Diving or Drowning

The Story So Far - Part 2

Having fun with a Whacker

This is part two of my life story. If you haven't already done it, you might want to read Part I.

My new friends took full advantage of my naive generosity and new found wealth. Keen to impress them, it wasn't long before a hefty proportion of my income was going on ecstasy, both to supply my needs and theirs. At that time a crowd of us were meeting down one of the local pubs every evening. It was a good crew of people, and I found in there the normal rough and tumble of friendships that I'd not really been involved in before. There was quite a flow of friendship and brotherhood really.

About this time I met a chap called Richard who had an interest in spirituality. He introduced me to the writings of Carlos Castaneda, a kind of Shamanism based on the teachings of a mysterious South American Indian called Don Juan. I had stopped going to church but enjoyed long debates with Richard about God and Christianity. He was one of the few genuinely deep people I met from this time and I regret losing touch with him. Some of his friends - Dave and Moog for example - were much more down to earth than the rest of the 'middle-class Harpenden' crowd, but none had his depth.

It wasn't just Richard I liked to argue with though. I used to love argument and debate. I'd always been interested in politics - a socialist by nature as I believed firmly in social justice. [1] My argumentative nature and inability to relate to others was starting to get me into trouble in my double-glazing job. Although I was personally very successful the team as a whole was doing badly, they figured I was a divisive factor and fired me. Suddenly my disposable income vanished.

Part of my job at the computer firm was sorting out minor problems and sending off computers for repair. We'd sent one brand new Archimedes package, probably worth 1500 pounds in 1992, off by mail order to someone. Unfortunately we'd sent off the wrong one and it had been returned. I sent the right one back to the customer and, not knowing what else to do I shoved the other computer under my desk. After a few months it became obvious that the only person aware of this computer - which was basically new although the packaging was opened - was me. I stuck a big label on it labelled 'Mr Smith' and put it in the corridor with the other computers back from repair. One of my more respectable looking friends arrived as 'Mr Smith' and collected his computer that had just been repaired..... I posted a monitor to Mark and destroyed the shipping documents. He phoned me with the immortal words 'the eagle has landed' when it arrived.

I let it be known that I had a friend who had an Archimedes for sale. By another twist of irony someone from work put me in touch with a wealthy doctor who wanted to buy one. He arrived at my house one morning when my parents were out and handed over sixteen crisp fifty pound notes. As soon as he'd left me and Mark (who first introduced me to ecstasy) threw the notes in the air.... when they settled we went on a big spending spree.

By now I'd realised how easy it was to steal - and how that changed my life ! I upgraded my own computer, acquired new ones, upgraded my friends computers and supplemented my income. Of course the party couldn't last. The local vultures of the drug scene had realised that here was someone who didn't know the score. I spent a small fortune on what was probably fifty paracetomol. Keen not to be outdone, my 'friends' also made sure they ripped me off as much as possible.

By now work knew someone was stealing - they could hardly miss it. I'm sure they suspected me, but they had no evidence. My mistake was selling a scanner to someone who was possibly even more naive than me. It was 24bit colour, top of the range A5 scanner. A snip at £250. I was selling it to him for £50 - staff discount, know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink. Unfortunately for me, the stupid get believed me. He talked to our sister repair company about the incredible discount he was getting. The next thing I knew my parents house was raided and I was dragged off to the cells. The adrenaline of the situation and my habitual drug intake meant that I 'came up' on ecstasy in the cell, bizarre. For the first time in my life I briefly contemplated suicide and how much easier it would make things.

Having lost my job I was heavily in debt and had to do agency work all that summer. With a lot of help from my Dad I was just about at break even by the time I started University in September. I arrived with a bottle of Jack Daniels, a lump of hash, and a criminal record.

Cambridge University is a place of great beauty, great intelligence, marvelous history, ostentatious wealth and huge egos. The sons and daughters of many rich people were there.

I actually found studying law fascinating. English law is a combination of common law, statute, and a process of interpretation by courts with varying degrees of authority. It is a combination of logic in the framework of statute, and creativity in applying the framework to the particular facts of an individual case - and how you apply opposing authorities from similar cases.

There was a good group of us who were the 'counter-culture' within the college. This involved smoking a lot of pot and not being rich. Actually there was a bunch of 2nd years who did form a counter culture, and I found them very cool. The unofficial 'leader' was a third year and native to Cambridge. He knew most of the local hippies and I was drawn into their circle.

My Christianity was starting to be more of a social barrier. There hadn't been much substance to my faith since I'd started taking drugs. Defending beliefs I didn't really practice was a nuisance, and another reason to feel the outsider. I went out of my way to lose my belief - and succeeded. I stopped believing in God.

I needed to explain my spiritual experiences when younger, particularly one or two very intense experiences without the aid of drugs. The acid fuelled mysticism of the hippies was mesmerising. It combined the sensual lifestyle I enjoyed, with the promise of spiritual fulfillment.

My friends were into the brand of Buddhism favoured by the FWBO. We got more into the practice of the meditation than any of the theology. The mindfulness of breathing is a basic concentration meditation, which I still practice occasionally today. The Metta Bhavna is about evoking feelings of loving friendliness towards others. I got to the point where I could groove on the warm feelings of metta at will - which I think was missing the point a bit . I did have some interesting spiritual experiences meditating, with the allure of better to come.

I was particularly impressed with the lifestyle of the hippies and travellers [2]. It stood out in stark contrast to the narcissistic, materialistic aspirations of many of the other students around us. The people I was getting to know lived in and out of each others homes, shared their few possessions, and friendship was their highest priority. I certainly fell in love with the dream.

I scraped through the first year exams with a 'desmond' [3] and spent the summer in a fantastic job - working with a gang in the wheat fields. We worked for various industrial farms that grew seed crops. We would walk down the line of the field pulling out wild oats, spelt (deformed wheat I think), and the 'genetic throwbacks' that stood head and shoulders above the other wheat [4]. I think they were growing shorter wheat to make it less resistant to wind damage - this was back in 1994 (I think !), so it was genetic modification the old fashioned way; by crossing strains of wheat.

At first, bending down and looking at the jumble of wheat, it was hard work to spot the tall ones. But soon it became easy to see the ears that stood out from the crowd. Within a few days the job became as easy as a walk through a field in the sun, great fun. At the end of the week they paid us in the back of a pub car park - so it was a short step from there to the pub. When I took acid at the weekend, as I did every weekend, the waving corn was so imprinted in my psyche that I would see them waving gently in every surface I looked at.

I managed to spend most of the money I earned on drugs and so wasn't clearing any of the debts I'd accumulated. At the time I was on a full grant and had a hefty student loan, but like most students I was an expert at hemorrhaging money. The high street banks competed fiercely for our overdrafts, on the condition that our grant went into their account. I figured - why not take them all up on their offer and hop the money round the accounts. I soon had several overdrafts. The theory was good, but the narcoleptic effects of all the dope meant that I couldn't be bothered to do the work of shunting the money around - the mountain of debt became increasingly unstable.

None of this was making me any freer. Throwing off the shackles of religion hadn't removed the crippling chains of shyness. In the second year of college I abandoned any pretence of work in favour of full time consumption of drugs; and I was starting to have some very bad trips.

Unfortunately, part of my personal theology was that acid revealed the depths of your personality. That it takes away the veils we use to hide our inner selves (as well as causing very pretty hallucinations). I thought that every trip gave me an opportunity to overcome my weaknesses and fears. Therefore to stop taking them would be the real weakness. I think by now it was already too late for me .

In the second term, the college gave me accommodation - but refused to let me sign in academically. They had wanted me to 'degrade' and take some time out; an opportunity I declined. An ex-priest of the FWBO had started to experiment with crystal magic, and I had some extremely bad times with him and his friends. It hardly took any drugs now to induce soul paralysing paranoia - and I became convinced he was trying to steal my soul. I'm sure now that this was complete nonsense - but it was totally real to me at the time. My life became absorbed in a fight against his black magic. I was no longer paranoid just when I took drugs - but now all the time.

I left Cambridge and lived homeless in a car at the bottom of my parents garden for a while. A friend from church introduced me to someone who had a flat to rent. On the promise of housing benefit and help doing up the flat he let me live there. Unfortunately for him (and me) any contact with people left me feeling like my life was being sucked out. I went to the housing office once, but found the experience so intense I never returned.

For a few months this was my desperate existence. I had no income - but I lived quite well from 'short dated' food thrown out by the local branch of Iceland. That was a weird diet - one day ten packs of bacon, the next biscuits and dips for crisps. My cigarettes came from collecting dog ends from the coach station and selling the occasional possession. My psychotic state had got to the point where I thought that in order to escape the snare I was in, and cast off my raging fears, I needed to fight someone.

My days were spent searching for cigarettes, watching television, and wandering the miserable streets of Luton trying to pluck up the courage to attack someone. Something had to break. In the end my tattered mental state snapped, whilst watching some talk show on daytime television. The presenter turned to me, and told me I'd been enlightened. That was it, I was free at last - what I'd been searching for for so long had happened. Getting to this point had taken a long time and a huge amount of effort. Going mad is very hard work, and I can't recommend it to anyone.

After a few more days in Luton I decided I had to return to Cambridge. It was early evening and I started to hitchhike. Strangely enough, with my shabby appearance and dreadlocked hair I didn't get any offers of lifts. I'd cycled the route several times - so I kept on walking. At one point - angry that I wasn't getting any lifts I stood in the middle of the road shaking my fists at the passing cars. Shortly afterwards a police car arrived. They gave me a lift to the next town, other than that I walked all the way to Cambridge and arrived in the early hours of the morning.

I expected to be welcomed back as a returning hero - but strangely enough the college wasn't too pleased to see me. I was now homeless in Cambridge.

Things were a bit different for me though. As I was now enlightened I could cope with social interaction and things like signing on. I also went back to college to attempt to renew my old friendships. Those attempts never went anywhere, but I did slip easily into the social fabric of the homeless.

Cambridge was a good city to be homeless in. The town centre is small, with a profusion of rich people. I could earn 20 or thirty pounds begging in a couple of hours, this would last me a few days and food was provided free by various well meaning organisations. I would either stay in squats or the newly built night shelter - which looked more like an underground bunker. The disadvantage of the night shelter was that we were expelled at the ungodly hour of 8 every morning.

Several things happened around then. The college were concerned about me being around - I'd shown some tendencies towards violence at the end of my stay - so they attempted to serve an injunction on me to keep me off their premises. For a short while I was followed around the streets of Cambridge by a funny little man on a scooter. He was hired by the college to serve the injunction papers on me. In the end he threw them at me because I refused to receive them, which is apparently just as good in law .

A friend who had shown me the location of a great squat also introduced me properly to heroin. I'd smoked a very small hit of it once before - but this was something else. I sat on the pavement while he begged, and the pavement closed over the top of me. I was utterly rested, and flying over a mountainside in green and black monochrome (like the old computer monitors). I had no body, but could move at will over the iridescent green trees. Luckily for me later events overtook me before I could turn this into a habit.

I also happened to know that under certain circumstances you could claim back payments of unemployment benefit. Having been too ill to claim was a valid reason. I'd been to the doctor at the start of the second year to try and get prescribed temazepan. I explained that I felt depressed and couldn't sleep. He told me I was clinically depressed and prescribed temazepan and anti-depressants. I threw away the anti-depressants and enjoyed the sleepers. It was now a snip to get another doctor to produce a certificate saying that my mental condition had made it impossible for me to sign on - which was true I suppose.

I went in every day check on the state of my claim - asking which department it was in and who I should speak to or fax to see where it had got to. Occasionally I would wave my Aleister Crowley books at them, and once I was forcibly ejected from the DHSS offices.

Something did the trick though - that Christmas eve I received two giros totalling over 900 pounds. Back pay of benefits for the time I had lived in Luton. The day I was given the giros it was too late to cash them, but a couple of days later I went on the spend. My first purchase was a nice expensive pair of roller blades.

Cambridge town centre is almost entirely flat - except for one large hill called Castle Hill. The hostel I was staying in, was at the top of the hill. Going up Castle Hill that evening was fun - a great way to learn to use them, a few steps at a time clinging onto the hedges and walls that line the pavement.

Coming down the hill the next morning, into the town centre was also fun. I'd lurch from post box to lamp post, a few metres at a time and anything I could grab hold of. I was getting confident - so I launched out onto the road. It was great, sailing at speed down Castle hill. What I'd forgotten about, was the main road that crosses halfway down - and yes the lights in front of me was red. That meant the traffic was streaming across the road I was charging down. I had no choice but to fall over - which is a bit easier said than done whilst blading down a steep hill on tarmac. It hurt surprisingly little and only cost me a bloody knee and a hole in my new pair of jeans.

But like most of life, the really important things were happening behind my back. A couple of times in the preceding weeks I'd been picked up by the police. They'd shuffle their papers, mumble a bit and let me out of the cells after an hour or two. I should have realised that something was up - but I wasn't too hot on picking up clues in those days .

One day whilst out blading in the streets of Cambridge I got picked by a police van. The next thing I know I'm in a meat wagon being taken straight to Bedford prison. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred pounds. I'd been photographed on college premises by an employee of the college, in fact I think I'd even posed for the photo. Ironically enough that was many weeks previously and I hadn't returned since.

Anyway, it turns out that if you break an injunction you can be sentenced to prison in your absence. It's slightly weird because it's a civil offence not a criminal one - and if you write to the judge and promise to obey the injunction you can get out at any time. Obviously I was too proud to do that - so I was stuck with serving half of a three month sentence in Bedford prison.

It was a bit like going back to school. Being told what to do, where to go, the controlled juvenile companions. I even did the education classes to earn the basic pocket money for tobacco. I met some interesting people including a minor celebrity - the ex-wealthy 'Lord Brockett' who was in prison for insurance fraud.

One small middle aged guy with a wry, cynical sense of humour was an armed robber. He used to rob securicor vans for the cases of bank notes. When you break them open they spray a purple dye over the contents - but he knew the right combination of solvents. After doing a robbery he'd spread the notes out on a plastic sheet in his front room to dry.

He'd got caught on camera branching out and robbing a jewellers - when I knew him he was on remand and looking at serving nine years. He was sure that, unlike most prisoners, his wife would wait for him. His ambition was to write a book called 'The Nearly Men' the people like himself who might have made something with their lives. We attended literature class together - where I read them my epic poem Wordsnow - Insensibilia. Written at the height of my madness it's unfortunately lost to posterity . He was a good friend to me, this nameless hero. He even offered to let me know where his sawn off shotgun was buried, he figured he wouldn't need it again for a while.

It was while in prison, during one of the bouts of insomnia it induced, that I realised I wasn't enlightened. The insomnia filled my soul with lead, but that was far preferable to the crash that ensued. I suddenly realised what I had done with my life. I had destroyed my family relationships. I had squandered my dream of being a lawyer and wrecked the opportunity that Cambridge University had offered. Even worse I had wrecked my mind and soul. Inside was a raging emptiness, and it raged with a vengeance. I had nothing to say, and no ability to say it.

On release I was given my roller blades and a travel warrant back to Cambridge. I wondered the streets destroyed. I looked at the passing cars and thought I would never ride in one again. You needed friends to ride in a car, and I'd lost whatever meager ability I'd ever had to make friends. I could ride in busses but not cars.

Fortunately for me the story doesn't end here. Whilst in prison I'd been in touch with my parents - who hadn't quite given up on me totally. My Dad had been talking to a lecturer at Hat field Poly [5]. This person (or persons) unknown (to me at least) recommended somewhere called The Farm, up in Northampton. My Dad rang the Northampton social services who gave them a clean bill of health, so he contacted them and asked me if I wanted to try them. To me it seemed like I had little choice. It was a bed and food, neither of which I had, and I would stay there as long as they would put up with me.

To be continued....

Footnotes

[1]

The interest in politics has now evaporated utterly. As I grew up I listened to Radio 4 rather than conventional teenage music - programs like 'Today' and 'Moneybox Live' and stuff... the epitome of middle classness... I honestly thought you could sort things out through politics, and you had a duty to be well-informed, and have an opinion on things. The reality of course is that the cause of suffering and misery is the fallen part of mans human nature - and politics will never deal with that. Politics primarily appeals to selfishness.... in fact the very essence of capitalism is that selfishness is a force for improvement (interestingly enough it is considered the driving force of evolution too - scientists attempting to show that the real reason for altruism is underlying selfishness). Of course the spiritual word for a system based on selfishness is..... evil. Luckily there is an alternative ! I still believe in social justice of course, but I no longer think politics is the way to achieve it - I've found social justice in the practical outworking of the Kingdom of God.

[2]	Cambridge was, and probably still is, quite a hub for the new age type traveller culture.

[3]	A Two-Two.

[4]	Looking back on it, I suppose that makes me a tool of the capitalist system to destroy individuality .

[5]	Now University of Hertfordshire - where my brother went, met his now wife, and generally had a whale of a time. He got a pretty good degree too, which is more than I did .