - the police, men in black, shadow people, ninjas, whatever - but these side effects are just part of the fun.

So, the beauty of the 'go' pill is that it seems that I get all those desirable effects, with no side effects. You would be completely unable to tell that I was under the influence of 5mg of dextroamphetamine. Recreational use of amphetamines is normally quite obvious to spot: talking too fast, sweating, dilated pupils, restlessness, jerky unnatural movement. No side effects? Well, not quite.

US fighter jet pilots use 'no-go' pills at the end of a mission. Having been kept awake and alert for hours, it's now time to go to sleep or at least chill the fuck out. Sleep can be difficult without a 'no-go' pill.

My personal 'no-go' cocktail allegedly contains Xanax (alprazolam) and zopiclone, which have hypnotic, sedative, muscle relaxant and anxiolytic properties. To be honest, you could probably get to sleep naturally if you took your 'go' pill as soon as you got up, but it's pretty exhausting spending a full day in a highly alert state.

Isn't it madness, me taking all these pills? Shouldn't I just go 'clean'? Isn't it best that I'm completely drug-free?

Do you remember when you quit smoking? You chewed a lot of gum, ate a lot more, drank more tea and coffee. Do you remember when the kids were little and life was really stressful? You drank a lot more gin. Do you remember when there was that project with a really tight deadline and you were working really hard; drinking lots of coffee? You were drinking lots of wine in the evenings to relax. Basically, humans will compensate to make sure things remain balanced. If you hurt your foot, you might find your back is aching, because you've shifted your body weight to one side, to put less pressure on your injury.

My injury's a brain injury and the best thing you can do for the brain is to allow it to find its own equilibrium. However, life must go on. My brain's telling me to go to sleep in a dark room for a month or two, but I need to attend hospital appointments, do the administration for my company, line up my next IT contract, find a new flatmate, move money around and make sure the cash keeps flowing and doesn't run out.

A bit of dextroamphetamine is an effective antidepressant and helps fight any supercrack cravings. It's like methadone for a supercrack addict.

I'm on a mission to get back to coffee and wine as my 'go' and 'no-go' substances. I actually worked really hard to break my caffeine addiction, and now I only drink caffeinated drinks on extremely rare occasions. I'm certainly not habituated into having my morning coffee or cups of tea throughout the day, like the majority of adults are. This is how addiction works: you don't cure the addiction, you just replace it with something else. There was a time when I loved playing with toy cars. I had hundreds of them, and I played with them all the time. Then, I got a computer, and I loved playing computer games... and the process of swapping one addiction for another continued. I'll be just fine and dandy with some tasty food, wine to wash it down with, TV and film to distract me and a girl to put my arm around and take to bed for some rumpy-pumpy later on. That ought to just about tick all my boxes.

In the last two weeks, I broke my addiction to two opiates - tramadol & codeine - and I've obviously been off the supercrack for the best part of a week now. That's fairly impressive. Please forgive me for having the occasional G&T, glass of wine and my little 'go' and 'no-go' pills, just to keep the pedals turning.

I've got a torn muscle and ligament, damaged nerve and fractured ulna (bone in my arm) but I spend most of the day with no pain relief at all. It's only at night that for some reason all these injuries start feeling super painful and I might take a couple of co-codamol.

Interestingly, amongst the opiates, heroin was named because it was thought it would have military applications, making soldiers more heroic. Heroin addicts certainly do seem to be prepared to do almost anything to get their fix and not get junk sick. I guess the idea was perhaps to addict the soldiers, and then deny them their heroin until they had done their mission. I can't really imagine it'd be a great idea to have a platoon of men who are pretty much just dribbling and half-asleep. The Nazis had the better idea, giving their soldiers crystal meth. The nickname "marching powder" for cocaine is literally what it sounds like: cocaine was given to soldiers so that they could go on longer marches. You might think of the pharmaceutical industry as concerned only with the treatment of disease, but they have profited handsomely from military concoctions.

Adding fluoride to the water supply has made a major impact on the rates of tooth decay. Drug evangelists have touted LSD and MDMA as other candidate chemicals to be added to our drinking water. The idea being that criminal and aggressive behaviour might be replaced with love and empathy, or the 'sheeple' might have their consciousness expanded. For clarity: I do not endorse such ideas.

"Go to the doctor" is now a synonym for "go get some pills". People are extremely disappointed if they don't come away from a doctor's appointment with a prescription for some lotion or potion. The reflexive response of people if you ever say you are in pain, is to offer you aspirin, paracetamol, ibuprofen or preparations containing codeine (e.g. co-codamol and Solpadeine). People have looked at me in shock and horror, when I tell them that I don't take any medication for the incurable mutative virus: the common cold. What part of incurable didn't you understand?

Many people with mental health issues are asked "did you take your pills today?" or told "maybe you should up your dose" by people with no medical training or expertise, who they simply encounter in their day to day life, such as family members, friends and work colleagues.

We should be mindful that psychopharmacology is only 60 or 70 years old at most, as a fairly advanced field with the accompanying branch of medicine: psychiatry. Before psychiatry, chemists could offer preparations containing opium, cocaine, cannabis; all of which treat symptoms, not underlying issues. We will look back 50 or 100 years from now, and laugh at how primitive our medicine was... especially when it comes to addiction, mental health and the psychoactive compounds.

One final thought: if the majority of us are taking medication for depression, stress and anxiety, are we sick or are we actually victims of a sick society?

Tags: #drugs #addiction #medication #mentalhealth

This is a story about nonlinear progression...

There's my bedroom door. As you can see, you can bolt it closed, which is a security feature I added myself. Later, I decided to slide a knife behind the wooden surround and screw that into the wood that surrounds the door. Then I decided that a second knife was probably needed, in case the first one snapped as the blade flexed. Then I decided that I needed something else and finally arrived at the decision to dismantle one of my crutches and part of my bed, so that I had a wooden slat and an aluminium tube, which in theory provided some kind of extra security.... I don't know. I'd been doing this for hours by this point, completely exhausted.

What you're really looking at is the mind, after losing five or six nights of sleep, skipping fifteen to eighteen meals, and being confined to one room, with all the windows obscured.

Who would want to come and do me any harm? Well, when you attempt to balance a crutch and a bed slat on a door handle at 4am - in total darkness - I imagine anybody within earshot would probably want to see me lynched.

I used to go and hide in the bathroom, because it had a proper lock, but then my flatmate unlocked it from outside with a butter knife. Luckily I was right by the door so I locked it again. He was only checking if I was alive, but it's strange how nobody talks to you when you descend into one of these periods of isolation.

In my mind, the lock on my balcony door had been picked. Then, the large glass patio door had been noiselessly slid open, and men clad in black wearing stealth shoes had been able to cross my wooden floor without alerting me to their presence. Meanwhile, more men clad in black, had entered my spare bedroom through a window. These men removed the 'security' features from my front door - for example, a hammer that falls on the floor if the door is opened, which is a kind of improvised intruder alarm - allowing more of their team to enter my flat and prepare to batter down my bedroom door.

Hiding in bathrooms is awful. The floor is freezing tiles and that's about it. There's plenty to drink and you can answer the call of nature, but other than that, it's just cold and boring. I spend half my time barricading the bathroom door and the other half looking through the crack under the door, to see if I can see the men in black in my bedroom. It's a really narrow crack and you can hardly see anything, so you start to imagine that you've seen things. This is why I've stopped hiding in bathrooms.

I have a bed that lifts up so you can store stuff underneath it. If you didn't know, you'd just think it was regular Ikea bed. I actually slept under there for 8 hours or so. It's fucking roasting and I'm sure there's inadequate air recirculation, but I seemed to survive.

Every time I get so hungry or thirsty or just fed up with the bullshit of it all, I take down the barricades and say "come on then, men in black, do your worst!". Then I usually just collapse in bed and sleep for hours and hours. Nothing bad has happened in my home, ever. The police have kicked the bedroom door in a couple of times at my parents', which is what triggered this whole paranoia. That's my parents for you: they'd rather have a door smashed off its hinges than talk to their son. I've tried the basics, like saying "use your words" but that's obviously too much effort for them.

That's the thing about paranoia: it doesn't come from nowhere. There are seeds and they grow into nightmares. Doesn't it creep you out, the idea of some twisted sick voyeur watching you while you take a shit or even just sleeping peacefully in bed? Doesn't it creep you out, the idea of your bedroom becoming a viewing gallery, where people come and go as they please, to watch whatever you're up to?

I haven't written in a while, and that's because I'd given up hope. I'd given up hope that my foot/ankle could be fixed and I could stop the massive doses of painkillers, that were making me so doped up I couldn't work. I'd given up hope that I had enough runway left, to be able to get another IT contract, especially after HSBC lowered my overdraft limit by the best part of £2,000. None of the sums added up. None of the calculations could show that there was a way that I could make my money last until I got some more income.

Then, a windfall from an investment I was managing on somebody else's behalf. A gift from a kind and caring person. Some help getting my spare bedroom ready to rent out to a flatmate - it had been left in an awful state by the last guy, who owes me approximately £6,000 - which will bring deposit money and cut my burn rate by half. Finally, I managed to get a bridging loan, which is getting paid into my account today. Turns out my credit rating is pretty awesome. One of my non-HSBC credit cards just had its limit doubled, so I can live on that to some extent. My interest bill is awful, but put in the context of what I can earn as an IT contractor, it don't mean shit.

I'm crashing at my girlfriend's so that I'm in a different environment. Also, because there are workmen replacing the planking on my balcony, but the amount of noise they're making, you'd think they were demolishing the entire block of flats.

The lounge/diner/kitchen massive room in my flat - with patio doors onto the balcony at one end and a dual-aspect panoramic view of the River Thames - is fucking awesome, but when I'm depressed I only go in there to get more unhealthy snacks, which I take back to my stinky bedroom, with the curtains drawn, to watch endless amounts of on-demand TV.

I don't like it when alcoholics describe themselves as 'in recovery' when they've been teetotal for years and years. I'm 'in recovery' in that I lost at least 14kg in body weight, since my peak (although that was somewhat skewed by fluid retention). I lost more sleep and skipped more meals than you'd ever believe. I need to recover. I need to catch up on sleep. I need nutrients and to allow my body to lay down a bit of fat. I need to have some time where I'm not worried about men in black kicking the door in, and where I can have sex with my girlfriend without worrying that some sicko voyeur is watching through a tiny gap in the curtains.

Working so hard, with such enormous effort and stress, to get out of hospital and get to the first day of my new job, was one of the most difficult, challenging and against-the-odds things I've ever done. I did it. I fucking did it. Then, to have it snatched away was a cruelty that broke me. It broke me. It broke my will to live. It broke my will to keep trying. I had to hide from the world for an entire week, just in shock, unable to allow myself to think, because my thoughts would have turned straight to suicide. I had to get through a week without a single bit of thinking, otherwise I was dead; it hurt me that badly and left me in such a shitty situation.

Since then, I've been careless with my life and everything in it. I've got an amazing girlfriend, but I risked losing her. I've got a super helpful friend who's always there for me, but I risked pushing them away. I know people are monitoring the situation through this blog and social media, and would act if they were worried, perhaps to send the police round to find my corpse. It'd be a better idea to just reach out and ask if I'm OK and say you're worried, using any of the tech communication channels we have - SMS, iMessage, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter DM... the list is endless.

My long-suffering girlfriend ended up speaking with somebody I know through my blog and Facebook, because he was quite rightly concerned. I'm really touched when I find out about these little webs of people who are like a safety net. Nets have holes and I might fall through one - as I have fallen through many of the cracks in life - but it does feel like I have more to live for, knowing that people care enough to speak to each other; share information; discuss what to do.

I'm now admiring my newly flat stomach (but seriously, don't do the supercrack diet) and feeling a little bit more relaxed about having some runway to get back to work once my foot/ankle is fixed... although ironically, I stopped taking the painkillers, but I broke my wrist, so go figure.

You'd seriously hate me if you knew everything about my charmed existence. I left my apartment which faces West - a view of almost every famous London landmark: Shard, London Eye, Tower Bridge, St Paul's Cathedral, Walkie Talkie, Cheesegrater, Gherkin, BT Tower etc. etc. - and I'm now recovering in my girlfriend's apartment which faces East, so I can look at the cable cars going over the Thames, the O2 Centre (a.k.a. the Millennium Dome), the Cutty Sark and Royal Naval College and other parts of beautiful old Greenwich.

I'm off most of the meds now. Coming off a high dose of Tramadol, I wondered why I was itchy, nauseous and sweaty, and realised I was junk sick. Opiate withdrawal ain't that bad really.

I've had an MRI scan of my foot/ankle, and on Friday somebody is going to test the nerve wiring from my foot all the way up my leg, to check for any broken connections. Then, there'll be another consultation and possibly an operation. Things are going quite quick because the NHS outsourced me to a private hospital.

Just need to remember not to get too relaxed at the moment!

Tags: #addiction #london #career #relationships

This is a story about grand gestures...

Here's the thing. You can reach the ripe old age of 52, father three children and generally be carrying on life completely unnoticed. You're a nobody. You're just making up the numbers. You can die of old age, and unless you're somebody considered to be important, you won't even make the obituary listings in your pathetic local rag of a newspaper. Most people live and die in total obscurity.

The recent murder of 4 people and injury of 50 more, on Westminster Bridge and at the Houses of Parliament, must have been influenced - at least in some small way - by the fact that the murderer knew that there would be a huge amount of media coverage of his actions: publicity. Whether we call it a terrorist attack or a killing spree, is very important. Terrorism needs publicity. Terrorism needs the media to strike fear into our hearts.

If it hadn't been for the media, I might not have known about the events of Wednesday until she sent me this message showing the memorial flowers. There are deadly road traffic accidents, stabbings, shootings and people jumping under tubes and overground trains, every single day in London. Because of the scale and significance of the attack, at the seat of government, perhaps the word-of-mouth news would have circulated quicker, but the media made it their top news item for four or five days, maybe more.

You may hate me for this, and think me detestable, but it plays heavily on my mind that these words that I write, even if they're not read today, are very likely to be read if I prematurely end my life. I write with that in mind. I write about what's driving me towards suicidal action. I write to leave a record of who I was, how I thought and what made me tick. I write to leave evidence, should anybody wish to investigate how a person who - to outward appearances - has nothing but opportunities, but yet could end up on the mortuary slab.

'Depression' is a cop-out of an answer. If you dig deeper, there isn't some difference between my brain and yours. Measuring the levels of 'happy' chemicals in our brains cannot be said to be the symptom of a problem, or the problem itself. Yes, we know we can manipulate our brains to alter our moods, but we also know that non-chemical things alter our moods too: when our sports team win; when we see a loved one; when we eat our favourite food.

There are so many variables to control for. The rich cry too. However, I refuse to accept that the cure for a condition that was identified in Ancient Greece - some 14,000 years ago - as melancholia, has to be pills, and not the freedom to escape from the confines of this crazy society.

It might piss you off to think that part of me wants to die, so that some attention is drawn to all the things I've been writing about; so that some questions are asked about why it happened.

I'd never go on a killing spree, but I wonder if dying for a single identifiable cause makes it easier for the public to understand. What would I choose? Anti-capitalism? Socialism? Wealth inequality? The difficulty of the choice is perhaps part of the reason why I'm still here today, writing, rather than having made my grand final gesture.

A friend made a couple of trips up to London to see me when we were both feeling really glum. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing - anonymously - that he'd tried to take his own life a couple of times. An old friend I had fallen out with came to see me in hospital, which was a nice surprise. My two friends who I've seen most regularly since returning to the capital, visited me in hospital. I have a friend who I got to know through my blog, who has been incredibly supportive and loyal and has gone to great lengths to keep me alive. I have a girlfriend who has slowly and naïvely unearthed the multiple additional issues that often accompany bipolar disorder, but she has worked hard to keep an open mind, be forgiving and kind, and be incredibly supportive. There are a handful of other people whose path I've crossed in London who care enough to help if I was in trouble. In Portishead, Killavullen, Bournemouth & Poole, Weymouth, Abingdon, Nottingham, Newcastle and perhaps even in Hythe, Woking, Biggleswade, Milan, Wimborne and Worcester, I think there are people who know me and care about me and would be upset by my departure from this Earthly realm.

Does it keep me glued in place, knowing the pain it'll cause so many people if I come unstuck? No, I'm sorry to say that it just adds a kind of guilt... a weight of responsibility.

People have their own problems and busy lives, but the stuff that makes the difference is when somebody says they'll help; even just opening my post. Even just sitting with me while I place an advert for a new flatmate. Even just getting me out of bed in the morning so I can make an 8am hospital appointment. It's rather childish and immature, to have to be babied and receive such hands-on care, but I've reached a point where I've lost all hope. I have no belief that there's any way out of this sticky situation I'm in. Things could be so much different if somebody just sat with me and answered my phone, and when it's HSBC ringing me back about a bridging loan, they can hand me the phone and we can see if we can get that sorted.That would completely change my optimism about the future, if I had adequate runway to get to the point where I'm consulting again.

My head's gone down. I've given up somewhat. I actually gave up fairly prematurely, and without much of a fight, on the face of it, but I'd had a long exhausting stressful wait with very little to do over the festive period, with regards to marketing my consultancy talents.

I've had a couple of kind offers from people to get me out of London and get me earning some cash elsewhere, but I'm so trapped by tenancy agreements, plus I'm in love with her and can't stand the thought of only seeing her at weekends and stuff. Fuck knows. It's a big shit sandwich, and I've got to take a great big bite.

You know, I'm TechStars accelerator alumni. I could leverage my network. I've got 500+ LinkedIn connections. What the hell am I worrying about? Well, I've got an MRI on my ankle/foot on Wednesday morning. I've got to go back to the Renal High Dependency Unit straight after that. I'm still pretty drugged up and in pain. I don't want another false start like I had with Lloyds. That was heartbreaking.

With the complexity of it all; the challenges that lie ahead; the cashflow projections that look terrible; the sheer number of pissy little jobs that need to be done, there's a voice that loudly and clearly says "why fucking bother?". That voice says "you've had all this stress before, and it's gotten you nowhere. You're back where you started. Why don't you just give up?". That voice says "take some pills and never wake up". That voice says "cut your carotid artery and that'll be the end of it: no more struggle, no more strife, no more stress".

I have to admit, that voice is one of the most reasoned and intelligent I've heard.

Tags: #suicide #terrorism

This is a story about whether it's right to stay with an alcoholic and/or an addict...

Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink. Like every alcoholic and/or addict I have a million and one reasons why I had one too many bottles of wine, or why I lapsed or relapsed into drug addiction.

I mentioned on Facebook earlier today that I rearranged the furniture in a hotel room in Bournemouth, right at the very worst most moment of my divorce. If you think that "worst moment of my divorce" caveat is me getting my excuses in early, then you're wrong. Let's get this straight: I didn't break anything or chuck a telly out of the window, but I made a lot of extra work for housekeeping.

I was actually so concerned that I was in such a bad frame of mind that I was actually going to throw a telly out of the window, so I phoned the duty solicitor. The duty solicitor gets phoned after you've been arrested, if you don't have your own solicitor.  I had not been arrested, but I didn't like the way things were going.

The duty solicitor was rather bemused by a person ringing up to chat about things before they're arrested.... in anticipation. He said that he didn't think the police would arrest me, and I should probably just ring friends and family. I was loathe to involve friends & family in a mess that I had made.

Eventually, having tried several other local solicitors, I rang the family solicitor, who phoned my Mum, who told my Dad to phone me. He was exceedingly unhappy that one of his longest friends had suggested that I might be in the need of a bit of support during a messy divorce.

I rang my friend Tim, who texted an ex police constable, who confirmed that the police would not press charges given the circumstances. Tim came to the hotel, and said it wasn't bad at all and we could fix it up in 5 or 10 minutes, but I just wanted to get home.

Despite a couple of offers of financial compensation for any inconvenience or damage the hotel manager laughed, being rather experiences with the wrecked hotel rooms due to the large amount of stag dos who visit Bournemouth. His housekeeping staff had not even commented. However, I still feel guilty about that today.

That was December 2013.

Let's make one thing really clear before we go on. My ex wife did not addict me to drugs. She's not responsible for any of my addiction: then or now.

My startup company fell to bits because I was under unbearable pressure to deliver Investment Banker lifestyle on startup wages, and base my company in Bournemouth, where there are no angel investors, no venture capitalists, no startup scene, no customers, it was over 2 hours away from my co-founder and his new baby girl. It was an irreconcilable problem, with my ex-wife being least willing to compromise despite having a job she could work anywhere in the country. But, that's not her fault. It's my fault. It's my fault that I made myself CEO instead of my co-founder. It's my fault I couldn't handle the pressure. It's my fault I wasn't strong enough to leave a toxic unsupportive relationship.

Drugs - legal highs - appeared on the scene in the autumn, as I sat at home, desperately depressed about the situation. I had already tried about 5 different antidepressants by this point, and had even moved on to trying over 10 extremely rare antidepressants that are extremely rarely prescribed, even in treatment-resistant depression cases.

It's not like I didn't recognise the problem. I accessed local drug & alcohol drop in centres, where I sat listening to teenaged alcoholic prostitutes talking about their children being taken into care, knowing that I owned my own home, cars, boats, hot tub, summer houses and had tens of thousands of pounds in the bank. I left, because it feel like sheer selfishness to deprive the time that could be given to somebody more needy.

I spent a day in a residential rehab as a day patient. By the end of the day, I had brushed up all the leaves, done all the washing up, hoovered, mopped and done just about everybody's weekly chores. The people's lives were fascinating, but most of the day was drinking tea & coffee and sitting around.

I don't know if I was successfully hiding my habit, but I gave a talk to a bunch of startup founders in London, and a few came over and said they'd heard me speak in Cambridge, and they thought my public speaking had improved a lot. Go figure.

The only real problem for hiding my habit was school holidays - my ex being an educator - when I wouldn't have the daytime to take drugs. Christmas holiday was unspeakably awful, with me sneaking off in the middle of the night to take drugs.

Getting clean and staying clean is my sole responsibility, but I found it telling that the only book on addiction my ex read parts of was called "Nag your loved one sober".

After Christmas, my ex demanded that my parents take me away. Naturally, they resisted and I resisted. My dad came down, and my ex had been nagging our mutual GP about how hard it was on her to deal with my addiction. Deal with my addiction? She didn't even know about it until a week earlier, when I struggled to hide it during the school holidays.

I was completely spooked by the sudden appearance of my dad and my GP, through no request of my own. The idea of leaving my home, my friends and everything else I'd spent years building around myself, to go live in a house I'd never lived in, trapped in a village where I didn't know anybody. That's fucking offensive.

Anyway, the psychiatrist I saw just before I left Bournemouth told me to taper off the legal highs gradually - over the course of 6 to 8 weeks - because nobody knew what withdrawal would be like.

Having gotten rid of me to my parents' house, my ex then refused to take my phone-calls and generally treated me like dog dirt.

I would say, that if it turns out you're dating an addict and/or alcoholic, you should make a decision - based on how long you've been together - as to whether they're the type who's going to bleed you dry and move onto the next unwitting victim, whether you're prepared to help them - and trust me, it's really fucking hard - or whether it's your moral duty to help them because they became unwell while they were your husband, wife or long term partner.

Anyway, my ex continued to be a right ***** until someone who isn't me hacked her email account and found out that no sooner had I left MY house, she had been dating other people. I confronted her with her infidelity, and she started treating me like a human again. Unfortunately, I thought a leopard could change its spots, so I spent £4,000 on flights to Hawaii to get married and £3,000 on an engagement ring. As you can tell, I'm the kind of junkie who spends all their money on themselves.

I struggled with sobriety, but held down a couple of good jobs and continued to be a good provider. My ex could have called off the wedding at any point.

The wedding, which was supposed to be stress-free with no guests, somehow became one of the most stressful things I've ever had to deal with. The whole holiday was ruined by my bridezilla. In the end, I threw a tantrum and said I could no longer deal with teepees and camper vans that break down and other eclectic but stressful shit that I had to organise, and booked us into the $800 a night Hilton. I had cocktails by the pool and it was bliss, but there were two days until we had to go home.

I relapsed as soon as we got home. It didn't help that my then-wife had booked a taxi online, specifying the wrong year. We could have stayed at Heathrow and waited for 4 hours, but having been on a plane for most of a day, I wanted to get home: unexpected £180 taxi ride in a black cab that I managed to negotiate.

My then-wife must have ordered my parents to come and 'deal' with me, because my dad marched into my house and said "you're an addict. you're an addict. Can't you see you're a dirty addict?" which was rich coming from a man with a history of drug use. That's not the kind of treatment you should ever receive in your own home, nor did it take account of the fact that I'd been in a lot of correspondence with several specialist psychiatrists who could deal with my specific condition: dual diagnosis. I was bipolar before I was a junkie, and the two do not complement each other well.

My mum had decided that she could 'smell' drugs on me. Unless she has a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer for a nose, she is wrong. You can smell smoke and cannabis on somebody's clothes, but drugs that you snort, swallow and inject are excreted through kidneys and faeces. It's a completely disproven hypothesis. Anyway, My then-wife did nothing to vouch for my sobriety when my mum had a go at me on my sister's wedding day (I was clean).

I'd gone back to working at JPMorgan, and they coughed up £12k for me to go to The Priory for 28 days, without a single qualm. My general psychiatrist had said I needed treatment in a therapeutic environment, which clearly my home was not. My then-wife said that she'd divorce me if I followed his advice and got treatment, and that she'd rather be a widow than a divorcee.

On my first day at The Priory, I phoned the local florist near our home, and asked them to leave a different flower each day under the windscreen wiper of my then-wife's car, before she left for work. She however, joined the dating sites again and decided not to visit or phone me.

During my stay at The Priory, we established that I was not well supported at home, and indeed, perhaps my relationship did not contain the prerequisite levels of respect, love, care, compassion etc. etc.

I panicked on day 27 of rehab, realising I had to divorce my wife, sell our house and decide what I was going to do next with my life. I spent the day talking to a few friends about different ideas, and returned for my final day a lot happier.

Straight after that was the birth of my niece. My loving then-wife did not attend. In fact. I remember her once being extremely put out that my grandmother had the temerity to die at an inconvenient moment. I think my friends had been right all along: she really was "the poison dwarf".

Anyway, after being under virtual house arrest, where I must admit I abused a lot of drugs as I tried to grapple with the magnitude of selling a house and downsizing. Probably moving to London. The friends who would take sides. Having to get a new job. I got fed up with my then-wife making me feel absolutely terrified by her unjustified rage and abuse, so I took to cocooning myself into a single room of our ample 3-bedroomed house, and even built myself a man cave in our summer house. She was never content to leave me be, and would hammer and scream all the time at whichever door I cowered behind.

Then, I sent an SOS email to our parents, to come and force our separation. I was starving. I had no toilet, no shower. Do you think that's the way that people get clean & sober?

My friend Posh Will kindly offered his spare bedroom to get back into London life. I was clean & sober, riding my bike all over London, incorporating a new company and touting for consultancy work. I was entrepreneur-in-residence at PlayFair capital and I was loving the London startup scene. I was making new friends and I quickly got a beautiful new girlfriend. I know I wasn't the first to commit adultery, because someone who isn't me hacked my then-wife's email and found out she was fucking a married man with kids.

Then, divorce turned nasty. A six week house sale turned into a six month sale, simply because my then wife wanted to drag it out, knowing I had no income yet in London. She kept making me do the 4 hour round trip to Bournemouth to do trivial things she could do herself, like get estate agent valuations. Finally, we arrive in December 2013, where I went to a hotel because our house was sold but I was so angry and frustrated by my wife dragging out the sale to the point I almost ran out of money, I was going to trash the place.

Sure, I then did a 5 days of a 10 day detox, at a place where they didn't know what a detox was, or how to deal with somebody with a benzo habit. I then did 7 weeks at a proper residential rehab. My parents were on my no-contact banned list, but my mum still wrote to me with Louise's divorce demands. I told her from the start I wanted to rent out the house, defer the divorce and deal with it all when I had my health. When she refused, I said take whatever you want, but just don't drag it out. If I wasn't the kind of person who assumes that everybody's OK deep down, I'd say that it was all because she's a vindictive, abusive, greedy, *****.

Anyway, after a mix-up at my parents about what day of the week it was, my dad demanded that I get dressed in front of him and leave immediately. I agreed to leaving immediately, but I refused to get dressed in front of him, on the grounds that it would be one of the most degrading things you could ever ask a person to do. He manhandled me and a mirror got knocked off the wall, slicing my shin muscle in half along with 4 tendons and 2 nerves. Only then did he allow me to get dressed in privacy.

After my operation, I was taking fentanyl and tramadol - both strong opiate painkillers - for the pain, and yet I managed to avoid becoming addicted to these drugs. Having to wear a plaster cast kinda means you're going to have to destroy a nice business suit, and who wants to hire somebody who's sick?

My friends said it was time for me to get a place of my own, although I was still on crutches. I rented a room nearby. I went for dinner with Posh Will, and I was honest with him about my addiction struggles, and his attitude towards me changed visibly immediately. Our friendship was almost ruined, because he had such strong preconceived notions about what drug addiction is. He virtually accused me of being at risk of coming round to his house to steal stuff to feed my habit. I had the money from the sale of my house and some successful Bitcoin investments. I didn't need to steal from my friends. I cried myself to sleep and then tried to commit suicide.

Hospital discharged me, but I'd lost my flat, so I was homeless. I lived in hostels and Kensington Gardens. I guarantee you that not many people get clean from drugs when they're homeless.

Anyway, I finally got a great group of friends at a hostel in Camden, and a beautiful girlfriend. Those were some of the happiest months of my life. I also got an IT contract for Barclays and a room in a student house in Swiss Cottage.

I did have a couple of 'lapses' on mild drugs, but I was clean and I was happy. Then Barclays terminated my contract and I was evicted (the landlord was selling the apartment).

I tried to put a brave face on things and have a happy family Christmas, but I'd broken up with my girlfriend, lost half my friends, lost my contract, was homeless again. A lovely family in Ireland saved my life, looking after me at one of the most depressing and vulnerable times of my life.

At the suggestion of Posh Will - ironically - I stayed in a hostel in Shoreditch. Initially I had a whole dorm to myself, but when they realised I had an OK personality and was a long-term resident, they moved me to the infamous 'Ward P'. The drink and the drugs were off the scale in that place. I had to leave because I was off my face around the clock, but it seemed normal because everybody was.

I started staying in AirBnB places, because they were homely and I could do short [but expensive] lets. I'd recently reconnected with an old friend, so it was nice to live near him, in the East End.

I was running out of money again, so I stayed in a really awful hotel that's covered quite extensively in the blog post called Finsbury Park Fun Run.

That got me back to the Camden Hostel, but I was still hopelessly re-addicted to drugs. Trust me, it's hard to hide a drug habit in a 'regular' tourist hostel, and the tourists don't really love it if you're acting all weird because you're so strung out you can't even see straight.

Somehow, I managed to land the HSBC contract.

I ran out of money. Working for HSBC while living in a hostel is just not possible either. More drugs - whole week AWOL from work. Got away with it.

Stayed clean all the way to Christmas pretty much. I was a wreck on Christmas Day. I hadn't eaten for days. My Kiwi sofa surfer had kindly cooked the turkey but he'd pretty much cremated it, and it'd taken him hours to coax me out of my bedroom. Still, it was super kind of him to cook the world's most depressing Christmas lunch.

Then drugs, drugs, drugs to March 21st. I had a bag that could quite easily have kept me supplied for 3 years. That's the problem with being rich and choosing a cheap and powerful drug - you're never going to run out.

Are you spotting a theme yet?

January, February and March are my nightmare months. If I'm off kitesurfing at some exotic location, no problem. If I'm working a contract, no problem.

This year, I've had acute kidney failure and severe and ongoing leg/foot trauma AND the loss of my contract at Lloyds to deal with. However, I had the best Christmas ever and I'm also dating the world's most amazing girlfriend, so perhaps these things should cancel each other out?

I have to think about drugs at the moment, because my leg is so damaged that I need a cocktail of strong opiate painkilllers, nerve blockers and a sleep aid, just to be able to partially function. I wake up every 4 hours in the night in excruciating agony.

Through the urgent need to re-stock on painkillers, I found myself back on the Dark Web. It was a stupid move. I kinda knew I'd never be able to resist the urge to go window shopping. I tried to order weaker drugs that might satisfy the craving that was instigated by nothing more than buying other products, but lapse and relapse were inevitable.

My most amazing girlfriend in the whole wide world is somebody I could spend 100% of my time with, and never get tired of her company. We like the same trashy TV. We enjoy the same high-brow movies. We both have an insatiable appetite for feature-length documentaries. We love London. We love the same things and we love each other.

Why then would I relapse onto incredibly dangerous and destructive drugs?

The watchword you need to look for here is trigger. When I was with my ex-wife, if she ever went on holiday on her own - which is something she did regularly during the death throes of our relationship - it built a Pavlovian association with an opportunity to take drugs without having an aggressive abusive ***** attempting to kick my prison door in and screaming horrible things at me.

I found a black market seller who would supply just enough for me to have a moment of fun, but not enough for me to end up in a destructive binge. Then that supplier disappeared, and I ended up buying the next smallest bag I could find: 100 to 200 mild to medium strength doses.

The net result is that I spent all yesterday evening and all last night trying to jam my locked bathroom door closed with a pair of nail tweezers, because I was convinced that angry neighbours had phoned the police, and even a mob had formed outside my apartment, ready to heckle me when the police led me from the building, cuffed in shame.

That's a net result of two things:

1. Having more than you need of a highly addictive drug is bound to lead to a binge
2. It's impossible to measure milligram doses of drugs without excellent scales. The difference between no effect, and psychotic overdose, can not be seen by the human eye

I sold my scales because I've successfully been having long periods of abstinence, and it makes sense to get rid of drug paraphernalia that could 'trigger' a craving.

Of course, I should have controlled my craving. Of course, I knew what the worst-case scenario would be. Of course, it seems to suggest that the love of my beautiful girlfriend is not enough.

All I can say in my defence is that my life is pretty depressing right now. I'm on such strong pain relief that I can barely even concentrate on writing. I'm not well enough to go back to work. I've been stressed about running out of money and being evicted.

Life is also awesome right now, because me and my incredibly fetching and intelligent and knowledgeable girlfriend both have riverside apartments, and we take turns to spend nights watching sunrises and sunsets.

She has a really difficult decision to make right now. My longest period of abstinence from drugs is what? 9 months, since becoming addicted. My longest period of sobriety was 121 days. All my money has been frittered away on private healthcare, periods where I was too unwell to work, and yes - perhaps as much a 5% - has been spent on drugs. Would you choose somebody like that for your boyfriend?

Alright, so my drug habit isn't going to lead me to a life of crime. I've been cautioned by the police 4 times, but there's not much point in wrecking my career because I'm an addict is there, when I'm not shoplifting, dealing drugs, robbing, doing fraud or committing any other crime.

However, this weekend has shown that I still have the capacity to get myself in a life threatening mess. I was ready to stab myself in the carotid artery this morning, rather than have my life ruined by a criminal record and have all that shame on top of what has already been a pretty awful February and March.

Of course, nobody can deny that I brought this on myself and that the behaviour is just the same as it was over the last few years. Is my addiction getting better? It's certainly not cured.

If you want to know if my addiction is getting better, you could look at my medical records for 2014. I was an inpatient for 14 weeks. You could consider the fact that the longest period I had without my drug of choice was 2 weeks, for the first couple of years. You could consider the fact that I'm in a meaningful relationship with a kind, caring and compassionate girlfriend who's sympathetic and well informed. I'm not lying to her to have a drug habit behind her back. I've lied to her twice when she went away on holiday, both times shortly after I had lost a contract and was a bit depressed.

Ask yourself, am I worth knowing as a friend? I could drop a dirty HIV or hepatitis infected syringe in your kid's playpen. I might replace your salt with cocaine for a prank. I'll probably take money out of the purse and wallet of everybody in your house. I'll nick anything that isn't nailed down. All I want to talk about is drugs drugs drugs and my life story's not interesting because it just goes addiction addiction addiction. I'll bring shame on your family and you'll get in trouble just because you're friends with me. Not worth it, is it?

What about dating a junkie? Well, everything they say is a lie, and you won't like having sex with them all the time because you know they're probably thinking about a syringe of heroin while they're doing it to you. They'll take all your money and ask for more. Nobody ever got cured of drink & drugs. Death's too good for 'em.

I do feel terrible about the lies [two] and the betrayal of trust. Also, she knows that a binge could easily hospitalise or kill me. She's also trying to have a relaxing holiday break, but she knows I'm sick, haven't had any sleep and haven't had anything to eat.

She can't watch me like a hawk all the time. She can't spy on me using webcams when she's on holiday. She doesn't know what I get up to at home when she's at work.

Why take a risk on a loser with such a poor track record?

I've told her if she wants to break up with me, I'll fight to save the relationship, but I won't just say anything to talk her out of it. I actually advised her to break up with me, because I'm a month or two away from earning money again, I've got depression, bipolar and maybe even borderline personality disorder, along with the death sentence of dual diagnosis. Would you want your kids to have those faulty genes? Would you want your family to find out one day that you've been dating a loser?

Anyway, that's where I am right now.

No amount of stick will stop anybody from taking drink or drugs. I need to find a social group to regularly attend. I need to get out of the house more. Through socialising will come enjoyment of even more people's company, as well as routine. There will be new opportunities. Maybe a new hobby? I'll get a new contract and throw myself into work. Once the money starts rolling in, me and her can have holidays and plan adventures.

Could I replace everything and everybody in my life with supercrack? Almost. It is pretty fucking good. Still, how much money would you need? Even if you lived in a tent, I still reckon food & drink would cost you £150-200k over your shortened lifespan. I do however think you get sick of it after a while, but the bastard thing is so fucking good when you go back to it after a little break.

What can I tell you? That's the truth?

So am I honestly comparing a night with the love of my life, with a sniff of supercrack? No. The comparison is facile. If you choose the tent dwelling supercrack life, there's no coming back from that. Also, I've never been in such a good relationship in my life: it just keeps getting better and better.

One final question to ask yourself? Even if you think you have the perfect partner, perfect friends, perfect job and generally perfect life... do you still occasionally do something that looks totally insane in the context of your amazing life, like get too drunk, or take a recreational drug even though you never do drugs? Do you think the fact that you do that, means you love your partner any less?

Tags: #drugs #addiction

This is a story about treating every day like it's your last...

My life plan was a fairly simple one: earn loads of money working in IT, marry an attractive & intelligent girl who was into outdoorsy stuff and live happily ever after. I lived by the seaside. I owned my own home. I had masses of savings. I owned everything outright: my car, my boat, the furniture... I paid cash for everything.

When it turned out that the girl I picked was, errr, 'incompatible' with living happily ever after - to phrase it delicately - I didn't really have a plan B.

To be honest, after my marriage went to shit, I hadn't really planned on living very long. I'm really rather surprised to find myself alive and in reasonable health today. I was warned that my new plan - to take copious amounts of drugs and die in a hedonistic blaze of glory - would drive me insane and I'd find myself permanently brain damaged and dying slowly and painfully as my organs shut down one by one, or perhaps I would just suddenly and unexpectedly drop dead.

"Suddenly and unexpectedly drop dead."

Isn't that a risk that we face every single day anyway? There's a certain chance that your heart is just going to stop pumping and go into cardiac arrest at any moment. If you have a cardiac arrest outside a hospital, you're 80% likely to die.

The biggest threat to my life at the moment, statistically - and this goes for any 37 year old man, not just the ones with bipolar disorder and substance abuse issues - is suicide. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 50.

If I made smart lifestyle choices like not taking copious amounts of dangerous drugs, riding my bike through central London in rush hour traffic with no helmet on, stopping eating and drinking to the point where my organs fail and I piss blood, you'd have thought that I'd be doing a pretty good job of minimising my risk of premature death. NOPE!

What about all those extreme hobbies of mine? Off-piste snowboarding, skydiving, mountain biking, kitesurfing, rock climbing and mountaineering. You'd have thought that it'd be a good idea to give up those dangerous sports, if I wanted to minimise my risk of premature death. NOPE!

I was trying to have this argument with the Royal London Hospital consultant in the Renal High-Dependency Unit, where I was being kept alive by dialysis. I basically said, look, you're going to have to discharge me and let me go and start my new job and I'll just have to take the risk that my kidneys get worse and I drop dead. "You're playing Russian Roulette with your life" she said. Not really. The biggest threat to my life is suicide, and it was inevitable that losing my job would leave me in a psychologically critical condition.

One thing I quite often hear is criticism of risk takers. "How can you climb that mountain and risk your life, when there are people who are terminally ill, who would give anything for just one more day alive?"

"Treat every day as if it's your last."

That fairly innocent sounding platitude actually backfires, when you realise that it's an incitement to maximise your risk in pursuit of hedonistic pleasures and thrillseeking.

Knowing that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 is just a meaningless statistic, until you lose a friend or a relative to suicide, or you become suicidal yourself.

That's me in the picture above. I'm stood on a pinnacle of rock that's nearly 3,000 metres above sea level. If I fell - and I'm not tied onto anything - then it would a very long freefall before I went splat into the ground. Why am I not tied on? Why haven't I taken the precaution of attaching myself to a rope? Is it because I was suicidal?

The more you climb; the higher you climb; the more steep and perilous things that you climb, you start to become used to the exposure. The constant threat of falling to your death is something that you just get used to. One slip and it's curtains... but you're not afraid anymore.

I've got rather a toxic mix of psychology. I've got the ability to manage my own fear, stress and adrenalin, so that I can throw myself out of planes or climb frozen waterfalls, but when I become suicidal, I'm acutely aware that I could act on a suicidal impulse very calmly and methodically.

What is this silly little dance we call life anyway? Is it about procreation? Is it about making money? Is it about looking after your grandparents and parents as they get old and die?

Do I 'owe' anybody anything? Do I 'owe' it to my parents to treat the fact I'm alive with respect because they 'gifted' me a life that I didn't ask for? Do I 'owe' it to terminally ill people, to treat my life with respect, because I'm lucky and they're not? Do I 'owe' it to my friends to struggle on through the misery, because they'd be a bit sad if I committed suicide?

There are a couple of families - one in Ireland and one in Bletchley/Suffolk - who have been there for me during my darkest moments. There's a friend who I would've seen over the Christmas break, except for an unfortunate bout of illness laying him low. There are a handful of people in the world who've seen what my friend Laurence calls 'The Horrors' and they've protected me; stuck by me; defended me and been loyal friends. There have been people who've appeared unexpectedly - most welcome - back in my life. I'm not the most predictable of people, having decided to visit an old school friend in San Francisco, booked a flight and boarded it, within the space of just a few hours.

That's how it goes. Here today; gone tomorrow.

The speed with which my kidneys failed was shocking, even for me. The fact I needed dialysis was shocking, even for me. The length of time it took my kidneys to start working efficiently again was shocking, even for me.

Does that sort of stuff make me think "oh wow! that was close!" and "I better be careful and treat my life with respect"? You're asking the wrong question. My suicidal thoughts drive my reckless risk taking behaviour. Suicide was, and still remains, the biggest threat to my life. The shitty stuff that happened was all a consequence of my flirtation with death. I don't quite have the nerve to take the active steps to 'pull the trigger' as it were, because I know that I'm psychologically strong enough to just do it, without hesitation.

My trip to the Golden Gate Bridge was a metaphor for just how quickly, impulsively and with single-minded determination I can reach the point of no return.

My friends who hosted me in San Francisco read some of my recent blogs and asked if there was anything they could do to help. These are some of the people I admire and respect most in the world. They have super busy stressful lives raising little kids on the other side of the Atlantic, on the West coast of America.

What can anybody do? Everybody's got their own problems. Everybody's got their own money worries. Everybody's got a lot of shit on their plate. We've built a society where we are isolated, alone, overstretched by ordinary life to the point where we're just about managing. Who can afford to shoulder part of the burden for somebody who's struggling? Who can afford the time? Where are you going to find the energy when life is already so exhausting? Who has the financial means to help every fuckup with their begging bowl held out?

More fundamentally, under what kind of terms am I prepared to help myself? Arguably, I've thrown away 3 very well paid IT contracts for 3 massive banks, doing work that I can do with my eyes closed. Why the fuck would I do that?

I'm a complex beast. I feel guilty about my role in building systems that were pivotal in the financial crisis of 2007/8. I hired a development team in Mumbai, India, and I led that team to create a trade confirmation system for derivatives that handled over a quadrillion dollars in volume, in its first year. That's immoral. I knew what I was doing. I was busily fixing my own mortgage rate, knowing that there was a credit crunch coming. I invested my money in physical gold, because I had so little faith in the banking systems that I helped build.

I also had a taste of what it's like to own and run my own company. I outsourced. I ran software projects. The only difference was that it was my money and nobody could tell me "no". I could do whatever I wanted, and the ego rub from holding the job title "CEO" is a hard place to come back from. I now wander from company to company, pointing out the things that are on fire, fixing them if they let me or otherwise getting into conflict or suffering incredible boredom and frustration as I try to keep my mouth shut about the impending disasters I can see unfolding. Sure, I get paid a buttload, but it upsets me. I still spend money like it's my own.

That last project I was working on had an annual budget of about £25 million and was handling 30 customers a day. Basically, the cost of customer acquisition was over £2,000. These were not high-net worth individuals. They were simply ordinary banking customers. The project was not very complicated, but the waste was incredible.

What the hell is wrong with me? Am I a prima donna? Am I Goldilocks? Everything's got to be 'just right' for me? Do I consider the kind of work that's available to me to be 'beneath' me?

Certainly, I struggle with the prospect of having to do the kind of job that I mastered 10 or 15 years ago. I sometimes laugh out loud in interviews when somebody asks a question that's the equivalent of asking a master builder if they know what a brick is. Is it arrogant? I don't give a fuck... it psychologically destroys me, running projects for dinosaurs who pay top dollar for the best consultants and then don't listen to them.

I remember quite distinctly in 2001, I was deciding whether to learn a new(ish) computer programming language. I read a book about it. I was already learning another programming language at the time. Then it hit me: I had become a polyglot, somewhat by accident. I was able to read any code and understand its function - its intent - no matter what the actual specific implementation technology was. I knew that me and software had reached the end of the road. I asked my boss for a sabbatical while I considered what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

It's kinda hard to change career direction and it gets harder with age. You not only have to bankroll yourself through training and getting started in whatever new thing it is that you're doing, but if you're turning your back on one of the most lucrative careers there is, you'd better be pretty damn certain that you picked the right alternative.

I bump along the bottom, being dragged back into god-awful, boring, unambitious, ill-fated and badly run IT projects, whenever my bank balance reaches danger point. But the hardest thing is the dread: the dread about selling my soul; the dread about having to keep a straight face when people are panicking and running around like they've never seen some mundane issue before.

I can't escape. I'm in a deep hole. The hole isn't deep at all for an IT consultant, but for almost any other job, it's an inescapable pit of doom. The reason why I got in such deep shit is divorce, mental illness, and being smeared all over the streets of London, in and out of hospital. Like I said earlier, it's a miracle that I'm still alive.

I hadn't really planned on living this long and that's a bit of a problem. Because I'm so suicidal and trapped, I guess there's an easy decision to be made. I know that I have absolutely no problem following through and overcoming any psychological hurdle that might stop most ordinary people from killing themselves.

I wrote this, while I was working my last IT contract:

Once he had started, he knew there would be no stopping until it was done.

That's why it had taken him so long before he started his final journey; because he could picture every single step of it. He knew that he would just methodically follow the steps, and then it would be over. He could be cold and clinical when required; rational and calculated; measured in his approach. There would be no panic, no rise in pulse, no hyperventilation. To all outward appearances, there would be nothing that would cause alarm or alert suspicions in anybody, until he was at the very brink; in the final moments.

The imagery of the bridge was so ingrained in everybody's mind, because it was such a major landmark. The bridge had featured in so many films. The bridge had been photographed so many times. The bridge was a prominent part of company logos and corporate branding. The bridge was something you could close your eyes, and picture it in exquisite detail. If you were asked to draw the bridge from memory, you'd be able to make a passable sketch of it. Even if you'd never been to the bridge before, it felt like you had been there.

That's why he had never been to the bridge. He could never be sure if he was there just in his imagination - where there were no irreversible consequences - or if he was there in real life. It would be so easy to follow through with his day dream - his fantasy - in real life. He'd played it all through in his head so many times.

Staring up at the spot on the centre of the bridge, where it was highest above the river below, he could imagine himself walking up to that spot, knowing that when he reached that point, only the chest-high barrier would separate him from the edge. He knew that the hardest part would be the bold step of climbing over the barrier. It would be so easy to peer over the edge, while safely protected by the barrier, and then chicken out. That's why mental preparation was important. That's why visualising the whole thing in advance was important.

He wasn't unfamiliar with the psychological battle of overcoming your fears and hurling yourself over a mental obstacle. Stepping off an edge was something you did every time you stepped off the kerb and into traffic. Vaulting a barrier was something you did when you climbed over fences as a kid, playing with your friends. He had done bungee jumps, where it was up to you - free will - to actually jump. He had done skydives and parachute jumps, where it was up to you, whether or not you hurled yourself out of a perfectly good aircraft. He knew he could overcome the psychological challenge of cutting loose and falling. Falling, not attached to anything, tumbling free in space. Nothing to grab onto. No second chances. No way to change your mind once you throw yourself out into empty space.

People talked about cowardice, selfishness, but they missed the point. People didn't understand that have to be brave to choose to put your life in danger, especially when falling to your death is one of the obvious risks. You also have to be brave to choose death. Who knows what happens when you die? Fear of the unknown is why people cling to life: self-preservation instincts.

He'd been a leader in the mountains and on rock faces. The leader always took the biggest risk of falling. At some point, falling became inevitable. If you roll the dice enough times, your number is going to come up eventually. If you take risks, you have to accept the increased chance of injury and even death. He'd had friends who had been killed or permanently disabled. A certain amount of "it could never happen to me" bravado and gallows humour stopped people from losing their nerve. At funerals, people would say that "he/she died doing what they loved" which was true, but this was mainly to distract from the reminder of our mortality, while doing the things that we - the living - love.

Those psychological skills, as a rock climber, mountaineer, bungee jumper, skydiver... they all now worked against him. He knew what it felt like, to be on the edge of a perilous drop, with nothing holding him safe except his own grip, and his own sanity: to not hurl himself over the edge.
At the top of tall buildings, on a mountain, or at a cliff-top, it troubled him how easily he could just jump off. He had to stay away from the edge; not because he wanted to keep himself safe, but because he didn't know if he could trust himself to not just jump. It would be so easy. It was the ease of it that troubled him. The proximity to a fall that would deliver a swift death called to him like a siren. Instead of being appalled by the fear of death, there was an allure.

When learning to climb, people clung to the rocks with white knuckles. They kept their bodies pressed as close to the cliff face as they could, as if being flat against the surface would mean that they were somehow safer from the pull of gravity. Most people were not psychologically prepared to be climbers or mountaineers. People on mountains collapsed on the flat ground, when sheer drops to either side of them overwhelmed them. Our instincts tell us to lower our centre of gravity, but when you are up high, gravity can only pull you down. It doesn't work, putting yourself closer to the cliff or the ground. You will still fall to your death.

There was something different about him. Sure, he wasn't the only one with the strange mutation of the mind, that allowed him to overcome the self-preservation instincts, but it was rare. Most people dislike heights. Most people are scared of falling. Had he always had this ability to put himself in a position of peril, and to overcome the instinct to simply freeze, to overcome the instinct to not jump out of the aeroplane, or climb up high where you could fall.

Possibly through repeated exposure to perilous situations, he had become immune to the threat of death. He had become comfortable, being in situations that put your own mortality as the immediate and most pressing concern. Sure, you could die crossing the road, but most people aren't thinking about that. Those first few times that you jump out of a plane, you most certainly are thinking "what if my parachute doesn't open?".

But the what ifs can be set to one side. What if I end up in Hell? What if I change my mind, in the split second before I die, when I'm past the point of no return?

Death is the great unknown, and we intrinsically fear the unknown. He had become well practiced at entering the unknown, in mortal peril. Who knows how you're going to feel, plummeting towards the ground at terminal velocity? He knew.

In a way, he had answered too many questions that previously had comforting answers dreamt up by priests, shamen and witchdoctors. The answers of the unknown, and of the intrinsic fear of death that dwells within all mortal creatures, for the purpose of self preservation instinct, had been given by those who sought to profit from believable fairy-tales for simple minded idiots. His rejection of organised religion gave him little comfort, in an uncaring universe.

Science tried to give answers, but it could offer no meaning. Why was anything the way it was? It just was. Even science broke down at some point, demanding that those who studied it just accepted the cold hard equations that revealed themselves in the mathematical patterns that were observed in reality. However, science had nothing to say about how to adjust to the incomprehensible vastness of the universe, the insignificance of existence and the seeming finality of death.

Science demonstrably showed that there was nothing after death. After the neurons of your brain ceased in their electrical dance, you were gone. There is no soul. A person is nothing more than the quantum potential, held in a brain. Consciousness is nothing more than an illusion, an unintended consequence of the vast complexity of an organ belonging to an organism that was only intended to allow genes to replicate.

What had he done, opening Pandora's Box by studying theoretical physics, and all the applied sciences that were derived from the fundamental rules that governed the universe? It was if by pulling back the curtain, and shattering the illusion of the theatre that played out in front of his eyes, he had of course ruined the enjoyment of life.

The willing suspension of disbelief was necessary to get any enjoyment out of any theatrical presentation. For sure, the sets were made of wood, and the birds were painted onto the background and never flapped their wings. For sure, it wasn't really snowing when a stage-hand in the rafters tipped a bucket of white polystyrene balls from above, but the illusion was passable if you didn't pick it to pieces.

He had picked everything to pieces. By relentlessly asking "but why" until the question made no sense anymore, nothing made any sense anymore. When he had reached the realisation that he was nothing more than an insignificant speck in a universe that was as good as infinitely huge, and incalculably complex, it was hard to return to a simpler, happier time, when there was some mystery and joy in things. When you can reason everything from basic principles, there is no more magic in the world. When the magician's trick can be picked apart by logic and reason, he turns from an entertainer bringing joy and delight to his audience, to a con-man.

Everything had turned to shit for him. With a Midas touch, he now applied sharp reason and logic to everything he saw, and the curtain was permanently pulled back. He saw humanity's ugliness. He saw people fighting and fucking each other over, and just vast numbers of total idiots, everywhere he turned. His heart was broken. Where had the beauty and mystery all gone? What questions were there really left to ask, when it seemed like all could be answered on his own, using base principles.
Through extrapolation, he saw no more point in continuing his life, than a scientist would in repeating an experiment that has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt to yield the same results time and time again. Only a fool does the same things expecting different results, he was often fond of saying. If you keep putting garbage in, you'll keep getting garbage out.

The world had exhausted him. In love with ideas of building a utopia as a child and young man, he now accepted that there was no shortage of good ideas, but there was also no shortage of people who didn't want to see them implemented. There were too many vested interests. People had too much to lose. He couldn't fight the world anymore, with reason and logic, and arguments about the greater good. Nobody wanted the greater good. Most people just wanted to be at the top of the pyramid, king of the hill.

Perhaps that's why men climbed mountains, because for a brief moment when you stood on the summit, you could count yourself amongst just a handful of people who had faced great adversity to be higher than almost everybody else on the planet at that moment. Standing alone on the top of Mount Everest, anybody else you could see, with solid ground under their feet, would be literally beneath you. The air passengers and astronauts in the International Space Station don't count: they didn't walk there, on their own legs, and they're not standing on Earth.

That was a brave thing, to get into an aeroplane or a rocket. We have become desensitised to it, now that jet travel is commonplace, but imagine those first adventurers in space flight and aeronautics. Imagine again, how mad it is to put yourself in a position where you could fall to Earth.
So, he supposed it was apt, that he should end his life in this way: falling.

He walked up the steps, to where the bridge departed from the land, crossing the chasm below, held in space by the tensioned steel structure that towered above. He started to cross the bridge to the opposite side, that he had no intention of reaching.

In a dreamlike state now, his vision narrowed. His hearing was dulled. The fine detail of the universe around him seemed to fall away. He no longer noticed the cars driving across the bridge: their engine noise, and the rush of air as they went past. He no longer noticed the people, who were photographing themselves, talking to each other and headed to their own unknown destinations. He no longer noticed the rumble of a jet passing ahead, or the blast of a horn on a giant ship, that passed under the bridge, on the river below. He was now living his daydream, with everything playing out exactly has he had pictured it so many times before.

Reaching the centre of the bridge, he turned to the barrier. He couldn't hesitate for a single moment. If he hesitated, then doubt would enter his mind, and he would start to have thoughts: rational thoughts. He would start to re-analyse things. He would start to talk himself out of what he was going to do next. He would start to think about the "what if?"s He would start to enter some unknown situation, out of control from the destiny he had chosen. Things could easily get out of his hands. Some kindly good Samaritan could step in. The police could become involved. Psychiatrists. People to save him from himself.

He threw his leg over the barrier, and lowered his foot to the little ledge the other side without a pause. He then brought his other foot to meet the other on the ledge. He was now stood with his back to the river, facing onto the bridge, but on the outside of the barrier. He stared dead ahead for just a second, steeling himself to make the final moves.

He twisted his body 90 degrees, and swung his left foot out into space. Now, he swivelled on his other foot on the little ledge, and reached behind himself, grabbing the handrail of the barrier, with the bridge now at his back. He returned his left foot to the little ledge, with his feet now pointing outwards.

Pausing to look down, he didn't really see anything. His vision had glazed over. He knew that to focus on what was below him, and to consider the height that he was at, would be to invite a sense of peril into his mind. He had put himself into a trance-like state. All of the mental rehearsals beforehand had prepared him for this. All of the times he had pre-visualised these steps, meant that he was now following a dance routine, and his mind was quiet and calm. All he had to do was exhale, and make his final move.

His stomach rose in his chest, constricting in his neck, before he even released his grip. His body anticipated the weightlessness, before he had even stepped off the ledge. He knew he was going to jump, before he had even done it. He knew he had passed the point of no return - psychologically - before he had even physically started the process. The decision had been made in his brain, and the signals were being sent to his muscles, but he was already conscious that he had done it. He had jumped, even though his hand still gripped the barrier and his feet were still on the ledge.

Now, he was just a passenger. He felt himself let go of the handrail, and let his arms drop to his side. He felt himself squat slightly so that he could launch himself off the ledge. He felt himself straighten up, springing forward and away from the bridge. He brought his arms up, above him and pushed out his chest, forming a 'Y' shape with his body, as he cut through the air.
He didn't tumble. He fell fairly flat, with a slight incline towards the ground, as he gently rotated towards a head-first plummet to Earth.

He felt the air briefly rushing past his face, and heard the noise of wind get increasingly loud. He didn't see the ground coming towards him. It was all too quick, in the end.

Then, blackness and silence.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about being locked in...

Let me quote from a poem called The Panther by Rainer Maria Rilke:

His weary glance, from passing by the bars,

Has grown into a dazed and vacant stare;

It seems to him there are a thousand bars

And out beyond those bars the empty air.

 

The pad of his strong feet, that ceaseless sound

Of supple tread behind the iron bands,

Is like a dance of strength circling around,

While in the circle, stunned, a great will stands.

 

But there are times the pupils of his eyes

Dilate, the strong limbs stand alert, apart,

Tense with the flood of visions that arise

Only to sink and die within his heart. 

Some of us do not seem to suffer in captivity. Some of us even thrive. "This is great: it's so comfortable, warm and dry in this big building" one pig says to another. "Yeah, I know and they keep bringing us all the food we can eat". Have these hogs found hog's heaven?

Perhaps this analogy serves well to explain why I bite the hand that feeds me. Perhaps it explains why any short-term comfort does not outweigh my long-term unhappiness.

"Stop complaining and take the free food and be grateful to work in a nice warm office" you might admonish me. "There are other people in the world who'd dream of having what you have".

How low do you need me to go? I've been homeless, penniless. I've cleaned hotel kitchens and done the washing up. I've done shitty jobs for shitty money. I've lived on the streets, in parks, crisis houses, and hostels. I've accepted food handouts. You want me to sink even lower? How's about being locked up in police cells, or on secure hospital wards? Is that low enough for you?

I tasted freedom once, when I was briefly released from my lifelong cage, and it was such a sweet feeling. No exams, no holiday projects, no homework, no bullying, no kissing ass to teachers. No interviews, no performance evaluations, no targets, no made-up work, no kissing ass to bosses. Nobody ever said "you're screwing up your academic prospects" or "you're screwing up your career" if I didn't conform and consent to live in a cage.

Obviously it it would be lovely to be a painter, a writer, a musician, a poet, and to be able to cope in captivity. Captivity demands zero creativity. Captivity can't cope with creativity.

Personally, I think the two worlds have been designed to be mutually exclusive. If I tell people at my day job that I wrote a novel they look visibly uncomfortable. The two groups just don't know how to mix, mingle, let alone relate to one another, or ask non clichéd awkward questions.

Am I medically broken for not being able to happily live in my cage, being fattened up for slaughter? Am I medically broken for wanting to be free of mortgages, ISAs, savings accounts, watching my digital bank balance slowly increment upwards. along with the days, weeks and years counting down until the day I die? Am I sick, if I reject a life of stress and anxiety, which benefits my paymasters, not me?

I'm sure there's a medically sanctioned happy pill out there to shut up the part of my brain that says "why are you enslaving yourself?" and turns me into a good well-behaved consumer, dragging a ball-and-chain of debt around with me.

Should I run clamouring for my doctor to anaesthetise me from reality? Should I ask for a chemical lobotomy that would allow me to be well-adjusted to a fucked up world?

Tags: #depression #suicide #career 

This is a story about what happens when the slender thread that holds Damocles' sword dangling above, is severed...

I live a highly leveraged life. When things go well, I can find my savings replenished, debts repaid and the threat of destitution lifted. When things go badly, I can quickly find myself in distress.

Something went 'twang!' in my leg. I'm not sure whether it was muscle tearing, tendon snapping, or something else, but I stood up from where I had been seated on the floor for a couple of hours, and my foot and calf were partially numb and I had lost some range of movement.

That injury - or perhaps damage to an old injury - happened two days before I was due to start a new contract. I needed that new contract. I needed the income from that new contract to pay the rent, bills, service debts, pay friends back who lent me money and generally get on top of a deteriorating financial situation. I was very close to running out of money.

Unfortunately, my leg and foot got worse, not better. There was lots of swelling and I stopped urinating. It was pretty clear that my kidneys had shut down. I had to go to hospital.

The company that hired me said they'd delay my start date by one week. I thought that would be adequate, if I could be quickly discharged. Then, I realised that it was going to take more than a week of treatment to get my kidneys going again. I delayed my start date by another 3 days, and then 2 more days. In the end, there was a total delay of just two weeks, which doesn't sound too bad to me, considering just how sick I'd been in hospital.

I had to discharge myself against medical advice on the weekend before I started my new job. My foot was still swollen and I was taking a lot of painkillers. My kidneys still weren't working efficiently, and the hospital wanted to keep me on dialysis.

I clomped into that new job, wearing an ankle splint that held my floppy foot in place, and expanded enough to not put pressure on the swelling. I worked a couple of days with the ankle splint, and then switched over to a slipper and a crutch. A slipper was the only footwear I could find that would stretch enough to accomodate the swelling.

I worked 4 days and made a good first impression. I put in a lot of effort into hitting the ground running. Unfortunately, I had to go back to hospital for blood tests and potentially more dialysis. I got the all clear from the hospital, which was a big relief. However, nobody had done anything to fix my leg/foot and I hadn't even been able to get my painkiller prescription refilled.

The following Monday morning, I was taking a cocktail of whatever medication I'd managed to get my hands on. We had a meeting where we all stood up. I was unsteady on my feet. My mind was cloudy. It was fairly obvious that I was unduly affected by medication, right at that unfortunate moment. My boss suggested I take another week off work, to recover properly. I was incredibly grateful for that.

I spent a week in bed, popping painkillers. My foot improved to the point where I could wear a normal shoe and I didn't need a crutch, although my walking was rather ungainly. On the Monday I went back again, the adrenalin of the situation carried me through that all important first meeting and everything seemed to be going OK.

Then, nausea surged up inside me. I spent the whole morning, feeling like I was about to throw up at any minute. I had all kinds of meetings to attend and I had to sit there, feeling sick, just keeping my mouth shut about it and pretending to be OK.

At lunchtime, I forced down a can of cola, knowing it contained some anti-emetic chemicals that might calm my nausea.

Things were not improving and a colleague asked how things were going. I said that the day had started OK, but I'd been struggling a bit. I said I'd be OK.

My boss called an informal meeting with me and asked if everything was OK. I explained that I felt everything was fine in the morning, but then I'd been having waves of nausea. I said that I really didn't need to go home or anything and that everything would probably be OK. I really didn't feel fine. I felt sick and I wanted to lie down. My boss suggested I take some more time off, and come back when I was feeling better. I had secretly wanted to go home and lie down that afternoon. I was grateful to not have to sit bolt upright at a desk, feeling so sick. I said I'd be back the next day, or the day after at the latest. Colleagues cheerily waved goodbye.

When I got outside the office, I didn't feel relieved. I felt like I might have been tricked into taking the bait. I felt like I had fallen at the final hurdle. I felt like I had failed a final test. I should have toughed it out. It felt like I gave up too easily. It felt wrong.

I got home and collapsed into bed. By this point I was sweating hot & cold as well as overcome by nausea. It was a slight relief to be able to lie down in a quiet darkened bedroom. Then, I noticed a bunch of missed calls from my agent. I immediately knew what that would be about.

I wanted to put it off but I decided to face speaking to the agent right away. Using the layers of complexity of end-client, consultancy and agency arrangements, they cooked up some cock-and-bull story that was basically: "Whatever your boss said about going back to work when you're feeling better, that's not the case. You're not going back to work. Your contract is terminated".

I earned 4 days money. That was enough to pay for a month's rent & bills.

There's no way I can apply & interview for another another contract, get the legal and accountancy things set up, start working, submit my invoices and get paid, before I run out of cash.

My foot's still busted and I'm still taking painkillers - albeit at a much lower dose now - and I'm not exactly in much of a fit state to start work, let alone face another gruelling battle to find and win a new contract.

There's just no way the numbers add up. There's just no way I can be lucky enough to pay this month's rent - which is due in 4 days time - and get my cashflow moving again fast enough to not run out of money entirely.

I need to move all my stuff into storage and leave my apartment. I need to try and get the lettings agent to find somebody to take over the apartment from me, or else lose my deposit.

I need to box up all my stuff, and get the hell out of my home. I just can't afford it. I've run out of runway.

Where I'm going to live, I don't know. What I'm going to do next, I don't know.

My confidence has taken a huge dent, and I can't see myself facing gruelling interview panels anymore. I can't see myself suffering the highs and lows of the job market, after such a horrific recent ordeal. I can't see any kind of way that things are going to get sorted out, without total collapse and destruction.

Suffice to say, depression and suicidal thoughts stalk me at every turn. Of course I just want to die. Of course I don't want to lose my home and suffer the indignity of being destitute. I can't face the stress of fighting back from nothing again. I've been to the bottom and back, and I know I can do it, but do I want to repeat that? No way. I'm exhausted. I'd rather just lay down and die.

I was touched by the outpouring of support on Facebook, during my acute kidney failure. I'm aware that there's someone in my life who's grown very close to me. I have a sister, a niece. However, I can't picture any kind of recovery from this point. I just can't see a route forward, to any kind of position that I'll be able to tolerate. Things are going to get wrecked, and things are going to be almost impossible to repair and replace. That kind of devastating blow is a hard one to take and come back from.

Right now, I'm just avoiding dealing with reality. I'm sleeping, watching feature length documentaries and generally trying to bury my head in the sand.

Everything is far too overwhelming, and I know that my thoughts will automatically leap to the conclusion that suicide is the best option.

She was amazing while I was in hospital. In fact she's been amazing full stop. But, it's been exhausting and stressful for her, and it's negatively impacted her life, her health and her great career. I'm dragging her down. I'm bad news. She's genuinely going to be better off without me, now that I lost that contract and all hope is sunk.

I'm not going to make the argument anymore today, but that's what I'm going to make my next few blog posts about: an attempt to persuade you that the humane thing to do is to let me escape any further pointless suffering, and to spare the drawn-out pain that those who care about me will witness, as my life gets ripped to pieces by the vultures.

Fine margins. Things can come down to the finest of margins. One little thread goes snap, and a whole life comes crashing down.

It's the beginning of the end.

Tags: #suicide

This is a story about dance, trance and magic plants...

On the left hand side of the picture above, we see drugs that are considered to be medications. That is to say, they are considered to have some useful function in the practice of medicine. On the right hand side of the picture, we see drugs of abuse. Drugs of abuse are considered to have no useful function at all, and have been made outright illegal in all contexts.

In the middle of the picture are pills that are sometimes considered medicine and sometimes considered drugs. Probably the best example I can give you of such a dichotomy is ketamine (not pictured) which is well known as a horse tranquilliser. In fact, ketamine should be better known as a general anaesthetic, and the drug of choice for paramedics to treat pain in victims of traumatic injuries, for example in the aftermath of a road traffic accident.

Dihydrocodeine is an opiate, and opiates are analgesic. Analgesics don't cause numbness, but they do increase pain tolerance. With enough analgesic, you could saw off your own leg and feel everything, but you wouldn't care about the pain. Anelgesics are painkillers. Dihydrocodeine is a painkiller.

Tramadol is an opiate, therefore also an analgesic.

Zopiclone, Xanax, diazepam and etizolam are in the hypnotic/sedative/anxiolytic category. Zopiclone will help you have a good night of uninterrupted sleep and wake up without a drug hangover: it's an excellent sleep aid. Xanax is a fast-acting, short-lived tranquilliser: it's great for stopping panic attacks, and might be useful if you're suffering a bout of unbearable stress and anxiety or struggling to drop off to sleep. Diazepam is a long-lived tranquilliser that's good for longer term management of stress and anxiety. Etizolam is a result of prohibition: it's an imitation of diazepam that used to be legal to sell and possess as a 'research chemical'.

MDMA is the abbreviation for 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (and yes, I did just write that without having to look it up) which is more commonly known as Ecstasy, molly, mandy or generally as 'pills' in a clubbing/rave context. It's a stimulant and empathogen: it stimulates empathy. Its peak effects last 6 to 8 hours, but takes about 12 hours to wear off completely. The experiences can be very profound and long lasting. MDMA is extremely draining on the serotonin system of the brain, which can lead to a form of delayed comedown, coming days after taking the drug.

Crystal Meth is the commonly known name - thanks to the TV series Breaking Bad - of methamphetamine. It's a very powerful stimulant with effects lasting 12+ hours, and it disrupts sleep long after its desired effects have worn off. The more astute reader may notice that the final part of the chemical name of MDMA is the same as the chemical name of meth. As you might expect, there are similar effects: loss of appetite, increased energy and decreased need for sleep. However, while MDMA stimulates empathetic behaviour - hugging etc - meth tends to stimulate rather more hedonistic behaviours, such as fucking and masturbating to pornography. However, both drugs - being amphetamines - cause a man's dick to shrink to a little nubbin that's no use to anybody. Polydrug abusers might use sildenafil (Viagra) or other erectile dysfunction medications in conjunction with meth, in order to sustain a decent hard-on.

Spread out on the kitchen counter top, there's probably about £300 worth of drugs.

MDMA is extremely cheap, coming in at circa £10 per gram, which is enough for 5 very strong doses. Far cheaper than getting drunk in a pub or a bar. Pound for pound, MDMA represents excellent value.

Crystal Meth is the most expensive, coming in at about £100 per gram. Because of the crystalline form of the drug, it's far harder (although not impossible) to cut it with other things. Cocaine has an average street purity of less than 20%, because it's so tempting for every person who handles the coke in the chain, to cut it a bit and increase their profits. All white powders look the same, and numbing agents - like baby teething powder - will give the numbing effect that cocaine has. Crystal meth is generally pretty pure. It's usually smoked or injected. You do not want to mess with this stuff.

Diazepam is frighteningly cheap. 100 pills containing 10mg of diazepam each, will set you back £30 or maybe even less. The price has fallen drastically, from £1 a pill, to now 30 pence. It's important to remember that diazepam is a benzodiazepine, and the benzodiazepines are physically addictive. You can die if you take a load of diazepam and then stop taking it. It's not something you should mess with.

Xanax, by comparison, is very expensive. Because it's convenient to be able to take it and not be spaced out the next day, it's become America's favourite tranquilliser. The Rolling Stones might have sung about Mother's Little Helpers - referring to Valium - but now the housewife's choice is Xanax. Physically addictive, blah blah blah.

Zopiclone is nice and cheap and works really well without nasty side effects. The only problem is, becoming too reliant on it for sleep. At some point, you have to stop relying on pills and alcohol to get to sleep, and learn natural ways of making sure you can drop off and get your precious 8 hours. Try blue-light filtering glasses, not having any screen time after 10pm and sleeping with your smartphone and other electronics in another room, so there's no temptation to pick them up and start looking at Facebook or whatever.

Tramadol and Dihydrocodeine will take you on the journey to opium, morphine, fentanyl and diacetylmorphine (heroin). The cheapest opiate of all is heroin, because of the simple economic law of supply and demand. People fucking love heroin. I've smoked heroin on a few occasions and I enjoyed the feeling of carefree sleepiness, but I never got a rush of euphoria like I imagine you must get when you inject. I've never injected drugs. One should be mindful that the vast majority of new heroin addicts in America started their journey with opiates prescribed by their doctor - oxycontin, for example - and then moved to heroin because oxy is prohibitively expensive. Tramadol and codeine are pretty cheap, but they're also very weak compared with morphine and heroin.

There's no need to be afraid of any of these drugs in the sense that they're not going to leap down your throat and cause you to instantly become an addict who's prepared to murder your entire family for 50 pence, so you can have one more tiny little hit. These drugs are not like Venomous Agent X, which can kill you almost instantly if you absorb even the tiniest amount through your skin. You do not want to touch a pin head sized amount of VX nerve agent, but you can safely handle Ecstasy pills, shards of ice (crystal meth) and all of the other drugs pictured, and you will come to no harm at all.

Taking these drugs once, or even twice or three times, is very unlikely to result in addiction. You may enjoy the sensations; the experience, but it's quite possible that you might find the effects of the drug to be extremely unpleasant. Certainly, MDMA can be very intense and the intoxication of tramadol can be alarming. Interestingly, the calming effect of the benzodiazepines is often the best treatment for a 'bad trip' that you very much want to end. Sadly, there's no 'off' switch for most drugs. It's like when you've had too much to drink and you're throwing up: you wish that you could stop feeling so sick and that the room would stop spinning, but there's no instant fix.

To have this vast array of drugs just lying around, seems to invite disaster and is a risk in terms of the illegality of possessing so many controlled substances. Are you going to ring the police? Do you think I should go to jail? Is it right to ruin my life, because we should follow the law to the letter, even though the law is an ass?

To address the second concern: doesn't this invite disaster? I've had enough disasters in my life. I've reached a point where I'm rather sick of the drama and the near-death experiences. I'm rather sick of the paranoia and the comedowns. The drugs don't even work any more, because my brain has become so used to powerful narcotics. My brain is literally saying "you've been doing this shit for far too long". I'm almost at the point where drugs bore me.

Right now, I need tramadol, because I'm in a lot of pain because of my leg injury. The zopiclone will be handy when I run out of pregablin, which I'm using to sleep through my pain and discomfort. Having Xanax and diazepam lying around is never a terrible thing. At least benzos are a lot cheaper than a bottle of wine or two, a lot less fattening and a lot less liver damaging. It is a slippery slope though, and it is easier to get hooked on benzos than it is to become an alcoholic, because there isn't really a hangover per se, with the benzos.

The MDMA and the meth should probably get flushed down the loo. I'm too old to go clubbing/raving, and the crystal meth tips me straight into a hypomanic episode and turns me into a total sex maniac.

The dihydrocodeine will gather dust in the medicine cabinet, as a strong painkiller, in case I ever have a nasty injury again and the doctors are dicks about giving me prescription drugs to relieve pain. I do think that doctors in America have been foolishly over-prescribing opiate painkillers, because they believed the marketing of the pharmaceutical companies.

I'm sure you think that this cornucopia of chemicals is crazy. I'm sure you think this deluge of drugs is deranged. I'm sure you think this mass of medications is madness.

However, it's fucking hassle having to get a doctor's appointment, wait for the allotted date and time, and then persuade the doctor to give you what you want and need. There's every chance that the doctor may end up sending you away empty handed. Far better to have your own well-stocked pharmacy cupboard, and have whatever you need whenever you need it.

Of course, the nanny state is there to protect us from ourselves, which is why we arrest people who are about to climb mountains, don't we?

Prohibition has failed spectacularly, because it has created highly efficient black markets. Prohibition has failed spectacularly, because it has needlessly ruined lives of otherwise law-abiding citizens. Prohibition has failed, because the middle classes take just as many drugs as poor people, but the rich middle-class people are very rarely prosecuted. Prohibition has failed, because drugs are just as widely available as ever, and the main beneficiaries are corrupt customs, corrupt police and organised crime gangs. Prohibition has failed, because it fails to acknowledge the inescapable fact that people are always going to make, sell, buy and take drugs, no matter what the law says. Prohibition has failed, because it makes people paranoid and exacerbates mental health problems. Prohibition has failed because it directs money that could be used to help the tiny proportion of people who struggle with addiction, instead of using vast amounts of resources to persecute ordinary law-abiding citizens, who just want to smoke a bit of dope or take a pill when they go clubbing on a Saturday night.

You know prohibition has failed spectacularly, when the government makes mushrooms - which grow naturally in the ground all over the UK - a Class A drug, in the same category as crack cocaine and heroin. Are you fucking nuts? Are you fucking telling me that we should stuff our prisons full of people who picked a fucking mushroom in a fucking field?

Imagine this conversation:

Prisoner A: What you been nicked for?

Prisoner B: Murder. What about you?

Prisoner A: I picked a mushroom

That is quite genuinely the situation that the government introduced into UK law. I'm being quite serious here. Mushrooms are considered just as bad as crack cocaine. I wonder what the government were smoking when they made that insane decision.

As we know, when a government bans a drug, then clever chemists create another one that's almost identical. In America, they have a law that makes analogues illegal, so only whole new classes of drugs can get around their laws. All kinds of obscure chemicals - legal highs - burst onto the scene thanks to America's attempts to get clever with prohibition.

The UK government has gone a stage further and attempted to ban anything that has a psychoactive effect. That means that we're all 'in possession' of illegal drugs, because our bodies are stuffed full of chemicals that are psychoactive. It also means that drugs will simply get sold in 'kit' form: mix the ingredients at home and hey presto! There's your drug of choice. People will always find a way around the stupidity of prohibition.

The fear that has been stoked up by these terrible prohibition policies, has created a squeamishness about being able to have honest open conversations about drug taking. We should be well informed, not ignorant. We shouldn't be paranoid about being persecuted by the authorities. You have to be fairly brave to stick your head above the parapet. A lot of corrupt officials make a lot of money, through the ongoing boom times of the black market. There is an insatiable demand for drugs - and there always will be - which is why there is so much resistance to making drug taking into something that's safer, regulated, quality controlled and a well understood problem, rather than something cloaked in secrecy and hampered by stigma.

I've had problems with addiction in the past, but it makes me a stronger more well-rounded person, to have been through that ordeal and to know what difficulties are faced by people who become ensnared in the traps that have been set for them: draining their bank balance, destroying their health, and driving them to criminality. Why can't I talk openly about my experiences? Why do I have to be anonymous, hiding away with other 'dirty' junkies, in church halls where we self-flagellate for our 'sins' and hang our heads in shame.

Obviously I've had enough of prohibition, but I've had enough of being stigmatised and shamed into silence and anonymity too. I've had enough of people's wilful ignorance, when it comes to drugs and the lives of drug users. I've had enough of ridiculous horror stories and misinformation.

Perhaps you didn't even read this far, if you're the kind of person whose mind I'm trying to open, but perhaps you did, because on the face of it I'm an educated middle-class white professional man, working for prestigious companies in seemingly important roles. You can't quite imagine me smoking heroin, can you?

I'm challenging your preconceived ideas. I'm making you question what you thought you knew, and what you thought was obvious and without exception.

Tags: #drugs

This is a story about comfort zones...

Relax and put your feet up, I'm about to tell you the tale of two sedentary situations.

I'm institutionalised. Put me inside a hospital or a head office, and I'll feel right at home.

Most people don't like hospitals: they associate them with pain, death and stress. Most people don't find hospital relaxing; quite the opposite in fact. Hospitals are places of mysterious rhythms and routines that seem chaotic to most people. There are different sounds that all the machines make when they're working, and when they're making noises that indicate that something is going wrong. There are different NHS staff, in different roles, in different clothes, who appear at different times.

My week in hospital that I'm going to tell you about - although I spent the best part of two weeks in hospital  - sounds kinda nice, because I was never really afraid or outside my comfort zone. I find the functioning of complex organisations to be fascinating. I love observing the systems and the people, trying to second-guess what's going to happen next, and what's going on behind the scenes. I like asking loads of questions and adding whatever I can learn to my growing body of knowledge that allows me to feel more in control of my destiny and more able to know what to expect next, than the tense, anxious and extremely tedious waiting game that most patients face on the National Health Service.

Once one has resigned oneself to the maximum speed that a massive organisation can function at, the whole hospital experience becomes quite meditative. Sitting in Accident & Emergency, you can fill your time sneakily looking at the other patients in the waiting room, and trying to guess what symptoms they reported to the reception staff when they arrived. Shortness of breath, chest pains, numbness in one side, drooped face, earlier seizures, unconscious or otherwise delirious patients will normally arrive by ambulance, but any walk-in presentations will obviously jump to the front of the queue. Then, there are the people with minor injuries who have put up with their trivial ailments for days or even weeks. The reception staff aren't allowed to tell them to fuck off, so these idiots must sit for hours on end, only to be told off for wasting valuable NHS resources, quite rightly. In the middle, there are nasty workplace injuries, DIY accidents and total wildcards. You usually get seen by a triage nurse within an hour.

Having been admitted into Accident and Emergency, there is a brief flurry of activity while routine blood samples are taken, and perhaps you're hooked up to a drip. A barrage of questions is fired at you. Examinations seem to be probing and thorough. Surely these professionals are going to have this problem fixed in no time?

It's always a mistake to believe that important things are happening and it won't be long before the right diagnosis is reached and the right treatment is administered. One should be aware that the function of A&E is to rapidly assess whether you're about to die, whether you might need to be properly admitted to the hospital, or whether you can be discharged swiftly, suddenly and brutally.

Once on a ward, a certain amount of orientation and induction is necessary, but all wards function with great similarity. All nurses are grateful if you don't press the call button all the time, for trivial things, as well as being cantankerous and discourteous. Remembering one's Ps and Qs at all times is a pleasant distraction from boredom, pain and discomfort. There will be shifts, and it's important to be mindful of when these shift changes occur. The NHS staff see so many patients come and go, and many are lucky enough to only have a very short stay in hospital, so there will be a certain initial reluctance to absorb you into the system: the ward wants to spit you out undigested.

Having overcome some initial resistance, you can relax into hospital life. Your day begins with your vital signs being measured. Then blood samples are taken. Then there is the hullabaloo of breakfast, ridiculously early in the morning at 7am. Then, there is nothing. All of that disturbance keeps the night shift staff briefly busy before they hand over to the day shift. The day shift hope to be able to ease their way into the working day gradually. Consultants start to appear at around 10:30am, followed by a gaggle of registrars and junior doctors. The most important time of the day arrives: choosing your lunch and dinner for the next day. By the time that lunch is served, you can't remember what you're going to get because it wasn't long ago you had to choose what to eat tomorrow. The meals are pleasantly bland and easy enough to eat. Mealtimes are something to look forward to, even if the food is far from gourmet. Expecting much to happen during the day, in terms of treatment, is a mistake. Anticipation of treatment that has been promised can only lead to frustration and disappointment. The NHS does what the NHS does, and it does it at its own speed. Things cannot be rushed or expedited. Complaining or asking staff when things are going to happen or what's going on, will only piss them off and ruin their day. Dinner arrives surprisingly early. Treatment can be sprung upon you at the end of the day, just when you thought you were going to have a relaxing evening, or you can have a lengthy wait until you get your pain medication and anything to help you sleep. Dropping off to sleep is not easy, especially as the day shift will hand over to the night shift loudly at the end of your bed, and there will be more vital signs being measured before you'll be left in peace to try to get some rest.

And so, my week in hospital consisted of lying on a bed that had buttons that could make me sit up or lie down, with no effort required at all. I was able to elevate my bad leg, to reduce the swelling. I was brought paracetamol every 4 hours, tramadol every 6 hours, and 2 hot meals a day. There were few unexpected interruptions, and if I was well enough, I would have been able to read, listen to music, browse the internet and watch films & TV, pretty much all day, all evening and as late at night as I wanted. I could stake a piss without even having to get out of bed. Friends travelled to see me. Doctors came to my bedside, and I was wheeled to wherever I needed treatment, by hospital porters. I was under no obligation to do anything, except to get better, and all my basic needs were met. My lovely girlfriend augmented the hospital care, so I wanted for absolutely nothing. Blissful, right? I could have stayed for a month, and I would have even earned £676 (I pay myself minimum wage).

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Why then was I in such a hurry to discharge myself? Why would I leave the lap of luxury, and risk my health and even my life, by leaving the safe confines of hospital?

Well, that's a topic of discussion I've covered at length in prior blog posts, so I invite you to peruse the archives.

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People rarely change their bank. We open current accounts in our teens, and we keep them into adulthood. Some of us even opened special accounts when we were children, and we have a certain nostalgic brand loyalty for the bank that we've been a customer of since we were youths.

The 'big four' or 'big five' high-street banks have not changed for my entire lifetime. We have (in alphabetical order) Barclays, HSBC [Midland], Lloyds [TSB], Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander [Abbey National]. These banks hoover up 85% of all the current account banking customers in the UK.

Just like current account holders, people join these banks when they're young - often their first job - and tend to stay loyal. Many people who I deal with on a day-to-day basis have worked for 15, 20 or 25+ years for the same bank that's been so good to them that they've never felt compelled to leave. Everybody bitches about their job, but a bank employee knows that they're very well looked after and they'd be mad to go off in search of a better job.

I've worked for 3 of the big 5, and they're institutions that I feel very at home in. Some people might think that I work in a rather high-stress environment, where it's imperative that I'm up to date with the latest cutting-edge developments in my field, and I need to perform in an exceptionally demanding role. The truth is, once you're in the door, you're in for good. You get your feet under the desk, and adopt the right kind of jaded resignation, that everything is going to be slow, sloppy, shit and a massive festering pile of neglected crap that nobody gives two fucks about, and you'll fit in just fine. Moan as much as you want - everybody does - but for God's sake don't go on any crusades to change or improve anything. Just settle in, get comfortable and enjoy the masochistic experience of being in a world where not a lot gets done and the right answer is always "no".

A lot of people get into technology and engineering, because they like to fix things and make stuff that works. They like to build stuff. They like the feeling of completing a technical project, throwing the switch and seeing their hard work put into action. A bank is a terrible, terrible place to build anything that will ever see daylight.

Having come to terms with the fact that any ambitions you had of building useful things that people might actually use, will be forever thwarted by a bank, you can begin to enjoy the ridiculous game. You command millions of pounds of budget, and you will achieve nothing. When you estimate how long you think it will take you to do something, you double your original estimate, double it again, and then double it one final time for good luck, and it's still not long enough. When you are asked about the feasibility of doing something, or whether you have any spare bandwidth to perhaps do something extra, you instinctively say no; it can't be done; no chance. Nobody ever got fired for saying no. In fact, people start to love you and think you're great at your job, if you get really good at saying no.

Delivering pieces of important technology, 100% working and of high quality, in short timescales and with hardly any resources, is liable to cost you your sanity. "It can't be true" colleagues will proclaim, even as the results are staring them in the face. From denial, your colleagues will move to the belief that it's a one-off fluke, or they will hate you. Colleagues will mainly hate you for making them look like totally incompetent blundering slowcoach fools. Nobody ever made friends and got ahead in a bank, by doing a good job. Finding yourself burnt out from the exertions of persuading people of the merits of doing things properly, without pointless delays, you find yourself suddenly alone; isolated. You may create some kind of mythical; legendary; cult status around yourself and your achievements, but you have no future with the bank: the bank doesn't want your type, and it will unceremoniously eject you.

You can work for a bank for as long as you like, provided you just go along with things. Never challenge anything. Never push for change. Never go the extra mile. For sure, banking demands that you be seen to be going the extra mile, but it's all just for show; part of the act.

So, if you want to be really successful in your banking career, you learn the rhythm and routine of your department. You learn when your boss arrives at work, and you get to your desk before him or her, and leave with them in the evening, making pathetic small-talk. You learn who's got kids, what ages they are, and what stressful childcare arrangements are a pain in the arse for your colleagues. You learn how everybody gets to work. You learn whether they're morning people or night owls. You learn their interests: topics to get them talking; things that enthuse them. You learn who takes their job seriously; who's ambitious; who's jaded and demotivated. You learn who drinks heavily, smokes, gets stoned. You learn who's lived, and who's been insulated. You learn who's worked hard, and who's had advantages. You learn when to make yourself scarce and blend into the background, and when to promote yourself. You learn the things that need to regularly get done, and you discover many things that don't need doing. You learn how to do just enough to please the handful of important and influential people, and how to avoid having to do any pointless busywork.

You can't prepare yourself for boredom. There is nothing in the world worse than boredom.

My first week back in the office was 4 days of boredom. I've seen it all before, done it all before, and I'm the master of minimal effort. The only problem is that I need to look busy to make a good first impression. I forbade myself from reading the news on my laptop. I tried really hard to not look at my phone too much, and to pretend to be busy.

My boss and his boss, both sit right next to me. My boss is a nice guy who seems to have a paternal nature. The big boss talks too much and doesn't realise that I find him amusingly stupid. I listen, make the right noises and say some encouraging sounding things, but I'm completely failing to disguise my contempt for this fellow, but luckily he's the only one who fails to see my total lack of respect for him, except for my bosss. I endeavour to make my boss feel that my number one priority is in supporting him in making our team look good in the eyes of the big boss. I try to make the big boss feel in control, while diverting any respect he commanded away from him. There's a mutiny in progress, but nobody will realise until it's past the point of no return.

Virtually nothing can be achieved in 4 days in a bank, and I've achieved far more than anybody expects of me, even though I've spent a considerable amount of time in the toilets, browsing Facebook and writing amusing things for my friends to read. I invested as much time as I possibly could in developing a good relationship with my boss and my team, but I have nothing of value to contribute yet. Aside from dazzling my colleagues with my all-round technical knowledge, my main task is to stay the fuck out of their way and not disrupt things too much.

Regrettably, I've had to take Friday off work. Making a good first impression can only be done once, and the lasting image that my colleagues will have of me - the guy wearing the robocop ankle splint - will now be tainted with the fact that I had to take time off work, giving the impression that I'm unreliable and prone to sickness. Damage to your image like that can be irreparable.

Sometimes, it's desirable to be known for being unhelpful, regularly late to work and somebody who leaves on time in the evenings. Being somebody who walks out the office door, even when there's a major crisis, is the sign that you have become perfectly adjusted to bank culture. However, the clever ploy is to try hard at first, to develop an image of being a hard worker, but in actuality, you are avoiding work and responsibilities at all costs. In time, you will have the best of both worlds: being thought of as dedicated and useful, but actually adding no value at all.

My foot has been steadily getting more and more painful through the week, and I've been popping painkillers throughout the day. I've passed the week in a dreamlike state; heavily medicated. Having strong coffee in the morning to make me sharp and alert enough to make a good first impression, has meant that I've been able to stay awake in some horribly boring meetings, but it has made me a little hypomanic, causing me to be far too outspoken at times, but I think I've got away with it.

I've earned more in a single day in the office, than I would for almost a whole month of being in hospital. That kind of cash does motivate you to get out of bed in the morning, and to stay at your desk with your mouth shut, when really you can't stand being in the office.

You'd think it wouldn't be that hard, being a bit bored, going to a few meetings, talking to people, saying fairly standard things that are obvious. Having the exhaustion of being unwell, plus being in pain and discomfort, make things hard for sure, but in a way, it's been an excuse to be fucked up on drugs for 4 days and get paid an obscene amount of money for the privilege.

It seems fairly clear that if I can dial the intensity down to 4 or 5 from 11 - and the dial only goes to 10 - and ease my way into a gentle routine that I can just about cope with, then I'll be able to blend in for years. There's no reason why I wouldn't be liked and respected. There's no reason why I can't be perceived as doing a great job, even though I'm not doing anything useful. That's the main thing I need to remember: I'm specifically there to not do anything.

Saying the right thing at the right moment - being the smartest guy in the room (as someone I know once jibed) - comes easily to me, and it does unfortunately command a disproportionate amount of respect versus doing some real work instead.

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I'm not sure which week was more comfortable. Certainly hospital was more physically comfortable, but I was highly stressed about losing my lucrative hard-won contract and being too tired to be able to function when I started work. My job is extremely easy and I anticipate no problems, except coping with boredom and my propensity to blow a fuse with frustration at the snail-like pace that everything moves at.

Sleeping in my own bed has been far superior to the hospital bed, but getting up in the morning is never pleasant. However, my lie-ins were so ruined in hospital - by irritatingly early breakfast and the like - that I have actually been getting ready for work, relatively painlessly.

Commuting is hell, but because I know it's hell, I'm able to impassively observe the shit that I'm going through; detach. Commuting is the price that one must pay, if you wish for your gross income to exceed a year's average salary in the space of just 8 weeks.

How can anybody handle such contrast? It's insane. It's surreal.

How can I walk out of a hospital, against medical advice, and go straight into a brand new job where they're oblivious of just how sick I am and how messed up my brain is by strong medication? Can't they see that they have an imposter in their mix? Obviously not.

That, effectively, sums up the bipolarity of my life. The ups and the downs. The highs and the lows. What more extreme example could I come up with?

Tags: #bipolar #hospital #NHS