Greetings all,

I am at work and unable to function. The power to concentrate is all but gone. My brain is not just fried, it is cut to ribbons and waving in the wind.

We have just had a meeting in which the boss made it clear how crucial to the company's survival everyone's committed effort is. I am behind schedule. I feel no more capable of doing my job than is an eight-year-old.

I am at the verge of panicking at my desk. I want to cry, or scream, or just run away from it all and crawl into a hole somewhere. I don't know how much longer I can take this - I am just so deathly terrified, as if a giant sword of Damocles lay inches above my neck.

I just don't know what to do. I have tried everything - meetings, sponsors, literature, steps, doctors, hospital, therapist, antidepressants, ginseng, email - nothing is working.

Hopelessness is rising up again, like an icy, merciless killer who knows the victim is despondent, defenceless, and despairing.

Oasis, Sept. 3, 1996.