I've had severe GAD and depression for over 4 years, but during that time I've succesfully negotiated: passing a forklift truck driving test (including having control of pallets with hundreds of boxes of wine on them 30 foot up in the air); managing 3 football teams (one of which won the league last year); going to my granddad's funeral; flying back from Amsterdam even though I had the worst panic attack of my life going out there; being best man at my brother's wedding; being successful in an interview for a job that I really wanted; climbing the Great Orme in Llandudno; and going to watch a local football team play in the north east involving some of my biggest phobias (agoraphobia, motorways, bridges, hills...).

I've had a horrible, scary, miserable time for the last 4 years. I've felt like I've needed locking up. I've felt suicidal. I may not have enjoyed doing any of those things that I've just listed, infact I hit the rescue remedy pretty hard for most of them (lol!), but really I'm proud of myself for doing them. There really can't be that many scarier things in life, for 'normal' people let alone nervous wrecks, than the death of a loved one, public speaking and specific phobias. Hopefully, if I can convince myself that that's about as bad as it gets, then I can start to relax.

I'm going to try and put a programme together for myself involving yoga, tai chi, swimming, football, diet, self-help books, relaxation time and anything else that I can think of. I really want to start enjoying life and feeling relaxed and 'chilled out'.

Apart from one short spell, when I got together with my first girlfriend I've always felt pretty miserable and uptight. I think generally I've felt that I'm missing out on 'life' and that everyone else was having a great time and loads of fun, while I sat at home with a can of lager and friday night telly. I think what happened was that finally feeling 'accepted as a human being' at the grand old age of 22 by this woman, gave me the confidence boost that I needed. I stopped putting such an onus on my career (not that I really had one) because I'd 'made it', someone loved me, so I could sit in cafes calm in the knowledge that I was 'there' and I didn't have to keep trying so hard.

About 6 months later she cheated on me and my descent into a nervous breakdown began. For most of the 4 years that we were together, I was living in Cheshire and she was living in London. Every couple of months she'd meet someone else and call it off with me. We'd then get back together when it didn't work out because I naively thought 'no one can compare to me'. I did live in London with her for a bit and then I moved in with a friend in a different part of the city. Within about 2 weeks of me having moved in there, I had to go away to be best man at my friend's wedding (which was a very proud moment for me and I wanted her to be there with me, but she refused). My girlfriend came round to my flat without me being there and had sex there with a guy who'd turned up with my flatmate's boyfriend. A few weeks after that, whilst we were having sex, she told me that the night before she'd had sex with someone else! I'm not racist, but like most white guys I feel a bit inferior to black guys in the trouser department...the guy she slept with was black and they did everything together that I thought was sacred to just us two. I think that they may even have had unprotected sex.

She never showed any remorse, infact she normally rubbed it in my face: I was 22 when we got together and 26 by the time she slept with the guy in my flat, who was 21. She was 42. When I next saw her, she 'confessed' what had happened by saying something like "what age is the sexual peak for a guy? Cos I'm sure it's 21!" or something like that. The list of ways in which she hurt me literally runs to pages and pages.

I was a wierd kid, but I think that I was getting to the point where I was feeling more confident: I was flying fairly comfortably; I didn't have much trouble driving around Britain and I even managed to drive to Amsterdam without a hint of panic! But, she really dragged me down and there was lots of drugs involved too.

I felt like I couldn't let go of the relationship because "I'd never have sex again" and I'd have to move back to Cheshire, where I had no friends anymore, as they'd all moved away and very little job prospects apart from factory work.

The actual point where my breakdown came was soon after the black guy (who she carried on seeing behind my back, sleeping in 'our' bed), where I knew that enough was enough and I had to call it quits and head back to Cheshire and start all over again. The night before I was due to come home I had a massive panic attack out of the blue....I didn't know that it was coming, although I'd been having urges to hurt myself such as by pulling my eye out, jumping under a tube train or headbutting spiked railings, which were really disturbing me.

I'd been in turmoil for atleast 6 months. Pretty much everyone that I knew had either turned their back on me because of my obnoxious, erratic behaviour or were very upset with me. I'd called my gran in a state of panic asking for money, which she said she didn't have and then somehow found to put into my account. I'd borrowed my mum's holiday money, promising to pay it back before she left and then neither paying it back or calling to apologise....my life was a complete and utter mess. I quit a job in a factory and then spent atleast a couple of weeks leaving the house and walking around for a couple of hours without a bean in my pocket whenever my flatmate was due home so that she didn't know that I wasn't working and couldn't pay the rent.

Ever decision that I made was out of pure panic and ended up getting me deeper and deeper into a hole. I took a job in direct sales, where I was only paid for what I sold, and it ended up costing me to go to work a lot of the time even though I was leaving the flat at something like 7.30am and not getting back until nearly midnight. Not long before I left London to come home I quit the job because I was going door to door in the pitch black in some tiny town outside London and they could see the desperation in my face....no one was going to buy from me. I got lower and lower with each door slammed in my face.

A guy that I was working with came to stop with me for a bit, whilst my flatmate was away on holiday. The answer to my rent nightmare, I thought! But, he stopped for a couple of weeks and then disappeared without giving me a bean!

When I did eventually come home I was told (after I'd already moved back) by my brother that my gran didn't want me living with her. My dad asked me if my depression was "an excuse" and the doctor told me that she didn't believe in talk therapy and that Prozac was the only solution. Which I had a particularly bad reaction too with a permenant headache, a numb nose, severe depersonalisation, insomnia for a week, a black toe, peeling skin on my hands and very aggressive, murderous thoughts.

Ok, no one died, but I think that that accumulation of events would knock most people sideways, let alone soneone already predisposed to anxiety and depression. Every time I tried to do something positive to help myself it would blow up in my face. I tried every trick that I could think of to buy me some time to get back on my feet, including getting a refund on some TV license stamps that my gran had given me. I was desperate and I just kept sinking lower and lower. One of the hardest things was that I felt like I had no one to turn to: my girlfriend was an evil bitch; my family were furious with me; my friends had almost all deserted me. I felt like I had no safety net and no one that I could trust.

Even now, 4 years later I'm still furious it my ex-girlfriend for the way that she behaved. I was literally apoplectic with rage towards her, which was probably one of the driving emotions of my breakdown. That, along with a sense of confusion about how to find my way out of the mess that i found myself in.

What could I have done differently? I should have left her as soon as she cheated on me, whilst I still had some self-confidence left, but I was in love, I was in lust and there were a whole host of other, less savoury reasons, such as she was my passport to living in London. There probably were other people that I could have lived with, but she had her hooks into me and it was very difficult for me to stop myself from going back, even though she destroyed me....very much like a drug.

Even though it brought out the worst in my personality (snobbishness, greed, selfishness, nihilism), there were good things too, which I would have missed out on otherwise. I'm not proud to admit that I did ecstacy, but it was great to feel so relaxed and happy for once. If I'd have left in the very beginning I wouldn't have got the job which meant that I travelled to Amsterdam and Ibiza. If I'd have come home straight away, I would have gone on somewhere else and I would have missed out on being here to appreciate my nephew's childhood and my granddad's final few years.

I think that the reasons why I still feel so rough are: because, even now, I still feel totally betrayed by my ex-girlfriend; I'm a 31 year old living with my dad and my gran, who are far from the most nurturing and supportive of people; I'm still not quite right chemically, I don't think...I don't feel totally grounded in my own body; I'm very tense and the slightest challenge quickly becomes a mountain which, depressingly, makes me feel very trapped and limited with regards to what I can do and where i can go.

On the positive side: I'm really enjoying my job (although I do need to learn how to switch off and my fear of commitment means that I keep panicking about the thought of being in the same job for the next 30 years and missing out on things!!); I'm at the top of the housing list, which will probably be my only opportunity to have my own place; I've got some really good friends around me (although I worry about them abandoning me) and I'm really getting into my football again!

Sorry for this epic....when I write it down I can understand how I got so anxious and depressed. It helps me to see the positives too.