This season's look is Human

Fire, broken glass, and over everything the immortal beats of the drums. I've never seen Oxford Street look so beautiful. Topshop is wearing a belt of riot cops, lightened with notes of colour from pink and white paintball splashes, and draped in classic spiderwebs of shattered glass.

The crowd stands round, impressed at the monolith of monoculture and how easily it came down. Inside, the shadows of management move like birds with tense steps, wondering how this will affect their sweat-stained stock movement. Rebels shout insults at the police, who stay impassive and blank.

'Did you join the police force to protect leggings?' mocks a dwarf.

Tourists step dainty past, worried about being tainted by disorder. Some of the young ones are probably upset that they can't shop on their visit. Then again, some stop to take memento photos of themselves in the classic one-hand-raised-smile pose, with a background of disgruntled prostesters. This will be something to tell them back home.

Angry, drunken young men approach the police cordon, and shout that they're tools of the system. I think they probably know. I want the men to shut up and go drink their Special Brew somewhere else, because it's just the same lairy, directionless anger you get at 2.30 in the morning, and it never works out well.

'Watch out guys, there's a sock getting away!'

That's the way to do it, short guy. Highlight the absurdity of defending property, of defending money and privilege that will never make it out to society in general. It's sad enough already without more people suffering. We're angry enough already without bringing the aggro.

The band's still going though, and the insistent beat has many of us twitching. With the traffic-suffering street stopped for a blissful hour or two, and the city returned to a place for humans, we can overcome our reserve and do that. We can talk to strangers, pass on advice, pose, stage impromptu theatre. Climb the street furniture. It's our city; a city for people, not cars or corporations.

'How selfish', a middle aged woman says to her joyless partner. 'Don't they understand that some people just want to go shopping?'

Together we crowd Oxford Circus and young punks climb the station and let off banners and fireworks. The signs they hold are vague and about peace, love and understanding. Their trousers are below their buttocks and their outfits are coordinated. They've taken a break from complaining about big business to smoke a cigarette.

They're only young; they'll learn. They're just trying to find the real shit, the good shit.

The traffic lights count down the precious moments when pedestrians are allowed across the junction, when buses and taxis stop to let people without money have a go. We count along and at the final zero dissolve into cheers and roaring, and no car's coming this time.

Later, more shops go down. More fires start and passion and violence and rawness takes over the artificial heart of my sticky city. No more shrink wrap, latest models, body dysmorphia, trading your future for the newest thing.

There are those who can't take this. There are those that think that a broken window has a higher cost than the glazier puts on it, that a day's lost sales is a crime like hurting a human is a crime. That the loss runs deeper than profits, and that this outpouring will hurt what it hopes to salve.

They say we can't hope to bring down the corporations with rights like humans to the standard of humans. They say our country needs more money, the shared hallucination of the modern world. Every sale the country loses due to our hurt feelings means it'll take longer to climb back. Back up the sticky mound of multicoloured bodies that make up the global economy, to resume our rightful position squatting on the false summit. They say we simply cannot live the next ten years in the style to which we've become accustomed. We must tighten our belts, even those of us who have too many belt holes already, and we're only making it worse for ourselves by kicking against the traces.

They're forming an action group against our actions; an action group for traders who are missing profits because we made them listen. Looks like the lines are drawn, and we will lose, because real living is just too extreme these days and the sympathies of the people are with the structures they know. The cut and thrust of promotion, sales racks, sizing, downsizing, credit and debit, keeping promises, stiff upper lip, gentle exercise and avoiding overstimulation. Fire and anger and justice are for TV shows.

But for one day, we had a human heart in the dead, glossy-eyed streets, and it was as bitter and harsh and spontaneous and loving as humans are.

These stories of disorder and panic on the streets, these are my love letters.

Another day, another desperate argument with receptionists

It was sunny, I'd bought some brightly coloured cream cakes, and I'd made it through a week on a low dose. I called in at the doctor's to pick up my prescription and it wasn't there.

The blank barbie receptionist who talks through me explained that I couldn't get that renewed as my last pack was issued too recently. I lied and said I had a few days to go (truly, I ran out on Monday: but was too busy being disreputable to apply for more) but that I wanted to make the transition seamless. Which is the plan, anyway, so it wasn't a total lie.

She said I had two months to go, on a 10mg daily dose. No, I said, I took 30 mg a day and so I'd just finished my pack.

She pointed out that my prescription said 10mg daily; I said my dose was 30mg, it was in my records, and I had assumed that was a printing error.

I didn't say that given my doctor's ineptitude with technology I was surprised it even had a dose on it. I didn't say that my prescriptions had said that for months.

I didn't say I hadn't taken my pills at the correct dose for a week and that I was starting to flake out.

They looked up my records and saw that what I said was true; looked concerned, and pointed out to each other all the different doses in my records. What were they to do? their expressions said. It's a very serious business handing out medication, their expressions said. People say all sort of things to get a little extra hit of selective seratonin reuptake inhibitions.

I explained that I had tried to come down, found the effects too severe, and dropped off gradually. They looked suspicious and confused.

I'm not trying to gull anyone. I just need these to function. I need them so badly I'm talking about my mental health in front of a waiting room full of people.

They tell me I can't have my pills because the system won't let them, that I need to see the doctor and review my status.

I can't wait two weeks to see the doctor. I've had two freakouts in the last week, one in daytime. That's bad news.

I say I rather need my pills. I say I've been taking these for a long time. I say the last time I saw the doctor he gave me a lot of repeat prescriptions and the impression I didn't need to make an appointment every month.

I didn't say that seeing my doctor, my font of database-searching knowledge, for an insincere 'dear' and a chat where he tries to set me at my ease by commenting on my mohawk once a month isn't very helpful. I didn't say that his response to my questions are unhelpful because he's used to patients who don't like science; I didn't say I just want my medications, but I'm tied to the medical services.

My dose confusion is because I'm trying to quit what I've been on for the last seven years, ever since I came to London to live on my own and entered a really dark place. For two months I was scared of certain places in the university, certain phrases, words, scared to sleep; scared to do anything that might make me think of my death, my non-existence. Because thinking of that reduces me to a gibbering screaming spasming ball of panic.

The inevitability of the worst thing I can ever think of happening, the fact noone can save me from it and it's coming for me. I tense and hurt myself and cry and whine and flail and scream and beg anyone or anything to save me from what I fear the most and noone can. It ends when I tire myself out crying, or if I distract myself before I get down into that hole.

That, or the fear of that state, rules my life without the pills. The longer I go without them the more it is everywhere.

So I need my pills, dig.

But they tie me to that sad little clinic and those men telling me what I should do and having to share my privatest feelings every month because they can't remember me. Dependence. I can never just take off and leave because I need a steady supply of those little round white pills.

I want to be free. I'm trying to be free.

It's pulling at me though. I'm not sure I can do it. I wanted to cry at the doctor's receptionists when the three of them stood there and said I couldn't have my fix.

While I've been trying to get by without it this last week, I was hit by it in daylight on the street. Deep breaths, clenched fingers, half-circles of purple in my palms, trying to cling to the here and now in place of fear.

I was hit by it in the bed of a beautiful man. Blind terror, while he slept. I had to go to the cold light of the bathroom and try to regain some sentience. What would he have thought if he'd known? If I'd woken him up primal screaming my existential angst and drooling and sobbing? He can't know. He can't see me like that.

I NEED MY PILLS.

I have an emergency appointment with the doctor tomorrow to sort out the clerical error upon which my continued operation rests. Tonight will be fun.