5am Heroine.

IT IS 05:48 HOURS as I start writing, though I have been musing on what I might say since long back. Outside, on my Turkish Chocolate Biscuit Trip, Flapper, my Giant Tubby Pie Pigeon (who I now know for sure is a wood pigeon, as opposed to the feral town bird, which is a species of rock dove ~ rock doves have iridescent scarves thrown over their shoulders; wood pigeons are clad in matte pastel tones and, as I said before, wear a tiny white cravat. Unlike the plucky rock dove, who we've all seen eating from the hands of French tourists he doesn't even know, I know Flapper, my Pie Dove will never become hand tame. Temperamentally they are the roborovskis of the pigeon world. Untrusting and flighty. Talking of roborovskis, I remember spotting my late three furry pingpong balls asleep in their toothpaste box nest at the time, all looking cute in a row. Unlike other hamsters, who curl into a ball sideways, like a dog or a cat might, robos nearly always sleep on their feet. So that if they are startled they can ping without delay! Anyway I saw the furry swines sleeping peacefully and thought I might surprise them with a tasty nibble for their rodent monoteeth (apparently they only have ONE tooth, top and bottom) so in I poked a "lady's finger" ~ that is a piece of okra or gumbo. O man ~ the commotion! Three tiny balls of fur pinged out the other end of that tube in a furry explosion. You'd think I'd pushed a needle-toothed baby crocodile in after them, snapping at their tubby bums. If they could have done, they'd have waved their hands in the air in horror and cheered, three little drama queens that they were. The reason I've not got any new hammies (apart from that roborovski hamsters are so very hard to find when you want them) is that I'm so terrified of them escaping again. The door to the hallway has a half-inch gap under it. To a little robbie this is as High as the Fourth Road Bridge. In my old house they would go missing for two and three days at a time. Only when I had given up hope of ever seeing each escapee alive again would I suddenly, usually far after midnight, see a furry hallucination silently whizzing across the floor. The ONLY way I ever successfully caught them was by 1. coaxing them into a box or something I could then pick up and deposit back into the robo-tank or 2. throwing a teeshirt or something over them. Even then, if I got my aim spot-on, the tiny terror would be half-over the edge, bulgy-eyed and frozen with fear. Of course, in a situation like that they think a predator has them. Another unique behaviour of robo-hamsters as opposed to "normal" ones was frequent playing dead at times of high stress. Which did look funny sometimes. So from a constantly moving, pinging jamboree of furriness, suddenly the hamster-tank turned into a Madame Tussauds of frozen furry astonishment. Hamsters are exceptionally good at looking surprised.

Now enough about furries. Except to say I actually saw a Norwich terrier yesterday! For the first time in my life. The tiny doggie trotted past me, then away. It was almost like being in the presence of The Queen...

Well it is now a good seventeen hours later. Should I have taken that hit, dripping with syrupy-golden poppy-juice? All it did was make me sleep. And sleep again... My feelings towards this drug ~ heroin ~ and my addiction are split and mixed.

On the one hand I hear my own voice, blithely prattling out the name of the hardest drug known to man. HEROIN. Without saviour of a final softening respectable letter e it's a dirty word, evoking misery, gloom, grunge and despair. Wasted days, wasted years, wasted lives.

And yet Heroin, as trademarked by the German pharmaceuticals firm Bayer in 1898, means strong and brave and heroisch and noble. The fine white lady. My saviour.

My reasons for taking heroin ~ and I mean, for ever wanting to try it, for keeping on trying it. For being attracted to it in the first place. The reasons I was drawn to its narcotic black hole that radiates the glamour of transgression ~ these are all so complicated, I only recently realized I have told myself a Received Version of my own Truth. A convenient Edited Highlights Version, snipped free of inconvenient contradictions and inconsistencies.

It's not so much that Truth Hurts; my truth is very, very complicated.

Heroin saved me. Or I certainly thought it had, for a long time. When I was on heroin I at last had confidence and joy and the love of a relationship with the drug and a human soul-mate.

Years of inadequacy and misery. Years of being someone who never quite fit anywhere, never fitted with himself ~ these dissolved like drops of bright rain streaming down my window. Nothing in the past ever seemed to matter any more. As a druggie high on drugs I was actually able to live in the moment. Past and future were confined to the trash. Little did I realize my life was heading for the garbage can, too.

The most striking difference between me On Heroin and me Before Heroin was, that on heroin I no longer daydreamed at all. The drug was enough of a living daydream. Heroin enlivens and dulls at the same time. It cured all my pain ~ mental, physical ~ everything, for a while. Having endured years of what doctors called Chronic Fatigue and Depression I now felt free.

The last psychiatrist I saw said I was... still AM self-medicating.

He implied that, unlike many other users who use to escape boredom or many other things I wasn't using to escape. I was using as someone incomplete, who with heroin suddenly felt whole. These are my words for his expressions. I think he was right.

From the beginning my interest never was in getting "out of it", being wiped out, unconscious. Heroin gave me an accelerated, brighter better version of me, full of confidence that felt real. Not a jittery turbo-charge like cocaine's counterfeit security. The heroin-state felt totally and utterly real to me. And of course I only wished I could be like that all the time.

In the beginning I WAS like that all the time.

I have been musing deeper and deeper on ... what am I doing? Where shall I go? How did I ever get like this? And how will I ever get out? Do I want to get out?

One thing I've come to accept: methadone treatment is NOT working for me. It is not making me feel OK. Physically (mostly) perhaps, but not mentally. On methadone the depression is so intense sometimes it is unbearable. Methadone is supposed to give addicts a shot at normality. theoretically a well-functioning addict could even hold down a job on methadone. I have never, EVER willingly done ANYTHING on methadone. I sit and sit. i look around at the mess that desperately needs fixing and have no energy for any of it. Nothing changes. Nothing gets done. Since methadone, nothing has improved, except that I have stopped going out making money to pay for gear. But my non-life has slipped into a black hole. Anything I need to do: a dentist appointment, a trip to see my mum, a trip into town ~ I have tried doing these things on methadone, they are heavy, burdensome chores. No matter how much I might "want" to get them done. I very much want to see my Mum, but the process of getting there entails extreme stress. I have tried living on methadone and it just does not work for me.

Now I am realizing there ARE other treatments out there, ones that work. Yet they always seem to be for someone else.

I think I told the story of when someone gave me a bottle of morphine syrup which I drank instead of methadone. I was amazed at how good I felt. I felt absolutely OK and fine. The life-defying dolour of methadone was gone. I am now researching whether my addiction could not be treated perhaps with direct heroin or morphine therapy. The heroin would be injectable or smokeable, morphine would probably come in long-release pills. The deeper I dig, the more disappointed I am, that therapy I know would at least give me a chance has so far been denied me.

I have been on various methadone scripts for over TEN years, I have gone to two detox units but couldn't handle even medication-assisted detox. I have tried Subutex. I have gone cold turkey. The ONLY improvements over ten years have been: 1. I no longer go out "grafting" ~ begging money to get my hit and 2. I now pay bills on time and get in weekly shopping. Not every single penny goes on drugs as it used to. But every spare one still DOES and that's the point.

I used to think and it has been levelled at me, both expressly and in many snidey ways, that I was somehow weak for not being able to go through with, for example a detox where every care was taken to make clients as comfortable as possible. You'll hear the whining junkies in there state "we're all in the same boat"...

But I look back and realize we were NOT all in the same boat. I was the ONLY person awake ALL NIGHT at that place. Nobody else lost half their days a gibbering emotional wreck in the 1-2-1 counselling room. No we weren't in the same boat, not at all. Nobody else I know seems literally to have gone crazy doing cold turkey detox. I was horrified years later to see I had met diagnostic criteria for "mixed bipolar episode" when I tried to come off heroin. Only when I heard repeated stories of people lying in bed for a week, sick, did I realize my experience was totally different. Far from lying down, I couldn't keep still for more than 2 seconds. In both detoxes I got extra meds, which is about as commonplace as a Norwich terrier with wings. I could go on and on. I'm not saying my problems are insurmountable. I'm just saying I feel that STILL ~ after all this time, they have not been properly addressed.

If I felt I could deal with this situation myself, trust me I would just go away and sick it out. but all that is likely to do, in all honesty is put me in a mental hospital if not a morgue. Because I will kill myself. If life is hopeless on drugs, imagine how bleak it feels with no drugs at all?

I can't believe I ever got so dependent. I hate it.

I feel desperate and angry. With myself. With the "system" I've got wrapped up in. With methadone, which I absolutely loathe ~ no question about that. I wish I could actually envision life clean, like those smiling characters who adorn American websites offering high-priced clinic facilities. But I honestly do not see it.

I could talk on and on but I'll only talk round more circles. I have just had enough. But WHAT NOW?



MORE INFORMATION ON SLOW-RELEASE ORAL MORPHINE PILLS: READ TERRY WRIGHT'S AUSTRALIAN HEROIN DIARIES: MORPHINE VS METHADONE UPDATE


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