Veins... Before Sunday Lunch

(HAVE I not done another post called that? Oh well. The computer can get itself confused as it likes over that one ...) No it won't. I added the word "veins" ...

OKAY! 1st: bird flu. The nation is not in a state of panic. In fact it is rapidly shifting down the news agenda. This says to me that bird flu armageddon is near. Sorry to be so negative but that's my honest view.

2nd: Other things. O wot am I meant to talk about my boring life ...? I HAVE DONE NOTHING at all for about 3 days. Good example: last night, went to bed before 10pm (far as I remember) ... slept till around 5am ... awake for 2 hours ... slept till 1pm ... bad dreams include one of a dishwasher that wouldn't start and another induced by sleeping with radio gabbling in corner (not bird flu dreams, thankfully).

I am being very good today and only taking methadone. And can report so far that it is keeping me okay. I've had some horrible squeamworthy moments of sticking a thin needle into the ridge of my foot along from my big toe - where (well, YOU try it) ... it hurts. More to the point, however, the word that describes my internal reaction is "squeam" ... it squeams me so badly that any "pleasure" or "fun" I get from feeling the (always weak) opiate buzz is nearly oblitterated. When I wrote about this the other day I meant what I said ... digging in your feet genuinely hurts, you have to ever so carefully swab them (because feet are so dirty (most especially mine)) ... as my Safer Injecting Guide advised me many moons ago, "you should only do this [in the feet] if you don't like wearing shoes because after a while you won't be able to" ...

And without going into any more lumps and bumps and abscesses and hotspots and bruises and pains and infections and acheing details, I shall leave it there.

Suffice it to say I have one friend currently in hospital after years of leg-injecting with an open ulcer. This guy already has lost one leg. His other smells so bad even the police won't arrest him for begging, he stinks out their van so awfully. (When I first met him I assumed he'd had an "accident" being on crutches and unable to run to the loo - so bear that in mind.)

As for me I have no veins anywhere on my body that I can easily get now. And this is only six years of (intense) injecting habit. I don't know what else to say really, without verging into childish and petulant territory ....

Well, let it go, let it go. As long as you have muscles, lungs and a nose you can administer heroin to yourself (inject in the muscles, snort up the nose, breathe vapours into the lungs ...) but IV is the only way that felt like it "sorted me out" ... that is so typical of me. I appear so mild in so many ways ... but even this street girl who doesn't really know me said to me "you're an all-or-nothing kind of guy". I have no idea how she could tell this... Up until quite recently I was injecting cocaine mixed (in small amounts) with the heroin every time I possibly could because I "couldn't feel" the "gear" ...

All this rambling is hopeless, I realize that. But who is going to save me? NO-ONE, of course. Life lays nothing out on a silver plate for any of us. So it's down to me. And that, to be quite frank, is why I feel it will never happen ...

Anyhow, on a lighter note, I'm off to have Sunday lunch at Mother Hubbard's. She will score and pretend she's not scoring. Or subterfuge of some type shall occur. But I shall rise above it and think to myself: ah, the things that scummy addicts do ...!