Stopping Forgetting To Stop

MY CONSTIPATION DREAM CAME TRUE THIS MORNING... O! I was shockingly blocked up and had a terrible time... Do you really want to hear this?!? Suffice it to say I did not end up with a dead-eyed dollie lying in the lavvy "pan"...

Yesterday evening I dropped in on an old friend called Rebsie who I used to see all the time. She used to drink really heavily; stopped all together; started again. Has at least managed to stick to normal-strength beer rather than premium cyder (the grot I drink).

Do you know - the puritanical side of me was musing this very morning - that strong white cyder, the cheapest alcoholic drink in this country costs less for 500mls than Coca Cola? This in a country that is supposed to tax alcohol highly, partially as a public health measure...

Anyway I ended up talking about Roborovskis and playing Grand Theft Auto on this £200 white piece of equipment (about the size of a cigarette packet)... with a ten year old girl telling me what to do as I was so lame. After it was revealed I was supposedly driving an ambulance round New York (after I'd stolen it - you can steal any kind of motor vehicle you like, including a motorbike or a police car) I took being in the City of Dreams rather literally and kept asking, "Where's Brooklyn Bridge? Is it that one? And how do I get to Fifth Avenue~?!?" etc, which the kids found rather exasperating. There is aparently a game where you can drive round a realistic replica of London (you'd have to be a much better driver than for New York City as the winding streets are narrower)...

Posh Spice has got a part in one of my supposed best television progs, Ugly Betty. (I really like the space-ship style offices of the magazine company. Also did you know the boss man used to play Jim in Neighbours?) Well anyway I don't watch television any more, except at other people's houses. I've gone all bouregois and twee and intellectual and left Radio 4/BBC World Service switched on 24-7 instead... I can't really put my finger on it what it was about TV I got tired of... I suppose nothing really grabbed me any more...

Did I have something else to say? I feel like I did. But it's gone! O! I'm giving up drugs tomorrow!! How could I forget that? Oh I know how: because every single time I've made the attempt in the past I've fallen directly down on my face. Usually straight away.

I had an emergency appointment with the duty worker at the drugs clinic yesterday as my script had run out and I'd no methadone for that day. So I saw this very down to earth non-nonsensical middle aged lady who informed me I was merely wasting my money by using and that it's the addict in me who keeps telling me I can't do it, I can't live a day without a jab (or ten) from a needle, that if I do stop I will feel better not worse.

I took all this information on board and told her the reservations expressed by the shrink about my picking a day and just stopping from then. (By "stopping" I mean ceasing using (heroin) on top of my methadone.) He had cautioned not to put it all onto one day in case it fails... But I see it that, as the saying goes:

If at first you don't succeed; try, try, try again!

As NA point out, you only ever need to do one day at a time. And that is what I was planning on doing. Picking a day on which I would ordinarily have used, then not using on that day. And not using the next day. And the next. And so on. I have after all managed to stop crack by exactly the same method. And if you do fall down you pick yourself up, dust yourself down and keep going. It doesn't really matter as long as you don't change direction.

So that is my plan, starting tomorrow!

***

Video1:
Pet Shop Boys: West End Girls - this song has hardly aged (to me) in the 22 years since it was released... Oh what a contrast between the music of the 60s and the 80s when I was in my youth! The 1960s felt like an entirely different era. The 1980s are simply a low-tech less hypocritical version of today...

Video2:
Pet Shop Boys - So Hard

***

Photoblog choices of the day
http://shinchua.blogspot.com - Tibet photos
http://mielikuvitusmasentuu.blogspot.com - misty atmospheric Finland photos
http://photonodie.blogspot.com - brilliant illusionist's photos from France...

***

Joke of the day. I found this at Scroblene's blog under the heading

Old/new ones are best department...

A Polish chap went to apply for a driving licence.

First, of course, he had to take an eye sight test. The optician showed him a card with the letters:

'C Z W I X N O S T A C Z.'

"Can you read this?" the optician asked.

"Read it?" the Polish chap replied, "I know the guy."

***

Here is a fascinating post about life in Norway 25 years ago (by a guest blogger) at Sicily Scene whilst Welshcakes is away