Revenge, like chocolate milk, is best served cold

On a carton of chocolate milk: "Delicious served cold". It seems a peculiarly qualified statement, as if there is an unsaid "horrible served warm" or "vile served hot" that a sly marketing manager removed. This thought has been with me all week, and I would have shared it in the real world except I'm a little embarrassed about buying chocolate milk.

This week's big breakthrough has been to attend a social event. I am gay. I was about to say I am obviously gay - which apparently I am - but it's a characteristic I do not recognise and am always a little taken-aback by: campness is a difficult thing to gauge, of course, but it's not as if I'm turning-up to work in a sequin dress and yelling "coo-eee" across the trading floor. I occasionally indulge in guerilla campness, threatening to hug people unless they deliver the work I need and on time; this is a surprisingly effect form of project management.

"Who asked for these system changes?"
"Laphroaig."
Shudder. "Best get them done else he might give us a kiss."
"But my workload!"
"That might be with tongues."
"I'll work night and day."

Tangents about my character to one side, this was a gay event. I approached it with an extra-large slice of trepidation, partly because it was for people who do not like The Scene. I do not like the gay scene either as it can be brash, shallow and very superficial - that gentleman with the lovely body is not dancing topless in the hope of a fascinating conversation about the influence of the cold war in post-modern geo-political international tensions. This is not to say that he lacks intellectual muscles to rival his (really rather gorgeous) pectorals, of course, but he's not there for a night of animated political discussion and nor is anyone else (except if they are it raises the interesting image of muting the music, shouting "let's discuss the relevance of Orwell's dystopian vision to today's society" and having the entire dance floor cheer you on in agreement). Aside from night clubs, though, there are precious few other options: online dating has gained increased acceptance, but my brief encounters with it were depressingly seedy. Then there are always gay bars.

"So where did you meet?"
"In a bar."
"I see, hang out at bars a lot do you?"
"Well, sometimes, to meet men. What is this, the 1950s?"

So this is a club. A social club for men of a certain sexuality (gay, of course, straight men who want to socialise with other men with a healthy dollop of homo-eroticism can join a rugby club), and who do not like the scene. This filled me with trepidation. I don't like the gay scene either but this is purely because I relish intellectual discourse and is in no way related to jealousy over my lack of lovely, lovely chest muscles. Not everyone's motives may be so clear-cut.

In the end, though, it was exactly what it seemed. A lunch at a pleasant enough London restaurant. I was quite disappointed by the lack of interesting anecdotes and (although I would never admit it) the failure to meet the love of my life.

Afterwards someone phoned to find out who you liked and who you, erm, did not. The club prides itself on not being clique-y, apparently. This, I soon understood, was because they had outsourced the whole organisation of the clique to someone else.

This is hardly the stuff of romance novels ... but nor is having anxiety attacks and social paralysis so yes, I confirmed, I would be interested in attending further events. But there was one thing it confirmed: I am a class-A introvert - I was exhausted by the time I arrived home.

Or maybe that was the free wine.

So, I'm having an anxiety attack ...

... it's like a panic attack but without the balls. What interests me most about it (although, I have to admit, probably not anyone else) is the cause.

Most OCD sufferers are well aware of their obsession, since it is linked to their compulsion. So people obsessed with germs are compulsive cleaners. On the darker side of the spectrum are people who suffer from obsessive thoughts (often unpleasant - sexual or violent or both), who must carry out a ritual in order to feel released from these thoughts. Of course, the real underlying cause is tucked-away out of sight: the brain chemistry if you believe in that, or upbringing, if you prefer that approach, or both, if you're a Liberal Democrat.

I don't understand what my obsession is. So on one hand I'm thinking "I see-e-e-e-e, ver-r-r-y ink-tu-rest-ink" (yes, with a German accent) and on the other I am nauseous, my breathing is accelerating and becoming shallow and I'm thinking ... well, what am I thinking? In the end I hide behind my compulsion, and run to my blackberry and take a look at work. Then I justify it to myself, call myself a liar and generally feel glum. (I may not know what my obsession is, but my compulsion is work.)

"There must have been something!" I shout at myself.
Myself mumbles something about doing the cleaning.
"You've done most of the cleaning, it's almost all done! You spent most of the week doing it without a single ****ing attack, digging yourself out of this stupid hole! You ****ing mental!"
N.B. I can have a bit of a temper, although only with myself.

Really, this makes me the worst form of hypocrite. I keep on going on and on and on to anyone who will listen how the symptoms of mental illness is not the feelings themselves - it is the lack of a rational cause. Having a panic attack is perfectly sensible if, say, you find yourself stuck in a lift with Hannibal Lecter ... or John Prescott (or both, although in that case deciding who would eat who could be quite entertaining), but you get officially filed as a mental if you have no good reason for having one.

But what was I thinking? Oh **** it, I don't know. Now ... where's my blackberry?

I'm sorry sir, but is that your capacity being diminished?

I have a new mantra: it's not me, it's the OCD. It sounds a little plaintive compared to ...

From ignorance, lead me to truth;
From darkness, lead me to light;
From death, lead me to immortality.

... and certainly lacks the Buddhist mantra's ambition ("from social paralysis, lead me to a pleasant social engagement with some nice people and an ability to really be myself, but nothing too intense"), but it works for me.

The words themselves are taken from the four steps. Yes, having spent most of my life sneering at self-help as self-indulgent clap-trap I am now going through the stages of relabelling, reattributing, refocusing and revaluing. Frankly, I have no right to be cynical when I'm the one with bailiffs on my door wanting payment for a bill I would have paid except I'm, errrr, frightened of the post.

"You have to pay."
"Oh."
"If you can't pay we're able to take possessions to the same value."
"Can't I just give you cash?"
"Er, you can pay?"
"Oh yes."
"Most people can't you see. That's why they don't."
"Oh I imagine so, yes."
"Why didn't you pay earlier then?"
"Well, it's a long story, but, erm, I'm frightened of the letterbox."
"Right. Bit of a nutter then?"
"Yup."
"Seeking help?"
"I'm on this fascinating thing called the four steps. Something to do with relabelling, retiering, repaving and re-tarmacing. I think. It's all a bit new."
"The four steps. Not much of a name is it?"

No. No it isn't. It sounds a bit like a pub. Or a generic alcohol rehabilitation programme. Or an early draft of a Richard Buchan novel before the publisher got him to change the title.

"I like it, but I'm not sure about the title."
"The Four Steps, what's wrong with it?"
"Sounds a bit like a self-help book."
"How about The Thirty-Nine Steps?"
"Sounds like a really, really ambitious self-help book. But it'll have to do."

When I heard about the Alpha Course I thought "that sounds interesting, it's got the word Alpha in it, it must be very intellectual". That was until I saw the footnote and saw the "may contain traces of God" warning and decided to leave it at that.

However, the branding is only my first issue with the four steps (it's not even capitalised, what were they thinking?). The second is the way I have started blaming everything on the OCD. What's that smell? It's not me, it's the OCD! Who ate all the pies? It's not me ... And so on. At what point does this become an excuse?

"So Mr Laphroaig, these dozen dead bodies."
"Fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh. I smell ... evening primrose body spray and ... fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh ... lacey underwear."
"Well don't look at me."
"Sorry, bad habit I picked-up from Doctor Lecter."
"You want to watch that."
"Sorry officer."
"And it's perfectly normal for men to wear lacey underwear."
"Of course, officer."
"So, these dozen dead bodies?"
"It's not me ..."

Not, I have to stress, that I have a dozen dead bodies. But when I sit there, desperately trying to avoid doing whatever chore I've avoided for the past six months and therefore is now a task of biblical proportions, and chant to myself "this is not me", I can't help but hear another, more cynical side of myself saying "yes it bloody-well is you lazy sod ... now I wonder if there's anything interesting on the TV".

Fortunately it's summer - there's never anything interesting on the TV. And so, if the TV scheduling allows, my recovery continues.

In a galaxy far, far away ...

This is the prologue.

OK, so I'm a thirty-year-old nondescript kind of guy, working in an investment bank. All investment banks are, of course, completely evil and completely deserve the rough time they are currently experiencing in the turbulent financial markets. Apart from mine, of course. We're lovely.

All is not well. My personal life shows several signs of going completely bonkers (and has done for some time) and I, not wanting to end up in a padded-cell, decide enough is enough and resign. Quite what my plans were I can't say; I'd love that to mean that I'd got an alternative career lined-up as James Bond (would have to kill you if I told you, possibly inflicting death with an ingenious gadget) but alas, all it really meant was that desperation had reached the shoot-now-ask-questions-later point, and minor complications like jobs and money and all that could wait until later.

I explained to my lovely, lovely employers that I was on a one-way train to a nervous breakdown. The ticket was probably blue. A kind of duck-egg blue. Yes, definitely blue.

They adopted a suitably caring facial expression. Perhaps, they said, it would be good to see a shrink. And, oh, you don't have any sharp objects anywhere near you, do you?

The psychiatrist was an epiphany moment.

"You've got OCD."
"Errr, no I haven't."
"Yes you have."
"Pretty sure I haven't, Doctor."
"Pretty sure you have, actually. And I'm the qualified psychiatrist and you're just a mental."
NB - the conversation did not actually happen this way.

For those who have not spent the entire night reading everything the web has to offer on OCD, it means Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and is characterised by a compulsion (cleaning is the most frequently quoted example) driven by an obsession (so compulsive cleaning is often driven by an obsessive fear of germs). The sufferer is well aware of the totally irrational nature of the OCD, which is partly what makes it so unpleasant. Frankly, an obsessive need to clean the kitchen would be quite useful in my flat, since I tend to stand in the doorway, stare at it listlessly and then think, "maybe tomorrow". In fact all of my symptoms are around inaction, so I feel I got a rather raw deal on the symptoms front: not picking-up the phone / answering mail / ignoring the real world / not maintaining contact with, well, anyone, really. Of course, all those people who are left house-bound by their OCD may disagree.

Apparently, quitting my job would be the worst thing for me and would have seen me decline. Which was nice to know since, at the time, declining felt like walking off the balcony. It also added an extra incentive to withdrawing my resignation.

"So, you're withdrawing your resignation?"
"Yes."
"Thing is, we were kind of thinking the team did need to get a bit smaller."
"Oh."
"And it came at a handy time."
"It's just that I'll die if you don't."
"That's kind of pressuring."
"Yeah, you and me both."
NB - not this conversation either.

And that's me. In a nut-shell. Back at work, all my bosses thinking I'm a flake (as in unreliable, not the wonderfully chocolate kind, I'm pretty sure their sanity is at a higher level than mine and therefore they do not have delusions of me as a chocolate bar) and trying to repair the personal life I've somehow devastated. Fun!