Sitting around today only feels like a waste of time that could be used to improve myself. Sat around all day yesterday. And the days before.

So maybe time to get up and do something about it, this painful feeling in my midsection. Maybe I’ll peel myself out of bed at half two (p.m) and shake the cannabinoid stupor from my head, but maybe that doesn’t fix it so I fix myself a coffee and I’m ready to go. Awake and alert, I’m ready to face my task - the only thing that I currently have planned - before going back to familiar stretches of inactivity hoping that something interesting might happen.

So the appointment’s at ten past three and I get in the car, starting the engine at 3:10 on the dot. Surprisingly, feeling little to no anxiety about the fact that I’m minutes away from telling someone, for the first time, that something is deeply wrong. It’s 2017, electro-shock therapy and lobotomies aren’t in vogue, so I’m not seriously worried about being handcuffed to a bed and wheeled away.

Anyway so I arrive and the doc asks me what he can do, and I ask if he would refer me to a CBT therapist, and he says:

“Why?” And so I say:

“Depression.” And so he says:

“Why?” And so I say:

“I don’t know.”

“Drugs?”

“Yeah, a bit of cannabis”

“A bit of cannabis.”

“Yeah. And some alcohol.”

“Some alcohol. How often?”

“Most days. Not much, only a few drinks usually.”

“Most days. Ok. One minute please.”

The doc turns and picks up the receiver on his newly-old-fashioned landline phone.

“Hello? Is this Drug and Alcohol Service? I have a young man here who smokes cannabis. All day every day. Will you be able to help him? Ok. Thank you.”

The doc, a Hossein, clicks the receiver down and turns to me again.

“Ok. They will help you. You will get a letter in the post. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Oh. Uh, no. I don’t think so,” I say, truthfully.

Standing up to leave my long frame towers over the tiny salt & peppered doctor

“There’s one more thing I should tell you.” Says the tiny doctor.

“Yeah?”

“Your circle of friends. The people in your life-”

“Yeah?” I brace myself for the inevitable push to reach out and connect.

“Break the circle. Stop seeing your friends. They’re not good for you.”

And at this point a look passed across Dr. Hossein’s face as he sat beneath me, as if the tiny man realised that he had made a mistake. I can’t say for sure what kind of look I gave him in return but I imagine it was one that gave away something about my feeling in that moment that this advice, although probably worth listening to, had nonetheless taken me by surprise. I can’t picture clearly what this look might have looked like through the other man’s eyes, but I can guess that it might have looked something like the look you might give an uninvited stranger who turns up at your door on a Tuesday night with a case of nice beer and a spliff.

Then, leaving the doctor’s in my own jacket at my own pace I sit in the car and can’t help but collapse in a violent giggle. Pulling out of the car park I stop and wave a woman with three young children to cross the road ahead. The mum waves back mouthing a ‘thank you’ with a big smile, and I feel warm, and good.