In 1996 I was driving in the lake district UK, went round a bend hit a rock in the road and went flying (literally) off the side of the hill through a drystone wall off into a forest and into a tree. The car (a shiny red For escort XR3i) did a full 360 spin and landed the right way up having gone over the top of several trees. Pretty spectacular. I got out and walked away. Not a scratch on me.

About three weeks later the nightmares started. They went on for over a year. Screaming ab-dabs every night. could hardly sleep. drank like a pissed fish. Work was not good anyway and i was trying to leave. Work suffered because i couldn't concentrate and was jumping out of my skin every time someone walked in the room. I was very depressed. I was very down at work and my boss started writing to personnell saying i was destroying the morale of the group. I was a disruptive influence on everybody. Within a month i was being summoned to meetings with middle management ouside my management chain where unrealistic demands were made of me. I rebelled and started looking for another job. Eventually i got one but i was enormously bitter. The symptoms got sowrse and i drank more and more.

After a year, my girlfreind walked out and i don't blaim her. But i did at the time. My brother laughed and said it served me right. My best mate sadi the same thing. I was fat, pasty, angry, bitter and nasty. I didn't like me. One morning i got up and decided to be the sort of person i liked and admired. I finished my PhD thesis and submitted it. It was only a couple of years late!
Started running. Went from 16 stone to 12 stone 10 lbs in a year. Still drinking. But the running really helped. At 28 I went back to academic research. Post doctoral. Still doing it. Slowly i put myself back together. Met a girl. Had a lovely daughter. She is just seven now. got married, had a son, stopped drinking, he is three and lovely.

Three years ago I had just finished two years of really top research and wanted to get published. I have enormous difficulty writing due to the inability to concentrate but I do my best. Started a new research project as a follow up to the previous reallly good stuff. One of the industrial partners refused to do anything and my boss passed their work onto me. I did it. Then, one of the other post docs left and i did her job so my boss wouldn't lose the funding. I was working a seventy hour week for one wage and no overtime. After about 18 months of this, working two jobs both to 3 month deadlines, I developed the most awful diarrheoa. Went to the quacks and the process of investigating me for bowel cancer began.

I didn' realise it but i went into full blown PTSD again. I started going home early (i.e. working 9-6) so i could spend time with my eldest who was five at the time. Maybe if i had cancer i could at least leave a happy memory in her head and she could forgive me for leaving her? My wife was pregnant again at the time. Less work got done. I told my boss i was being prodded and poked. Because less work got done he started coming in twice a day and setting highly unrealistic tasks and then demanding why i had not completed them. This culminated at easter 2007 when i took one day off to see my briother for possibly the last time while i had my health. My boss phoned me at home and played hell and called me a "selfish bastard". I had taken no holiday in 2005. I had two weeks off in 2006.

I cracked. Went to a counciller. Got diagnosed. In july my new daughter stopped breathing and was rushed to hospital. She was on oxgen for a few days and eventually pulled through. She is fine. I felt absolutely no emotion over the whole time. I got run over on my bike. Battered and bruised. A mionth later i was run over again. Broke both hands. I took on some teaching work, which pissed my boss off and he started bullying me again. After christmas he was lecturing me on what a bad scientist i am when i detonated. I left the building and went back into councilling. Got headhunted.

Currently working one day a week for my old boss. He expects a 40 hour week from my one day. At the end of june i go full time for the new boss. Can't wait.

Back running again. Still not drinking. Occasional cigar. Occasionally happy. Occasional rage. Almost dealing with it.

Thanks for your time.