My condition set me back £14,000 a year and nearly cost me my life
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In Alex Partridge’s Brighton flat there is a half-full suitcase that remains unpacked from when he went on holiday over a year ago. He goes shopping every day because the thought of planning more than a day’s meals is beyond him. Each time he will forget his bag for life despite the fact that he has more than a hundred falling out of a cupboard in his untidy flat.
Alex finds organisation difficult. He repeatedly forgets to return calls or complete basic household tasks. But he’s also seen huge success since dropping out of university at 21 to set up social news sites UNILAD and LADBible. ‘My flat is a mess. The rooms are so shameful, you can barely see the floor. The wardrobe is chaotic and I know I’ve got damp laundry in the machine downstairs, which I’ve just remembered to take out; Alex, 36, tells Metro over Zoom, gesturing to heaps of laundry with a self-deprecating smile.
‘But I know exactly where my jeans are, they’re in that pile over there, and I know everything in that pile is clean. But that pile over there needs a wash. It’s embarrassing.’. Shame has been a big part of Alex’s life. When he was unable to answer a question in school at the age of six, the attention caused him to leave the room in a fit of self-consciousness.
In the corridor outside, he pleaded with someone to call an ambulance because he was having a heart attack. It emerged he was having the first of many panic attacks and by the time Alex was 15 he was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and put on beta blockers and antidepressants, which didn’t work.
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