vestigialtext

[vestigialtext]

Euphorroria

[TW suicide, self-harm] 

Imagine you turn around there’s suddenly a perfectly circular swirling hole open in the floor, emanating a hazy purple glow and a kind of pulsing, reverb-drenched celestial siren song, like the single sickest shoegaze riff you’ve ever heard.

You think, huh, wow, that’s a pretty weird trip-hazard, and erect some cordons to stop anyone falling in. But you become fixated on the hole, staring in unblinking for hours. It’s curious, it’s beautiful, it’s sonically enchanting, it’s perfumed with a kind of partially floral, partially cardomomic, partially metallic scent which just encroaches on the sickly-sweet – but you still want a taste.

The hole, as it happens, is a portal to insanity.

This is how I experience hypomania; standing steady-of-foot behind the barrier, gazing at wonder to the insanity, hearing its call but keeping a safe distance.

Mania would see me leap the barrier, approach too close, and invariably slip in screaming.

Psychosis, meanwhile, would see me fall in, try to either fight it or fuck it, turn it inside out and prolapse it back through into rational reality, the fabric of which world begin to collapse as internal and external landscapes collide and splinter into one and other and I approach self-oblivion.

A full psychotic break has only happened twice in my lifetime, and frankly I’m lucky to be here writing this drivel – my second episode, nearly a decade ago, almost killed me and left me with almost impossible-to-comprehend scars I’ll bear for the rest of my life, scars invisible to the observer but forever altering my perception of the world, scars I’ve made peace with but which continue to niggle every day. Without getting deep into the nightmarish details, I tried – and, thank fuck, failed – to blind myself, resulting in bilateral scarred corneas which mean that, while my vision remains entirely functional and luckily unimpaired to any significant degree, I experience constant, curious aberrations, especially in low-light where the world melts into a sea of halos.

Importantly, I’m still alive. I very nearly leapt into the Thames on the morning of 10/03/2010, and not through depressive, I-can’t-bear-to-live anguish, but due to chasing immensely powerful delusions and hallucinations to the same place that almost cost me my sight. There’s a lot I’ve written and lot I will write about my experiences of psychosis – particularly re the corrupted internal logic that catalysed much of my bizarre, life-ruining behaviour in 2003 and 2010 – but not here, not now.

Mania, the losing control of my inhibitions and tripping headfirst into hyperactive chaos, has occurred three times in my life, but only progressed through to psychosis twice. I had my first (and to date, only quickly-controlled) manic episode age 16, following a few months as an inpatient at an adolescent psychiatric in Newcastle (remember when the NHS used to offer those kind of services lol). Up until that point, I had been being treated for major depression, which was my diagnosis until the mania emerged. I don’t quite remember the specifics – I celebrated the 20th anniversary of my bipolar 1 diagnosis last month – but one day it seems the depressive fog suddenly cleared and my mind, robbed of feel-good shit for so long, lurched as far as it could in the opposite direction as some kind of bizarre compensatory push.

Perhaps the flip was inevitable, perhaps it was triggered by a chemical predisposition to mania plus guzzling down combinations of all the anti-depressant variants that could be feasibly prescribed for the preceding three months. Who can say. Whatever the case, suddenly I was bouncing around the hospital halls like Sonic the Hedgehog, talking borderline-gibberish garbage incessantly, getting back deep into abandoned A-level art projects and attempting to start roughly 1,000 extracurricular projects simultaneously. The doctors quickly took notice, brought me down with lithium and revised my diagnosis.

Hypomania, (literally “below mania”), is something I experience on average a few times a year, hitting in waves, usually with a clear trigger. It’s a glimpse at the maelstrom of insanity without actually dipping a toe. Delusional ideas can creep into my head, but I can analyse and dismiss them rationally with a firm “No.” I now have enough insight and experience of my own sensations and mood pattern recognition to usually ward off a manic episode, typically with self-seclusion and/or self-management, sometimes with medication. Zopiclone, a sedative, has proven to be something of a magic bullet at sniping down incoming mania, so I try to keep a stash handy – I popped one Saturday gone just to try and keep the train on the rails after barely sleeping for two weeks straight.

After accepting I was an alcoholic six years ago, I’ve gone entirely teetotal, and that itself has greatly improved my ability to monitor myself, to try and regulate my own mood – previously, I’d (technically binge)-drink more or less every single day, and drown out any troublesome hypomanic episode with even more booze, remaining entirely functional (if prone to starting each day with a big purging sick and then having a couple of practically clockwork spew breaks at work) until my liver and my nervous system started wildly red-flagging at the sheer relentless demands I was asking of them, the perpetual nature of my misguided self-medication, so I decided to stop dead drinking or risk further ruining my health.

Without in any way wishing to belittle or underestimate the impact of the disease (severe, bulk-of-a-year depression episodes have also nearly killed me) I feel like depression is something even people who don’t suffer from mental health problems can at least begin to comprehend, can take a stab at imagining the experience. Perhaps not the depths – the eroding, claustrophobic mental space, the glimmer of hope on the horizon disappearing into darkness, all sensory input turning to a grey mush, the head-in-a–tomb depersonalisation – but most people can relate to being “sad”, most people have experienced tragedy at some point in their lives. Hypomania, however, is a trickier prospect to explain. But I’ll try.

I can’t speak for others who experience the condition, but in my case, hypomania manifests itself across my whole physical, mental, emotional spectrum. Although other factors come into play, the biggest single trigger for me seems to be sleep deprivation. It’s no news that circadian rhythms and bipolar disorder are intrinsically interlinked, and I have very real first-hand experience. As a shiftworker (occasional nightshift worker) who lives on the opposite side of London to my office and has a four-month old daughter, my current sleep hygiene is pretty... ropey to say the least, so I’m trying to be extra vigilant. A few nights back-to-back of little sleep (I’m talking a hour or two, at the best of times my sleep is shit anyway and five hours is a good stint) I can often feel my mood changing gears.

Simply put, when I’m hypomanic, the world is a more engaging place; more detail fills the cracks, more edges pique my interest. All of my senses sharpen up – my vision becomes cleaner, brighter, more vivid, sound seemingly has additional frequency space, imperceptible before. My senses of smell and taste overwhelm me, aromas become intoxicating and normal food takes on gourmet qualities. My energy level skyrockets without any additional external input; I have much more impetus, enthusiasm about life, work, whatever. I can literally feel my mind starting to function differently – but not necessarily more efficiently – taking shortcuts, randomly accessing memories in remarkable detail without any prompt. I can think faster, but with less focus; I’m more distractible and will happily shoot off on wild tangents with complete disregard for my goal. Depending on circumstances at home or work, hypomania is a mixed bag – any lethargy is dispelled and my agency and job satisfaction is heightened, but I might, say, approach 20 tasks simultaneously when sequentially would be more rational.

Depending on social context, I expend varyingly extreme amounts of effort to varying degrees of success attempting to mask a hypomanic episode. You know how your body never really “heals”, and scurvy horrifyingly opens up old scars and shit? That’s kind of what my ever-simmering mental illness feels like when i’m consistently deprived of sleep for whatever reason, the cracks start appearing and it kinda seeps out a bit lol. I am well aware my hypomanic demeanour and delivery can alarm people, and I do try really, really, really hard to suppress things or if absolutely required, just remove myself from situations where a lasting, detrimental opinion could be formed. I am also fully aware I can become borderline intolerable to my long-suffering and remarkably patient wife, and I try to mitigate the condition’s impact on domesticity, again, only ever partially-successfully (sorry, Kate). On any given day, high, low, or creamy middle, I’d estimate around about 90% of my effort is put towards just trying to appear normal to others, trying to blend in. I imagine many other mentally ill people are broadly intolerant to open-plan hotdesking (not to mention the insatiable clock-in-and-hit-marks demands of capitalism).

I can physically feel my body “running hotter” when I’m hypomanic, like an overclocked CPU frazzling on a motherboard; headaches spark quickly if I don’t drink enough water. I’m not especially clued up on chemical synthesis of naturally-occurring hormones etc. but I kinda get the impression hypomania is little like organic, high-on-your-own-supply MDMA.

Hypomania seems to foster within me a deeper connection to and longing to revisit all of my favourite music, art, writing, films, games, people – chiefly, I go on obsessive listening binges of records I adore. As I mentioned earlier, my hearing changes when I’m hypomanic – songs sound better, richer, more punchy. One of my fondest ever memories of mental illness (sadly ruined by slipping into psychosis shortly afterwards) was walking around out at night listening to My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless on shitty earbuds via a Spotify stream and still hearing subtle elements blossoming from the mix I’d never clocked before; layers of what sounded like processed flutes fluttering under the wall of guitars, gentle tonal ebs and flows, what seemed to be entire hidden tracks I was only just tuning in to, a secret sound world unveiled.

This might well just be wild conjecture, but I like to think maybe some bands – the bands who “get it” – deliberately bury this audio information deep within the mix, only to be decoded by specific mental setups, be they drug-indicted or naturally, hormonally occurring, breadcrumb trails left in the studio production as a little nod by whoever put the music together that they understand the confusion, the dislocation and alienation of mental illness, something extra beyond the lyrics. It might well be bullshit but it brings me great comfort. I’ve put together a playlist of some favourite tunes I suspect were written about hypomanic states, knowingly or otherwise, or instead conjure up that specific vibe.

To be honest, the hardest thing I find about dealing with episodes of hypomania is that they can feel so good it’s very hard to not attempt to stoke the sensation, prolong it, succumb deeper to it. That way oblivion lies; please stand behind the yellow line at all times.

[vestigialtext]

One year vegan

[CN: food]

After about six months of not eating meat, last summer I decided to try and ditch animal products altogether. Though the initial period was a challenge, mostly due to the total lack of research I did before taking the plunge, I feel nearly a year later I’m getting a pretty good grip on things. It’s genuinely one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, and I only wish I’d made it sooner. While this post isn’t intended as an exhaustive beginner’s guide if you’re considering veganism, I hope I can pass on some tips from my personal experience.

If you’re getting into veganism for ethical reasons, however strong your personal views on animal rights become, remain sensitive in what you say around others and what you post online. Yes, the meat, dairy and egg industries inflict horrible abuses on unimaginable numbers of animals during their artificially accelerated and cruelly curtailed lives - often in ways not immediately apparent or partially obscured by labels such as free-range or organic - but going on the offensive without provocation will simply undermine your cause and make you look like a judgemental jerk.

If you’re going to be outspoken about your choices, in my opinion, your ‘goal’ should never be to challenge (or deliberately shame) individuals into giving up animal products, but instead to promote veganism as a viable, healthy, balanced, affordable and accessible lifestyle. Income, social inequality, location, information, product availability, time constraints, peer pressure, food intolerance and complex personal situations are all factors which can dissuade or prevent interested parties from adopting an entirely plant-based lifestyle, and you should remain aware that circumstances can effectively bar others from properly contemplating a switch even if they wish to. When I switched to veganism I lived in a capital city, I had a full-time job, I had been cooking vegetarian food at home with my vegetarian girlfriend for years, and I had a health food shop and a vegan café within 20 seconds’ walk of my front door. Not everyone’s circumstances are so fortuitous.

Please don’t be the kind of vegan who spouts off shaming rhetoric and reinforces stereotypes, giving vegans a bad name and actively pushing people away from the lifestyle, please don’t parrot PETA factsheets (in fact, you’d be best to dismiss PETA altogether, its campaigning tactics are gross), and please don’t jump to condemn those who choose to make or are forced to make different consumer choices to you. Although it is theoretically possible to eat cheaply as a vegan, it remains hard while maintaining variety and ensuring you meet all of your nutritional needs. Remember too that no one is born vegan, and if you realised early on that this was a lifestyle you wished to adopt, then good for you I guess - but many people grow up in omnivorous households and lead large portions of their adult lives as omnivores. It took me 30 years to seriously contemplate what I was eating and why, and though I’d felt a sense of guilt for years every time I ordered a 3am lamb shish or ate a McDonald’s Extra Value Meal, that guilt did not outweigh my desire to eat meat until recently. Essentially: big-up what you’re eating rather than bully others for what they eat.

In an ideal world, once you make a big change in your life, unwanted traces of old traits would vanish. Sadly, that’s almost never the case - residue of past lives lingers on and you’re typically forced to tolerate it for an indeterminable time, perhaps permanently. I see my decision to go vegan as a slow cross-dissolve between scenes, not an abrupt cut. I’ve always been frugal with clothes, and I’ve worn the same leather belt pretty much every day for the past decade, still wearing it as I type this. I will almost certainly never buy another leather belt again, but I’m not going to rush and replace this one until the day I feel uncomfortable wearing it, or I come across an alternative I like. I’ve still got plenty of wear left in my few pairs of leather-swooshed Nikes, and while my next trainers will be an eye-wateringly expensive, eco-friendly, ethically-produced animal-derived-glue-free pair, I can’t presently justify or afford to bin stuff I bought when I held different views.

Although many vegans would argue that ownership of animal products is unforgivable, it’s worth remembering as a new vegan there’s a fundamental difference in continuing to buy animal products and using things you already own. My flat is still filled with non-vegan items accumulated in my teens and twenties - leather watch and guitar straps, holdalls, old wallets, feather pillows, woollen jumpers and so on. I still wear woollen clothes, although again, I will not buy any more. Likewise, I still have the dregs of old animal-unfriendly cosmetics to use up, and old gelatine-shelled drugs kicking around at the back of drawers. While I’m slowly erasing these traces, personally I felt that once I identified as vegan I had to stop wearing my leather jacket, simply because it seemed to me to represent such an in-your-face contradictory statement: covering my body in the literal skin of an animal while refusing to eat animal products. Of course, the ethics of buying second-hand leather products, as my jacket was, is another argument altogether, but I have decided to abstain from now on. I loved that jacket, and genuinely miss wearing it more than I miss eating meat. Its denim replacement is pretty sweet, though.

I know many vegans take a very binary view on rights and wrongs and would disagree with this slow ‘weaning off’ of animal products, but veganism can be a big step and maintaining self-care is also vital. Overhauling every aspect of your diet and life as a consumer can be overwhelming, especially if you’re juggling any combination of finances, work, study, relationships, family, care duties, illnesses or medical conditions. If you focus on positive steps you’re making in your decision to lead a vegan life, be kind to yourself, don’t beat yourself up if you unwittingly buy a ‘tainted’ product (discrepancies in M&S’ recipes for different sized falafels have caught me out on a rushed lunch break before) then you’re potentially more likely to stick with your choice in the long run if you decide it’s for you.

You may be bombarded by questions when you switch to veganism, by family, friends, colleagues and strangers. Remember, you are never required to be a spokesperson for vegans if you do not wish to be. Whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, pescetarian or omnivorous, no one has the right to demand you explain your dietary choices (well, unless you’re a cannibal and the cops come calling, perhaps). My go-to line when I’m faced with the question “Why?” and I don’t feel like a discussion is, “I watched a couple of documentaries and read a couple of books and decided I could not justify eating or buying animal products anymore,” which is a brief but fair summarisation. It also sidesteps the aforementioned difference between buying new and using old animal products, if someone alludes to hypocrisy or attempts to trip you up on a triviality. Regarding the documentaries I watched, I’m intrigued as to whether the explosion of streaming services and the on-demand availability of related films which at one time would have been tricky to seek out will prompt a sea change in consumer habits, as they helped influence my decision.    

Okay, so onto food. Of course, this all depends on what sort of thing you like to eat, but don’t for a second believe myths that a vegan diet cannot provide enough protein. I’ve read up more on nutrition in the past 12 months than I did in my 30 years as an omnivore, and I’m 100% confident I get enough: a few sensible steps are all it takes. When ditching dairy and eggs, I found it helped not to focus on how restrictive I was making my diet, but rather feel like I was opening myself up to a world of foods I’d previously only dabbled in or had never tried before. Many incredible dishes from Southeast Asian and African countries can be vegan-friendly with little or no alteration to recipes, while meze platters easily offer enough variation and nutrition to move from starter to main course status. Stews and curries based on beans, chickpeas or lentils can serve as a quick, cheap, protein-rich main component for meals, while health food shops and many supermarkets sell an ever-increasing range of meat replacements made of soya or wheat gluten. Sadly, widely-available Quorn products are not suitable for vegan diets (at least not in the UK). Be aware your portion sizes may have to be increased to make up for the calorific shortfall of dropping cream, cheese, eggs etc. The biggest hassle I’ve had with veganism is when grabbing convenience food out of city centres late at night. The vast majority of supermarket/corner shop/petrol station sandwiches are unsuitable, although vegetable samosas have been a lifesaver. Without sufficient forward-planning, you might find yourself falling back on the same staples time and again - I swapped post-gig takeaway kebabs for a big stack of cashew butter sandwiches long ago. Still, I’m the most disorganised person I know, and I’m easily capable of keeping myself well-fed on this diet.

If you’re eating out, many chains such as Pizza Express, Wagamama, Wahaca and Las Iguanas offer vegan options (or even separate vegan menus) while sites including Happy Cow provide invaluable info and reviews on local vegan or vegan-friendly restaurants and shops. If you’re going to be dining out somewhere and you’re unsure they will be able to cater for you, ring ahead if possible - I’ve done this a few times and the chef has been happy to provide an option. If you’re popping into an omnivorous restaurant without booking, the vegetarian option/s on the menu can often be veganised with a little creativity. Though at first it can feel like you’re hassling staff, being exhaustive about your requests can avoid confusion, or disappointment and embarrassment when your food arrives - if in doubt, specify no butter, no cream, no yogurt etc. Be aware the term ‘vegan’ can still be misinterpreted or conflated with vegetarianism, so if you’re in any doubt over your order, just explain you’re vegetarian but also you don’t eat anything made with milk, eggs or honey.

At home, raise your condiment, garnish and seasoning game up to the best level your budget and time allows. If you’re not a confident cook, simply chucking a shitload of fresh herbs into something can elevate a basic dish. Freshly chopped coriander in a tomato and chickpea stew or torn basil leaves in pasta sauce are amazing. Increasingly, a huge proportion of my enjoyment of meals hinges on smaller elements, sundries and dressings. I’ve always loved burgers, for example, but I’ve come to realise what I enjoy most isn’t the patty itself, but all the accompaniments - partner a soft bun, fried onions, gherkins, spicy relish and French’s squeezy mustard with a good soya alternative and I’m still just as happy. Fake meats can be a bit hit and miss, and only by trial and error will you find your favourites. I like Fry’s frozen hotdogs for an all-out junk food splurge, while Paul’s organic burgers are the most authentically textured shop-bought alternative I’ve tried to date. I tend to share photos of a lot of the fake meat I buy on Twitter to pique people’s curiosity and inform other vegans of tasty products, but to be honest the majority of stuff I cook on a day-to-day basis is basic soya/seitan-free pulses-and-rice dishes, curries, stews and salads. Be aware the diet does not automatically equal consumption of healthy foods or vast quantities of bland salad - I have days of greens and brown rice and days of instant noodles and whole packs of Oreos, depending on my mood - the same dietary fluctuations and inconsistencies I always had, just newly veganised.

I’m not going to delve too deeply into supplements, as I’m still working this stuff out for myself (for disclosure, I take an amino acid complex, prescribed thiamine AKA vitamin B1 for alcoholism, zinc, and vitamin B12 daily) but I would strongly recommend taking regular doses of B12. Though plenty of foods are fortified with it, it’s easier to just take a tablet every day and forget about making sure you eat enough of them. To my knowledge, it’s the only vitamin that’s hard to obtain from a plant-based diet (fortified foods aside), and it’s absolutely essential to wellbeing. Some devout meat-eaters you come across will probably use the fact you’re taking a supplement as proof your diet is flawed and ‘unnatural,’ but fuck them tbh, all food consumption in the industrialised Western world is so far removed from any semblance of natural order it’s a spurious argument.        

Be aware that many alcoholic drinks are not vegan - Guinness, for example, is produced using isinglass, a by-product of fish, while many wines use animal-based products as fining agents. I quit drinking for health reasons before turning vegan (in fact, I credit realising I could stop drinking for giving me the impetus to alter my lifestyle in this way) so I’ve not had cause to do much research, but it seems like Barnivore could be a good resource for finding vegan-friendly alcohol brands. Soft drinks, too, can effectively be vegan-unfriendly, with some cane sugars processed using animal bone char. Although ingredients and sugars vary from country to country, I wasn’t even aware of this process until fairly recently. No matter how careful you are with your brand choices, there will always be something waiting to trip you up, or a company will change a recipe on the down-low, so get used to getting caught out, checking and rechecking. Pressuring manufacturers to better-label goods is something I feel increasingly strongly about, as it benefits everyone, vegans and non-vegans alike. While supermarkets are taking steps to broaden to their ranges and more clearly mark products, there’s still a long way to go - I waste a lot of time scrutinising ingredient labels, time which could be saved if more companies simply put a ‘suitable for vegans’ note on the front next to the commonplace ‘suitable for vegetarians’ one.

It’s a myth you can’t train on a vegan diet. Sure, you may have to pay closer attention to your food and drink protein supplements (a word of warning: they can be pretty nasty) if you want to bulk up, but the idea perpetuated by some that muscle mass can only be gained through meat eating is bullshit - meat is merely more effective. I go through phases of going to the gym and feeling super good about myself, then slacking because I’m inherently lazy and would much rather sit on my ass playing video games, not because I can’t handle the physical exertion.

I’ve gone on long enough already, so here’s a quick checklist of tips to sum up:

-        Be aware that health food shops may offer discounts if you’re a card-carrying member of a vegan/vegetarian/animal rights organisation or society.

-        If you’re lucky enough to have a Mediterranean supermarket nearby, check out the hummus they stock, it’s likely better and cheaper than the big chains’ own-brands.

-        Carry some nuts or nut bars for a quick energy boost or when you find yourself unable to be catered for. I’ve taken to eating a heaped spoonful of cashew butter straight from the jar for a pick-me-up.

-        Don’t get your hopes up about vegan cheese. Every brand I’ve tried so far has ranged from merely tolerable to outright vile. You may feel differently, of course - I’m not saying decent vegan cheese doesn’t exist, but I certainly haven’t found any yet. HOWEVER, recipes substituting cheese with stuff like blended butternut squash and coconut milk can be incredible in their own right, while also offering a cheese-like comfort food quality.

-        If at first you try a milk alternative you dislike, don’t give up. I drank soya milk on my cereal for my first fortnight vegan, and had stomach cramps the likes of which I’d never experienced. Switching to rice milk, this was instantly resolved. Almond milk is incredible in fruit smoothies, and coupled with bananas creates a lovely creamy consistency.

-        Speaking of smoothies, a blender or NutriBullet is a good investment if you can afford one. Lots of fruits and vegetables are tough for anyone to eat, but chugging them is way easier.

-        Don’t kick off if you get served something which accidentally contains milk or eggs. Remember that your dietary choices are still pretty unusual in most people’s eyes, and well-meaning mistakes can be made. Obviously don’t feel obliged to eat anything you disagree with, but being cool about passing on it rather than making someone feel bad is a good idea in my opinion. Unless you’re preparing food yourself, there’s always a risk you’ll accidentally consume animal products, and there’s only so many measures you can realistically take against it happening.

-        Have a sense of humour about your veganism. Yes, unless a considerable number of people switch to a vegan or vegetarian diet soon we’re possibly facing catastrophic global food shortages, but that doesn’t mean the lifestyle isn’t a bit weird compared to the ‘norm’ of a-meal-isn’t-a-meal-without-meat I grew up with. And try not to be too insufferably smug about your choices: being vegan doesn’t give you some kind of magic free pass to being a good person.

-        Get used to hearing bullshit arguments which attempt to play down the fact that eating animals and animal products is just all-round not very good for animals or for the Earth. “Cows need to be milked. It hurts them not to be milked.” / “Well if everyone becomes vegan then we’re all fighting the animals for the same food, what then?” / “Yeah, but plants are alive too.” / “I read that Guardian investigation into quinoa production and quinoa is actually bad and therefore you’re actually worse for eating it than eating processed meat and cheese every day,” etc.

-        Follow not only dedicated vegan info accounts on social media, but also the personal accounts of those who just happen to be vegan, those considering veganism, and those who are former vegans. Listening to a broader, nuanced and relatable range of opinions without such defined agendas can help you build a more comprehensive understanding and opinion on the lifestyle. Note that, contrary to stereotypes, a lot of vegans don’t talk about being vegan, and a lot of non-vegans talk about veganism all of the time.

-        Get used to feeling increasingly mixed about non-vegans sharing their food on social media. I’m at the stage now where I’ve almost entirely stopped craving meat and have instead started to find the idea of eating it repulsive, all the while still enjoying the visual appeal of a good-looking burger or a fried breakfast. So every time some meat pops up on my feeds (which, once you ditch it, you’ll realise is constantly) I’m hit with a bizarre conflict of comforting pre-vegan memories, abject horror, and compositional appreciation. Sometimes, I really want to like or fav a meat-eater’s meal photo, but I guess it would be a distinctly off-brand move for me in 2015.      

-        I really, really wish I didn’t have to say this, but keep the hugely inappropriate misogynistic and racist ‘animal discrimination’ parallels out of your pro-vegan arguments (looking at you again, PETA). Likewise, avoid using ableist slurs to describe non-vegans. Though to my knowledge I’ve never met a vegan with dubious opinions in real life, so many sentiments I read online are a total embarrassment, loaded with extremely problematic comparisons. Don’t forget to care about the rights, struggles and feelings of your fellow humans as you care about the rights, struggles and feelings of animals.  

So, that’s about it. As my first year draws to a close and I look forward to (hopefully) many more, I’m aware I’ll always be a relative latecomer to veganism, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I can’t retcon all those years of eating meat, as much as I might like to. But now, aside from feeling like I’m doing the right thing, I’m enjoying what I eat more than ever before. Remember that I jumped from eating everything to being vegan in about six months, and it’s as if having to restart from scratch, rework my staples and seek out new favourites reignited my interest in food and cooking. Meanwhile, it’s encouraged me to become more aware of issues surrounding animal rights, sustainability and the environment, and in turn societal issues surrounding food production, marketing and consumption. Without trying to sound too contemptible, veganism seems to be a perfect fit for a lifestyle I didn’t even know I wanted a year ago. If you’re considering taking the plunge, I absolutely recommend it.

[vestigialtext]

10 days after cessation

(nb trigger warning for self-harm)

Despite a visit to the GP confirming my fears of nerve damage with the frank “you have been slowly poisoning yourself,” despite the shame I could have blithely allowed a favourite pleasure to slip so insidiously into toxicity, despite feeling utterly wretched, like Marty McFly mid-fadeout, the compulsion to snap open a cool, condensation-flecked can of fizzy bliss remains unbearable. Drink still feels like the missing piece of the puzzle, a cheap, tasty over-the-counter drug that quenched my thirst and quashed my highs and lows with killer reliability. Of course, I know full well this is bullshit, with the GP reaffirming alcohol abuse would have been exasperating my mental issues rather than controlling them. But, still, it was always my go-to painkiller of choice, and I need to alleviate pain more than ever right now.

No word has ever filled me with as much dread as ‘permanence’, yet here I am again, contemplating the very real possibility I won’t fully heal and will never shake off this aching, overindulgence-induced peripheral neuropathy, with another permanent drop in my health to acclimate to, a further dent of my own doing in my quality of life.  I feel like that eye-patched, previously-fatal-scar riddled dude in Game of Thrones, repeatedly brought back from death by black magic. Each resurrection – or, in my case, crisis escalation, resolution and recovery – a little weaker, more jaded, more heavily burdened with a stacking accumulation of glitches, like damage multipliers in a videogame turned on the player.

At 16, I lost something forever to a breakdown, then lengthy inpatient stay in hospital and bulk-buy quantities of psychiatric drugs flooding my still-developing brain. At 20, I slipped again as a three-pronged assault of skunk, heavy drinking and sleep deprivation triggered my first psychotic episode. A little further down the line, years spent as a frequent gig goer stood next to blisteringly loud speaker stacks sans earplugs prompted my battered ears to concede defeat and left me with unrelenting tinnitus and hyperacusis at 22. At 24, marathon sessions of fingers alternately wrapped around a joypad or tapping at keys with insufficient rest in between kicked off painful, recurrent flare-ups of RSI. Then, at 26, at the worst point of my life to date, I tried to blind myself in the midst of a severe psychotic episode shortly before being sectioned, mercifully failing but consequently ruining my eyesight by my own hand.

Now, at 30, after three years untarnished by major upheaval but marked by a gradually escalating alcohol dependency – and with it, slow-burn damage – I've dropped another rung on the health ladder, as my hands and feet fizz and pop and microspasm and fail to respond as expected, as waves of pain sporadically spark through limbs, like swarms of fire ants embedded under the skin, scurrying and nipping in their thousands, as sensations of weakness wash over me, like I’m inhabiting a 90-year-old husk of an avatar rather than the body I’m accustomed to. I’m trying to wean myself off searching for recovery stories online because the outlook is alas bleak from what I've read, despite the GP saying he has every confidence my symptoms will improve provided I stay sober. I still have relative youth on my side, and think (hope) I caught this just before things tipped into oblivion.

I worry that, subconsciously I seek to thwart myself, that I actively encourage this propensity for incremental sensory damage. I feel like my input from the world is gradually being degraded, with the noise-free, sparkling HDMI connection to reality I was gifted at birth slowly being swapped out for component cables, then RGB Scart, then crummy no-brand Maplin-stocked composite cables, then finally a shoddy RF box before the leads rust and signal transmission ceases. I worry, that deep down, some part of me wants this, and craves disconnection from the world, wilfully corrupting senses, wanting to retreat into dreams, languish in fantasy without the burden of being bombarded by external stimulation. Of course, again, that’s irrational bullshit - but I struggle to explain why I seem to gravitate towards scuppering myself so bizarrely, ploughing into self-abuse with total disregard for inevitable consequences, whether temporarily deluded by madness or not.  

I’m actively attempting to kick back at this maybe-arcane compulsion. I've booked a few days leave off work to get my head straight and begin to re-spool my home life, banishing forever the oft-intoxicated negligence I had become accustomed to, trying to be a better boyfriend. Alongside the high-dose thiamine tablets I've been prescribed in an attempt to alleviate symptoms (apparently long-term heavy drinking robs your body of vitamin B1), I’m taking multivitamins and getting my five a day for the first time in forever, washed down with pint after surplus pint of water - I've pissed about a month’s worth of piss in a week, a symbolic act, I suspect, as I strive to purge my body of toxins and push to heal. I’m going to attend AA meetings as recommended by the GP, because currently only the sheer terror of wreaking further havoc upon myself is stopping me giving in to cravings and buying some cans. Glorious, ruinous cans. Most of all I’m going to try and stay positive, because fuck knows I haven’t the energy to claw myself out of another major depression right now.

[vestigialtext]

Why I'm quitting drinking

About 18 months ago it twigged something might be wrong with my consumption, as I surveyed the dozen or so empty cans stood neatly on the floor next to my kitchen recycling bin, maybe a few of days’ worth of overspill. I live on the first floor and had been putting off carting them out down a few flights of stairs, alongside their numerous brothers stacked to the bin’s brim. I was fighting a pathetic weekly battle keeping on top of the volume of recycling generated solely by my Heineken intake, and it was far from over.

It had become a weekday routine to pop into the off-licence on the way home from work and pick up four cans of Heineken, digging a few deep into the fridge to get the icy-cold ones, the proprietor always serving with a smile, turning a blind eye to my obvious issue.  This was, of course, if I wasn't headed to a pub straight from the office, in which case I’d invariably turn up 10 minutes before the arranged meeting time for the pre-company company of a solo pint, followed by several more when friends arrived. I’d been frequently drinking at home and always drinking when out since 2010, and over the past few years this escalated into abstaining only a precious few nights the whole duration, sometimes going for months on end without a 24 hour-long break. Earlier this week I decided to call it quits.

A while back, maybe six months ago, I started feeling oddly rundown at times, leaden of leg, as if the force of gravity bearing down upon me was gradually being dialed up. More recently I began to experience frequent, unexplainable bouts of pins and needles in my fingers and toes, fleeting sensations of partially corporeal limbs, nerves seemingly misfiring. As I type this, my right hand tingles, pulses and feels like I've just withdrawn it from a bucket of ice. I haven’t had a chance to get to a doctor yet, but I’m terrified I've done myself some damage with drink, and stopped dead after having half a can while customarily hungover on Sunday night and feeling incredibly off-kilter. Googling my symptoms, hypochondriac jerk I am, I happened upon something called alcoholic neuropathy, and have convinced myself I’m suffering the early, hopefully reversible stages. It might all be coincidence and I might just be experiencing some kind of psychosomatic manifestation of overindulging guilt, but it’s certainly a wakeup call and brought my attention fully to the risks of excess, chronic drinking I've willfully ignored for years.

I've never really considered myself as an alcoholic, or alcohol dependent - I function without (though spend all day craving my first drink of the evening), and hold down a full-time job capably, never having had a sick day since I started this post in 2011, despite it being a rare occasion I don’t wake up hungover, feeling like garbage all day until that blissful fist sip. The idea of pulling a sickie to sleep off a night out seemed preposterous. I didn't count myself as a binge drinker either, having not gotten blind-drunk on a night out for years, never necking shot after shot. I thought my habits tolerable, more akin to a marathon, keeping a steady pace, comfortably but not catastrophically intoxicated in a relaxing daily wave. Except, on Sunday, ill and panic-stricken, I tallied up how much I was putting away and discovered technically I was binge-drinking every day. My weekly intake, year after year, was averaging 70 units - apparently the recommended threshold to avoid serious complications is 35 for a man, and I was ignoring the warnings on every can and bottle I sunk with a blend of sneering, obliviousness and stupidity.

I've always drunk a lot, ever since I had friends who looked old enough to get served. As an A-level student in South Tyneside, near every Thursday night was a blowout - several pints in the Wouldhave Wetherspoon’s, a big shared fishbowl in O’Brien’s bar, two-for-one repulsive WKDs in Evissa – followed by a quick tactical spew – cocktails at the excruciatingly loud Coast, then back onto cheap, warm bottled beer at the Escape nightclub until kicking out time. Back out the next night, then Saturday if I wasn't too broken or skint. A night or two out each week watching predictably awful bands in lousy South Shields venues. Basic rites of passage. But I rarely drank at home back then, maybe a few beers with my dad in front of a film the odd evening. Ditto as a degree student in London - I went out a lot, but only occasionally had drinks in my fridge. Maybe something about the 9-5 trap changed that, I dunno.

I've had plenty of experience of being teetotal for months on end throughout my teens and twenties, always due to long courses of prescription medicines - mood stabilisers and antipsychotics don’t mix well with booze. Since voluntarily shunning drugs in 2010, I've gradually slid into ruinous degrees of self-medication, replacing empty metallic blister packs of tablets with empty metallic cans - ‘dead soldiers,’ as Stephen King wonderfully describes them. Ironic, since the unhealthy, miserable side effects of medicines available to me were the reason I chose to wean myself off and function without them.

Until 26 I was an incredibly skinny guy, borderline malnourished-looking despite a healthy appetite, with a ferocious metabolism and abundance of nervous energy to blame. Several months on the trot taking the aforementioned antipsychotics (namely Quetiapine) served to fill me out a bit, as is their want, but subsequent years of solid drinking have left me looking kinda haggard around the edges - a smattering of persistent blotches around my permanently tired eyes, a fledgling gut. I’m still slim – and I still get into the same jeans I wore at 16 despite drinking well over 5,000 alcoholic calories each week – so I guess my body has been putting up a decent fight, but I’m unsure how longer that can continue as I enter my 30s. For the sake of my vanity as well as my health, I need to quit or cut down dramatically in the long-term. 

I’m attempting to hold off drinking indefinitely. I've never been able to have just one, and I don’t think I can trust myself to drinking in moderation. I still have beers sitting in the fridge - the urge to tip them down the sink is strong, but I’m not one for waste. Stronger is the urge to drink them. Once I start, I don’t stop until I go to bed, and if I’m not tired I’ll drink my allotted supply and nip out for more and drink until I’m on the verge of sleep. At an awards ceremony in October I had access to a free bar for half the night, which I took full advantage of – despite then getting home around 2am, drunk, I stopped off at the 24/7 to pick up more cans simply to douse the buzz of winning something, to offer a chance of sleeping. A triumphant evening eroding into the tragedy of drinking alone in the wee small hours, much like any other night.

Part of my problem, I guess, is an affinity for drinking culture and environments - I love being in pubs, soaking up their history as much as the drink, congregation spaces virtually unchanged for hundreds of years. Only recently have I become interested in seeking out better beers, independent labels, handpicking certain venues because they have a particular line on tap. At home though, I tend to stick to Heineken, simply because it’s cheap, readily available, fairly strong, I like the aesthetics of the can, it’s not too fizzy, has a decent nutty flavour, and Kyle MacLachlan waxes lyrical about it in Blue Velvet.  Another problem is the speed I drink - I've never gravitated towards wine and spirits simply because I enjoy the volume of beer, of drinking half a pint in one gulp. I tend to be one, sometimes two drinks ahead of friends, and lack the discipline to intersperse my rounds with soft drinks, hence tend to have drunk way more than I planned to by the end of the evening. I’m currently supplanting this acquired desire for vast fluid intake with glass after glass of orange squash.

Aside from health and vanity concerns, excessive drinking is scuppering me creatively. I can only write in the evenings, after work, and my first point of call upon getting home at 7pm is snapping open a can, which is spent within five minutes. The compulsion to sit and produce work is immediately quelled, and the urge to have a few more drinks and slouch in front of some piece of shit film on ITV4 I've seen half a dozen times becomes super-strong. Then: wake up feeling rough, spend way too money on recuperative junk food, spend all day shaking off a hangover, repeat to fade (and fail).

It remains to be seen how long I can stay off alcohol - it’s only been four days now, but that’s the longest I've gone in over a year. I’m not proud it’s taken being shit-scared for my own wellbeing and the possibility of permanent damage to provoke action. Besides, I’m sick of feeling rotten and regretful for the majority of my life. I’m going to see my GP next week, discuss my worries, and discuss the possibility of going back on mood stabilisers if I’m coming a cropper in the absence of my botched self-medication. I’m not going to beat myself up if/when I slip up, but I want to learn to respect the drug and temper my habit, give my body the break it has begun screaming for, and maybe even dust off my gym membership card.