Living with Nutnut

YESTERDAY'S POST was actually half-finished. I failed to explain what being in "treatment" twice in one year meant. First time I applied to a Crisis Detox Centre that takes people on self-referral from all over London. The drugs treated turn out to be invariably heroin and crack as well as alcohol and benzos (sleeping pills/tranquillizers). I met no-one there who wasn't on one of the first two. The vast majority were on both. This was a 21-day blind detox. I left on ... (let me rewind my memory) it must have been day three. That summer I applied through the local drugs service to do a detox+6-month rehab on the South Coast. I got in at exactly the right time of year (June or July) and so would have left early in the next year. I'd say that is the best timing if you can do it. Then the new year would have been taking off hand-in-hand with my journey of discovery -- clean -- in the outside world. I ran out of there as well on something like day three. What I hadn't realized before I got there was just how many of this facility's occupants were on a "jail swerve"; ie undergoing treatment so they could tell the judge this is where they were staying, that they were 100% clean now and on this course of rehab and everything was going so well and why jeapordize this by throwing a newly reformed person back in prison among "peers" who had no real intention of staying clean. In my head, as I said yesterday, I had been hitting crisis point literally every day and telling myself every day "I cannot go on like this"; yet every day when heroin eventually came the crisis was solved only to build up to near-breaking point the next day. I was staying in a madwoman's home. She was very kind but crazy. Whenever I left, as I did a few times, she practically stalked me in the areas she knew I frequented. This side of my life was never properly addressed except once when the counsellor looked at me as if I was in deep trouble, & told me "you HAVE to sort this out". But I didn't. For months on end I didn't. When I eventually moved completely out Nutnut treated this as a crime. I said to her You don't want me around. You are so much happier without me. But she could not or would not see it this way ...

to be continued ...

PS (21:12 hrs) There's a fantastic drama about Van Gough on Channel 4. Get back 2u after that ...