I have never fought a war. I must be the only member of my direct lineage, through my father and grandfather and back through the generations, to be able to say that. Come to think of it my dad never put on a uniform because he was in India during World War II but it was only by chance because India never became part of the theatre of war. I myself was too young for Korea and Suez even though I was actually in the Army at the time of Suez. I was still in training so was not required to fight. We let the Americans do our dirty work for us in Vietnam, just as we used to let them pay to defend Europe against the threat from the Soviet Union and then expend their young soldiers’ lives in tidying up subsequent messes within Europe.

Having had the experience of putting on uniform but never having had to fight, I am extremely grateful to those who do risk their lives to protect our country and our values. I can live in peace, rather than under the boots of fascism and communism (two sides of the same collectivist belief system) because other people do my fighting for me.

I support the war in Iraq and the war against terror precisely because I do know the alternative and I do want other people to enjoy the freedoms that I enjoy. The one hundredth British soldier to die in Iraq made his family proud of him. I am also proud of him and I am proud of his family who stuck to their currently unpopular beliefs.

Success is popular only in pop music and sport. Succeed in business (with the sole exceptions of Richard Branson and Roman Abramovitch because of their association with pop music and sport) and people cannot wait to see you come to grief. Ayn Rand refers to “the anti-industrial revolution”. Modern history books paint the industrial revolution as the time when women were enslaved in factories and young boys were sent up chimneys. They make no mention of the fact that the alternative was to die. Nowadays employers have discovered that profitability increases when staff are treated well. However, they also discover that there comes a time when their creativity, hard work and risk-taking simply fund government projects with which they have no sympathy. I see myself as working in a service industry, not as an industrialist. I am grateful to those who create the business upon whom the rest of us depend for our survival.

“Banker, Editor, Judge, Politician….” My neighbour told me the names (censored) and occupations of the members of The Garrick Club, sitting on the other side of the long table in the centre of the dining room. It is considered bad form to use the club purely as a restaurant for the entertainment of guests on the outside tables, let alone to use those hideaways for business purposes. The true members of the club get to know each other. I have patients in all those professions – and many with none – but they come to me to talk about medical matters – and I need a rest from that at times. Tonight we talked about music. I was tired when I went in and refreshed when I came out. Jeremy Paxman, in his book Who Rules Britain? concluded that club members rule Britain. Maybe they do in the outside world – but not in the club: they chat, eat, drink and afterwards slump deeper into the leather chairs. There is an appropriate time for doing nothing, rather than ruling.

My brother, a lawyer, has been gazumped – by a lawyer. Maybe there should be a law against it.

A psychodrama I did at lunchtime today focussed on prejudices, how to react to them and how to avoid being prejudiced. Addicts both give and receive prejudice in substantial quantities and there is a lot that we can do – without becoming brainless wimps – to modify our own attitudes and behaviours even when there is little that we can do to change those of other people.

Having told a consultant physician that I don’t like him prescribing antidepressants to my patients, I find that he has now told a patient to cancel a surgical operation for haemorrhoids. I trust the surgeon who recommended that option. I saw the haemorrhoids myself down the proctoscope. The physician has lost his clinical judgement through becoming too dictatorial. He won’t get any more patients from me.

At 2am Meg’s alarm clock went off. At 2.05am it went off again. She hates everything mechanical, electronic or computerised because, as she says, these things have minds of their own. There are times – some times in particular – when I agree.

To come down from 120mg of Methadone a day to zero in just ten days showed amazing determination, although I have known a previous patient do it in five. However, that is still the relatively easy bit. Learning how to stay off in the long term is the real challenge. As Mark Twain said about cigarette smoking, “giving up is easy: I have done it nineteen times”. The real point about this particular patient, however, is that his doctors should never have given him Methadone in the first place. They should see him now, as the vibrant and funny human being that he really is, when he is in on no drugs at all, illegal or prescribed.

“I feel calm, at peace, for the first time in over four years”. The images of physical and sexual abuse that had haunted her have gone after just four sessions of EMDR. Since the first week of treatment she has been abstinent from the use of all addictive drugs. Now she can start work with dealing with her addictive nature. That, in turn, should make her eating disorder, and then her diabetes easier to manage.

Two years ago I wrote A Book of Prayers for Atheists and Agnostics and I haven’t yet had sufficient spare cash to publish it. Last year I began to write a book of meditations. It was going well until I got blogged into creative submission. I am in the swing now so I’ll see if I can do both.