Mean Green Dull Machine

IT IS A WARM AND SUNNY AFTERNOON. I just got Night at the Museum 1 & 2 on DVD for £5. Try and cheery myself up. I have taken no heroin today and don't intend to. I bought a litre of hazelnut flavour Baileys instead. I might go out and get some coffee to put the Baileys in. Coffee and Baileys is really good.

Now I despair of ever feeling proper again. My friend Pinky says my moods are never normal, always up or down. She is probably right. They do go normal for a day or two but most of the time I feel noticably up or down. Of course I probably seem "normal" in anything bar an extreme extreme. Actually I don't know how I seem to others. Just thinking about that makes me paranoid.

I would spend ages down the park because fresh air is supposed to be good for you but it's just depressing. My Mum sent me a letter which is well meaning but talks about me getting chucked out on the street. (For not keeping my house in order.) I don't think she realizes I do know it would be more natural to be off meds and on the street. And it was WAY easier to live when it happened. No complications, that's for sure. I ate peanuts and corned beef and drank white cyder. I managed to do three days in a row on Valium and methadone with no heroin while I was homeless so homeless can't be that bad.

I have just collected my Mean Green Dull Machine (methadone). I'm on my way home. I'm not doing gear. Gear is a waste of time. Why was I taking it when it didn't work even when it was good. Buggerlugz said maybe it had sleepers in it, not to hit the spot but still make me unconscious. No what I meant was I felt the heroin in it, very heroiny. It stank of brown, too. It reeked when I cooked it up. There was brown in it. But it still doesn't make me happy so I give up.

Talking of giving up I really need to keep my drink in check. I'm not "drunk" by any stretch of the imagination. Or "a drunk". I just drink every day. Strangely I crave alcohol more in the morning than the evening. My evenings are mostly dry; my mornings aren't.

I should go to NA but can't face the thought of people laughing at me in there. I've turned up in some states and couldn't handle feeling boxed in by chairs, people sitting next to me, people looking at me etc etc. In other words I was paranoid. Now I feel depressed but am too paranoid to share it, in case someone finds it amusing.

Now I have to go I'll get cut off in a minute. I hope y'all are all right.


For Anna's prostitution in Hawaii blog post, click here.

The needle and the damage done

ANNA has emailed me her book which makes me really want to get broadband back so I can read it properly.

I was so exhausted today I couldn't do anything afater sleeping 10pm to 8am. I had to sleep again from 2pm till 7pm. That makes 15 hours' sleep! Too many hours in my view. I have to go clean my house. It's in a real mess.

There's not much more to tell these days except how boring and down things have gone. I woke up this evening wondering what I am doing with my life. This is a thing I think surprisingly un-often.

I bought heroin and it was rubbish. Bought some more, a bit better. None of it stopped me feeling depressed. Even when I feel relatively OK the heroin doesn't hit the spot it used to. Even when it's strong enough to knock me out with an opiate knockout punch it STILL leaves me feeling it could have been better. Which probably means what I was looking for I would never have found in heroin anyway...

Sunny Day

IT'S DEFINITELY SPRING WEATHER. The leaves are on all the trees. The birds chirp their heads off "of" a morning...

I woke up so irritated today with Vanessa Feltz taking calls about heroin and people speaking of brick dust and bleach in it. Only journalists who are taken as idiots are sold "heroin" with brick dust or bleach in it. Brick dust will filter out, leaving red mess behind in the spoon or on the foil. Bleach being alkaline would react with the citric acid our heroin needs to break down for injection either foaming wildly or just buggering up the injection so bad it wouldn't ever cook up. Which is why you DON'T get brick dust or bleach as common ingredients in street heroin.

I was depressed and exhausted all day and cold but it seems to have got hotter as the day wore on. I have nothing inspiring to say I'm afraid.

I should have been tidying up yesterday but I did nothing I was too tired. Last night I went to bed late and haven't slept in the afternoon and I don't feel quite as bad as yeasterday so it might be lifting.

I saw a thing about cancer on children's TV. BBC children's TV shows a remarkably wide range of topics for the underage and I was surprised at how grown up these little people were. Talking about fighting for their young lives, talking about losing parents. Very stoical.

Now I have to go before I get terminated again. I'm too uninspired to write much. I hope y'all are OK.


Illustrated: cherry blossom ~ this certain sign of springtime is a Japanese symbol for the transient, passing nature of all life into death...

Down and not out (yet)

NOTHING EXCITING TO SAY. I've run out of broadband and I'm exhausted all the time. I sleep all night into the midmorning then most of the afternoon. I wouldn't count the hours as they'd add up to a dispicable number.

So there's no news. Sorry.

Other stuff: the weather is nice, but it doesn't make me happy. I think I'm turning into a Goth: I'm happier in winter.

Sorry nothing else to say. I will try posting something tomorrow.

Boogie Nights

I WROTE PAGES AND PAGES last night because I went "up" (on nothing) now I'm down to "normal" I feel like a human rollercoaster. Or more to the point, like a beach with constant tides grinding me into sand.

The weather has been beautiful. I wasn't sync'd in with the sunshine yesterday, so I didn't appreciate it.

Then I watched Boogie Nights which is about a waiter/kitchen assistant with an abmormally large xxxx who gets a job acting in porn. And he changes his name to Dirk Diggler. It's really funny. What I remember was my [2 female] friends watching it and coming back telling me about the cocaine! They loved cocaine. Barely ever took it, loved leeching off a man for the night being called "Princess" when they did. One of their cousins owned a West London very posh nightclub so she'd go up every now and then to be called Princess and get free coke. So I watched this film and I'm waiting on a refill of my medication anyway so I had none, so my mood soared quite nicely and I couldn't sleep, so I watched the film again in German! It's really funny watching tacky porn actresses doing coke and yelling at one another in German!

Then they go nuts on the coke and decide to rob someone by selling him a half key of baking soda for $5000 (was it really so cheap back then?) He's freebasing and letting off firecrackers in his house it's mental.

So I watched all these mentalists going mental on drugs and wasn't impressed by any of it. I hate drugs now. They steal happiness away and leave misery, emptiness and destruction behind them. Often when that seems not to be the case, it's just that you don't know the case well enough to comment.

So that was me yesterday now I have to ping off before I get terminated. I get an internet refill on Monday. If not then, then Tuesday. Wahey!!

Good Mood

I WAS IN A SOUR MOOD EARLIER; I'M IN A FAR BETTER ONE NOW. I was so exhausted I went back to bed. I'd woken up at five freezing cold and longing for heroin (such cold reminds me of withdrawals). I took no heroin, only methadone, and I'm feeling OK now. Ma Famille phoned me up and cheered me up earlier. See my instinct that outside things like swimming and comedy work for depression is absolutely right. My family say I should focus on positives and that my talk has somehow become full of psychobabble like "coping mechanism"; stuff that I didn't previously used to come out with. Then again coping mechanisms are things I need (though that's not to say I need be aware of them). I think my schizziness is a coping mechanism. It might be an "illness" but it's a way of coping too. Personally I think anyone who manages to live in today's diseased world without being on hard drugs or crazy or both either has something wrong with them (or is just kidding themself)... Or is such a remarkable person I want to meet them.

Everyone thinks my swimming idea is a good one. Hey I found my swimming trunks earlier; the baggy ones I actually want to wear.

I weigh 14 stone 4 3/4 ie 14 st 5 lbs. I have no idea how many pounds that is... oh yes I do I just looked it up there are 14 lbs in a stone so that's 201 pounds I weigh. That's heavy man! And it's very approximately 95 kgs. I wanna go down to 11 stone (77kg).

Now I have to buzz off I'm at an internet cafe; my broadband stick has run out and I thought it might be an exercise in interestingness, putting off posting to the evenings anyhow. (I felt so sour earlier I truly thought I was going to post nothing at all!) Well I'm better now and I get a new £40 stick next week...

I have the film Boogie Nights and some donuts to cheer myself up. Nobody tell me please Boogie Nights is no good; I spent £3 on the DVD!

Like a Duck to Water

DO YOU LIKE the duck picture? That is supposed to be me in a swimming pool. Do you know that I was forced into weekly swimming lessons by my Mum aged six. I hated them so much I spent entire sessions in tears. So I must like swimming to even be considering it now. Swimming is the only sport I genuinely love. I'm still looking for swimming trunks I know I've got. One pair is baggy, the other is 1910 style, kind of like cycling shorts. I'm too tubby for the close-fitting ones. They only work when you're doing the swimming strictly as recreation, which I'm not. I'm swimming for thinning. The major reason for doing it is in order to be Calm and Stress-Free. I get very stressed very easily. And I don't think it is "anxiety" as such, it's more Stress than Anxiety. I don't have the cognitive style anxious people have, turning things over and over in their heads. I tend not to think about things, or to think about them so distantly they're vaguely real. But I've heard sports are like a drug. And being as I'm hell-bent on leaving a life of drugs Behind Me I need any new drug I can try. I have to wait till next week when the DSS deign to pay me. This getting money every 2 weeks instead of weekly thing they want us to do is not working for me. It means I keep running out of money now and I don't have the £5 spare swimming requires. And I'm not feeling fit enough (yet) to walk four miles there and back. Which I will do when I get on a roll. Keeps you even fitter walking an hour and a bit there and back!

And how was your day?!

Sundry Talk

THIS IS the molecule of the designer drug "meow" (also stupidly called mephedrone) 4-methylmethcathinone. I tried it once. Somebody gave me a free sample and expected me to ask for more. I didn't. He said it had no comedown, which is true, it didn't have any comedown effect on mood (which is basically chemical depression; very similar to the down I get naturally). This stuff was like Ecstasy with cocaine on top. Except the cocaine lasted about three hours instead of half an hour. Just reading the wikipedia mephedrone article made my nose hurt in "euphoric" recall. (As NA call it.)

I know two people who died after taking mephedrone. The first one (who triggered the second suicide) was floridly psychotic from taking the stuff. He had a borderline personality disorder and he took mephedrone and became psychotic. She took it increasingly after his death. Then mephedrone was made illegal and she wouldn't have known where to get it on the black market (because it's taken by clubbers, not heroin addicts ~ two totally divergent scenes). At the end of the day you're just paying to be "moderately manic" when you take stuff like that. Though I'm distantly tempted to induce the state (because it did feel really really nice being manic). If I truly wanted to go "high" I could just stop taking my risperidone. Which I don't want to do. There's no guarantee I'd go up and I feel weird enough as it is ON antipsychotic; without it I know Id be hearing voices etc etc.

Warning: 3 mental paragraphs follow, so skip it if you're tired of mad-talk:~

Eg today I was tired, so I retreated to a park bench where I drank cherry flavoured Latvian cyder named Fizzzz (I love cherry Fizz!) during the course of this decampment I saw the concrete path before me turn into a grey river. If my feet hadn't been on the concrete, so I knew it was not liquid I might have gone into one on this bench, believing I was stranded in a boat in water. I never used to see the path turn into water before I was "mentally ill". It was heroin that kept me sane. How ironic is that. Heroin blocked mood cycles (though it kept me depressed) I barely got manic on heroin. I got manic enough to be horrified at the wikipedia article on "racing thoughts" in bipolar disorder. It was a portrait of my experience when I used to go off on one in my house, long before I got called "schizoaffective". Bipolar symptoms a couple of years ago, and I wasn't on crack.

So I'm tired today; I never seemed to get enough sleep. I'm sleeping OK. I'm not under sleeping nor over (well, not much over) but my sleep is all over the place. I sleep at night then I don't sleep at night. Then I sleep by day and at night. Then I feel tired then I feel weird. Then I do feel depressed. Then I just feel flat. Then I feel odd again. It's all like the "depression" I had for years on end, only punctuated by little blips of hyped up high (kind of bipolar). The only full mania I've had was recently. It cycled constantly back and forth between higher and lower levels of mania and mania and a sour mood then back to mania. I got very very high on this mania. Higher than I've ever been low. I started going higher than I have even heard described and I knew what bipolar did. I've read An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison. I know you see Death and blood goes everywhere! I didn't see death I just turned into a roaring noise. See this is what happens when I go mad. Now I have something to be frightened of, because I lost my sanity to a Noise. All thought turned into this nosie and I was yelling and screaming enough that I can see everyone in my house now thinks I'm not just a junkie but a nutter-junkie too. See, if I think about this I'm scared and not scared. This clanging thing happened intensely every day and in the end instead of backing off from it I went through it and stood on top of the cyclone and that meant a feeling of standing on top of the universe.

I saw that Trisch Goes Nuts video the other day and was horrified to read underneath that I thought she was "just a bit manic" ("moderately manic" was the wording). When I actually was hyper I thought that video was so hilarious, that's why it's up there. But bloody hell if that's moderate then what is severe? I know I went severe I just don't like to think of what I looked like.

I am watching some Japanese children on TV. One just found her school bag in the wreckage of her tsunami-flattened house. She said (defiantly, I thought, or bravely): "but I like living by the sea" and I thought "that's my girl".

Speaking of the news: what the hell are we doing in Libya. Is it just so we can have cheap petrol (that's gasoline to you Americans)..? I'm sure it has far more to do with that than protecting Arabs' liberties. The liberty protection is just the excuse. They did nothing when Mugabe went totally nuts in Zimbabwe, did they? And what's the difference between Zimbabwe and Libya? More elephants, less oil!

Now I must go I hope this isn't too much of a mess. I am washing clothes in the sink then going to sleep. I'm exhausted.

Illustrated: meow-molecule; a funky blue walled bathroom. I want walls this colour and will have them soon...

Lime Cordial

I SPENT A LOT OF THE DAY ASLEEP having slept terribly last night. I ran into someone I used to know in the corner shop when I was buying cyder and a bouncy ball. I collect bouncy balls. I'm always bouncing them. This one was transparent with Spider Man in the middle.

I drank too much, took heroin, fell asleep. It is all depressing to look back on. Just a social waste of time. No offence to this guy the time spent was very nice that is the point. It is just afterwards I look back and see drinking and drugtaking, and see it isn't good like it seemed; and I don't want to be doing that any more.

Then I felt up; now I feel empty and down.

I had some lime juice just now. You mix it with water and sugar. It mixes up something lovely. Like a very posh lime cordial.

The weather has been beautiful. And at 5:30am the little birdies are already tweetling their feathery heads off. They sound like some pet shop owner dished out all their bird stock into the trees to chirp their heads off when it was still dark. They're not nightingales so what are those birds that sing for joy in the last dark of the morning? Night jars? Larks? (I'm thinking Romeo and Juliet here).

Now I have to go.

PS I had Chinese last night; it was the one I was craving after with a certain flavour of mix vegetable fry rice. Beef black bean sauce {"most traditional") mix vegetable fried rice very nice.







ROMEO
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.

JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.

JULIET
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.

ROMEO
Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.

JULIET
You kiss by the book.

Romeo & Juliet Act 1 Scene 5

Not as Down

I'M NOT AS DOWN as I was yesterday. I was in a horrible mood last night. The only good thing about those horrible moods is that nearly always I sleep for hours on end, which I love. And I did sleep twelve hours flat-out. I can go past twelve into the teens but I don't like to. When I wake up then I feel vile. Especially if I sleep twice in one day, when I wake up the second time I feel horrendous. Something I've noticed time and time again.

It was this type of mood, a kind of depression, that I was taking gear to self-medicate all those years. I tended to feel down whenever I had no gear and the days without it were just unbearable. For this reason I preferred using a small amount of heroin on top of methadone every day than larger amounts spaced throughout the week.

I usually felt OK-ish in myself (I thought I was all right) and I could raise my mood (slightly) by doing things like walking down the street. But I'd walk nowhere and feel like I didn't want to go home and the small amount of OK-ness that I got tended to be deluged in depression eventually, so it just drowned.

I lived that way for years, never entirely feeling better. Never getting any treatment (and the last time I was on antidepressants was, as I have written, unmitigated disaster).

I don't want mood stabilizer. It will prevent me going manic-swimming for one thing. Risperidone can be an alternative to lithium. (Thanks Lizzy for the link.) Carbamazepine can be used for rapid cycling but I'm allergic (was prescribed it over fifteen years ago) so I'd have to try oxcarbazepine.

I still don't have too much to say. It's a dark day! Nah I'm joking. I'm OK I'm flat as a pancake. Uninspired. I hope everybody likes the baby wallabies below.

I'm off to the Chinese in a minute for beef black been sauce mix vegetable fry rice.

PS i found something funny; it comes from the Royal College of Psychiatrists' website:~

■ Mania
At the start of a manic mood swing, the person will appear to be happy, energetic and outward-going - the ‘life and soul’ of any party or heated discussion. However, the excitement of such situations will tend to push their mood even higher. So try to steer them away from such situations. You can try to persuade them to get help, or get them information about the illness and self-help.

Practical help is very important – and much appreciated. Make sure that your relative or friend is able to look after themselves properly.

But whoever wrote their website needs to add a schizoaffective page. I can't believe they left that out when they had SAD (which my Mum says she has). SAD is equally uncommon and is a recognized subtype of a fairly common illness (many people with SAD are actually type 2 bipolar; they go up in spring as well as down in winter. I asked my Mum whether she ever did this; she said no.)


ps should I not eat the Chinese? It is full of calories after all? And I'm supposed to be starting a strict exercise regimen VERY SOON INDEED!

Furry Friends

FURRY FRIDAY ON SATURDAY: WALLABIES

Hello!

Baby wallabies are called joeys

ON YOUR MARKS, get set, GO!


Wallabies are furry friends

Wishing Y'all a
fURRY WEEKEND!

Delete Key

I'M NOT SPENDING ALL NIGHT DELETING half-arsed stuff I wrote so here is the non-news Im too exhausted to post anything. So you just gotta take this and be done with; it's all I can conjure.

I couldn't sleep last night now Im knackered. It's only 20 to 9 and already I'm done in.

I couldn't sleep last night because I had an energy flash without much of a good mood. Now I'm all bad mood and all bad stuff.

I was despetately looking for something furry or feathery to post for Friday but came up with nothing. Except someone else seems to have "appropriated" my last Friday's post. Click HERE and I kid you not you'll see my post on somebody else's blog. Anyway I have to go I'm exhausted I hope you're OK.

Swirl

I HAVE FOUND A NEW BLOG! SACRED INSANITY, "My story of addiction, loss, suicide, bipolar depression, abuse, love, hope, and life, not necessarily in that order." It's here: http://mysacredinsanity.blogspot.com

I feel weird it's past midnight and I've had a manic flash. I could really do with a fan so I can feel the wind in my hair as I rush. I want to go swimming while manic. That's my new ambition. To go manic swimming.

O I'm not going to go on about how I am y'all have heard it before and it'll bore y'all to hear it again. Suffice it to say my head is going a bit fast I feel good but kind of uncomfortable in that I'm MEANT TO BE GOING TO BED IN A SECOND and I don't think I'm gonna sleep. My body always knows it's late and that I ought to sleep. It lulls despite the mania and picks up noticably in the mid morning. Lulls towards evening picks up a bit at night if I don't sleep then on. If I do sleep I sleep very few hours, this includes on sleeping pills.

My head is lit up with imagery again I see golden ants circling in formation a perfectly sawn off treestump. Freshly sawn. If I tried, I could count the rings but my eyes are open. Oh it's gone. I now see curtains in a theatre with abstract lights shone on.

I am going out for a walk. Wish me luck. Here's stuff I keyed in earlier:~~

And here's another blog: Clean & Crazy http://surrendertowin.blogspot.com

Hey I've just found a write up of my personality. My personality now...
It's here, bulletpointed: http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/schizoaffective-disorder-10088.html

Jobs you can do with schizoaffective disorder: links

http://www.suite101.com/content/getting-a-job-with-schizoaffective-disorder-a352938

0021 ps music sounds SUBLIME! TRY LISTENING TO THIS:~~~~~~~
Barber's adagio for strings, Ferry Corsten trance version (William Orbit)





ISN'T IT ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, TRANSCENDENT, SUBLIME?

How Was Your Day?

I HAVE DECIDED to manufacture my own happy-chemicals through diet and exercise because this is what I wrote just now: Oh my head is running out of happy chemicals. I feel very stressed, or rather I did earlier. All about an appointment.

So instead of popping a Valium or two I'm going swimming, which I like. And I'm sure afterwards that I'll feel better.

The idea that heroin completely disrupts the body's natural opiates, the endorphins, that you access through exercise, is patently untrue. Because I feel better when I go out walking.

I'm a heroin addict (actually a methadone addict) and I do feel better when I go out walking. So I must still have active endorphins.

If walking makes me better, swimming can only make me Much Better.

Queue into this today's Morrisons trip. Donuts. And not only Donuts but Raspberry ones. Now I'm going to have to do twice as much swimming. I haven't thrown any out of the window (yet) so I live in hope.

And how was your day? Did anybody do any swimming? I need COURAGE PLEASE to get my stark naked body into that pool. Because that's what it's going to be like that dream even I have had (as a child) of going to school, going wherever and being stark naked. And that's what I have to do. Strip off (in a cubicle; they DO have cubicles still, right?) strip off in a cubile and be As Good As Naked in a pool full of strangers who all want to swim boring lengths when you may as well time yourself and swim all over the place as I do. I do stuff like breathe out then sit cross legged at the bottom and make the lifeguard think I'm dying.

So how was your day. C'mon. Comments please:~~~~~~~


Illustrated: this is exactly how I look when I'm swimming. And if you believe that you really Will Believe Anything..!

Spiders

I SLEPT LIKE A BABY: twelve hours flat last night. I took risperidone early in two halves it works better that way. Now I just wanna go back to bed I'm too tired and I have to go to this awful appointment this afternoon where people will look at me. I'm so much not up for that. Being judged and appraised. People are like tarantulas. You look at the weird eight eyed thing that BITES YOU and know it is thinking. Probably thinking about how much it would love to BITE YOU. Thats what people are like. Funnel Webs.

Here is a picture of an Australian Mouse Spider. They're called mouse spiders because they live in burrows like mice. Aren't they cute? Those big tarantulas always remind me of hamsters. All furry and cute.

You see everything I'm afraid of I also love. Well most things. The Devil might be an exception. I would quite like to do that phobia therapy where you have a bloody great spider walk up your arm. I wouldn't let it walk over the palm of my hand but my arm is fine. Back of my hand is fine. They're so enormous they have to bunch up so as not to fall off.

Did you know there are only three spiders in the world that can actually kill you? How depressing [or non-depressing, come to think of it] is that. I was hoping any poisonous bite and SLAM! on the floor. Like Cleopatra with her asp. She had to really get that snake going before it bit her, apparently. And they brought special venom suckers to suck at her tit, to get the poison out. Never worked did it. Clever girl probably got 2 bites one on a hand one on her breast and those kinky Romans were so distracted by her mammaries they didn't notice the other one that killed her.

You know the Cleopatra film misses out the sucking out bit, the best bit of the story. That film is amazing I've seen it six times. Now I have to go out and get something for breakiefast. Take care and if you're in Asutralia don't let any mouse spiders in your house!

Illustrated: mouse spider; Cleopatra from an Egyptian coin

1812 hrs: Cleopatra: end of the movie

My New Home

I AM GOING TO BE LIVING IN A NEW HOUSE. I don't know when. But within not too long. Mentally supported housing, it's called. That is a mentally ill hostel rather than a mentally all over the place (because everybody here is weird) Emergency Accommodation.

It hasn't been sorted yet, but Deshane is working on it.

I spoke to Naomi tonight who was saying I have to go to a Dual Diagnosis club under a psychotic team.

Now nobody knows whether I should actually be treated by the people I go to see tomorrow because I am housed by one borough and live in another. Nobody is sure. But it seems to me I'm meant to stay as i currently am ie not go to the new place. But Naomi said go anyway and sort it out from there.

Everything is a mess. For once it's not one of my own making.

So I get a new home and hamsters are allowed! (First question I asked.) I want to make the Tubby Swine a new house out of glass with separate burrow compartments etc etc partitioned in the glass. You just use Silicone Sealant to hold the glass apart it's really easy to make a hamsterarium, so I'm told. It needn't even be waterproof, provided it IS only hammies you're using it for...

I couldn't sleep last night so tonight I've taken the risperidone early. It doesn't put me under sleepwise but it keeps me under. My head is lit up with the most beautiful imagery tonight but I'm not feeling hyped up. I feel very tired and I've only taken half of that risperidone. I'm hoping to get really good sleep tonight.

I'm not in the best of moods which isn't a problem as regards sleep. I tend to oversleep when I'm down.

Hey I'm getting a new house a new house a new house. Wow!

Frisbee Day

I TOSSED A PIZZA OUT OF MY WINDOW EARLIER LIKE A FROZEN FRISBEE. It had fucking pork in it and I don't eat pork. It's dirty. So I stormed off down the corner shop for another one. This one was Margherita with red peppers and mushrooms of my own. It's in there now.

WAS IN A REAL STEW about Deshane, the mental health personnage coming to my house. I very naerly walked out and scored heroin instead of doing the meeting. I have never been so wound up over a thing, an actual thing. Not for a long time.

Deshane is VERY perceptive he recognized that the mess I live in is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder turned on his head. How on earth did you realize that? I asked. It took over a year of counselling for me to see that one. He said he has seen it before. But he sounded very surprised when I laughingly described my "symptoms" to him. All my life all my experience is now a "symptom". How horrible is that.

But Deshane says it's healthier to see myself as sick than to pretend Im OK (as I do to the world at large, of course). But I get confused on that issue. I think it's all a conspiracy to make me helpless and in desperation yet undiagnosable. And on meds that don't work. The pills weren't really working last night. My head was lit up and I was hearing voices a bit. I know hearing voices is meant to mean I'm cuckoo but honestly thats the least of my worries. It's the weirder stuff I get troubled by.
I took my 4mg risperidone as prescribed. It doesnt make me feel ill anymore so that's good. Sorry there's nothing good to report. Except I'm taking up swimming (see below).

All the best to everyone

G
xx

Going Swimming

MY FRIEND ANNA GRACE is doing gym membership stuff. She does this thing when you can use a step machine or other machine at a cinema, while watching a movie! That is so American!

So I decided instead of getting laughed out of the boxing club I was going to go swimming. I have about 2 stone I want to lose. That's about 14kg or 28 lbs. An unsympathetic doctor (ooo where you gonna find one of those?! Try a prison. Try a drug clinic!) one of them they'd tell me I'm ideal weight. Bullshit I am I'm overweight I hate having any fat on me so I have to do Water Torture x3 a week. I looked up the prices. Without a special card it costs £6 with a bus or about £5.50 at the really posh one or about £3.80 at the less posh one. I was going to walk there to use up more calories. If I can eat one meal divided in three and cut alcohol out I should be able to lose weight despite antipsychotics. I know this sounds OTT but you have to be strict. One meal means a BIG meal, about 1500 calories. I can easily survive on that much. Most of the population of the world eats between 1000 and 1500 calories a day. I've been to India and eaten with the natives. I know.

Risperidone like most atypical antipsychotics causes weight gain and everyone says I look fat. Not that they use that word. They say I put on weight since January when I had that breakdown and literally exhausted myself so bad I felt physically sick from exhaustion. If I could keep up a level of activity I could get really thin and lithe. Last thing I want to be is that steroidal look. I want the karate-type look.

I would quite like to go swimming while in my "elevated mood" that would be fantastic.

Exercise always makes my mood go higher. I need to sort this shit out. I'm less scared of going swimming than I am of going into town and buying paints. Paints are stressful. Swimming I've done endless times before and it's the only sport I genuinely like.

OK so remind me in 3 weeks time I said I'M NEVER GOING SWIMMING IN LONDON. EVER. NEVER EVER GOING.

If I say that then I'll definitely go. I only make resolutions these days to break them... ha ha ha!

0420 OK I don't know how much weight I wanna lose or how fit I want to be but I wanna do something and swimming is it

Just gabblling (as per usual)

0220 WELL I WASN'T HALF RAMBLING on earlier. I was going into one because Deshane who is a mental health type personnage is coming to my house tomorrow (actually today, this afternoon) and I know I'm not feeling "right" so all that confusion with vivid references to mental disorderedness is me stewing because I'm stressed out.

I don't know whether to go to bed tonight or not I feel a bit "high" as doctors call it. (I don't really call it high but in the nuthouse the nurses used to say "we think you're getting a bit high" as an excuse to give a pissed off person with bipolar disorder who was JUST A BIT ANNOYED AND JUSTIFIABLY SO just as an excuse to wrestle him to the floor and slam a needle full of haloperidol in his arse.

I'm allergic to Haloperidol if they gave me that I really would get upset and sue. No kidding. I was in such a state on FIVE milligrams I got carted into hospital in an ambulance for not being able to walk any more. It was that serious, no kidding. If they DARED give me that I would take every measure of legal action, including assault charges because I know they will try and play mind games with me in there and I know I will probably end up in the nuthouse sooner or later. I don't feel like I'm coping that well and I get tired of looking after myself the way YOU would be tired of looking after a young toddler who keeps turning on the oven and leaving taps on etc. I don't do those things but that's the point it's what I DON'T do that causes problems. I don't do anything unless it's absolutely essential so this is my issue with "self-care" as they call it. Just being able to tell you doesn't make things any easier, any better or any different. Ill-informed and ill-trained people hav been taken in by my impression of normality for so long now I'm not about to start acting "ill" to be taken seriously they can either believe me or not I'm not putting any effort into any kind of mental health "performance".

You have to bear in mind I'm diagnosed with thee most complicated serious mental disorder there is with the widest range of symptoms of possibly ANY mental disorder so being happy can mean I'm actually manic, being quiet could mean I'm depressed or withdrawn, being normal might mean I'm plummetting in mood and just happen to me "euthymic" (in a normal mood) during the snapshot of time for which they see me. I'm getting tired of myself like I say and if anybody does make the offer again I will take them up and go in the nuthouse. I almost regret not going in when I was asked before but they would have medicated me away to nothing. British hospitals seem to be heavier on meds than American ones. You hear stories of physical restraints etc in America they are VERY seldom used here and only when absolutely necessary and only as a last resort. The first resort is medication, always medication and I don't want to be on heavy meds. I don't really want a mood stabilizer. He gave risperidone, I think, to establish whether I had a schizo-thing going on with my affective stuff. I think that was his reasoning.

I decoded what he said in Psychotic Appointment Number One when I was saying I didn't fit into diagnostic criteria and he himself said "what do you know about schizophrenia?" which did my head in so much I cried. Just thinking I had schizophrenia made me cry which is very unusual for me I wouldn't usually cry over something like that but I did over that one. Anyway he also asked whether I'd been OK for any length of time in the past 6 months. 6 months is the diagnostic time you need to have been ill to qualify for schizophrenia (or schizoaffective). I didn't realize what he was getting at and naively said "no I haven't been OK? What you mean all day? No." Bear in mind I had dealers ringing ME asking where I was! Not the other way round.

I'd lost it so bad I couldn't even score without a big load of stress. Literally everything in life stressed me so I avoided literally any engagement with reality outside going to get methadone, going shopping for essentials and going to horrible but essential appointments for methadone.

I have had problems that I now realize are this illness for a good five years straight. Severe problems coping with day to day life which both I and my drug workers just thought was can't be bothereds. But every single time I tried (and I did try) to snap out, to do a new thing, it just fell flat, didn't work, led to more distress, disappointment, dysphoria. And I was depressed enough already. That's why they started believing I had a personality disorder. I had a mental disorder I was self-medicating pretty successfully. Heroin really did work as a mood-stabilizer and antipsychotic. It was particularly good at levelling out my mood. I remember when I first got addicted, realizing there were no more hills and valleys just a flat line. But that flat line wasn't entirely flat it inclined downwards and I did go into the pits, just more slowly and I stayed down there a long, long time.

So this is more of me spouting on about mental shit I know. Think of it as unedited autobiography. I want my family to have stuff Ive written in case I die. Then they can assemble it into something publishable and hopefully get tons of cash from my death. That's what I'm hoping. A dead junkie makes a junkie's life story SO much more saleable. Hey imagine if someone made a film of my life?! I want Brad Pitt to play me.

OK I'm off now. I might even sleep ~ woo! Take care y'all...

Weirdly Wired!

0030: I FEEL CONFUSED and weird. Deshane is coming tomorrow. Deshane has some connexion with the council he doesn't mind me being off my head on nutnutter disorder.

Deshane is not coming till 1430 so I have time to sleep.

I had "elevated mood" earlier on. That is I saw Paddster who told me his woes and I couldn't stop smiling at him. Then I had to pull a really serious face.

I think they all know I'm nuts nobody not one single person seemed surprised when I mentioned various psycho things (I had to to explain why I hadn't been where I'd say I'd be, done what I'd said I'd do, why I was all over the place I just had to tell people in the end) I only told 2 people apart from family that I had this schizzy thing actually I only told Pad I told Valium Marilyn I had bipolar I so wasn't in to a discussion about what schizoaffective means. I think Marilyn's daughter has bipolar anyway she is so hilarious when she's on form she tells a story about somebody and actually turns into the person she's impersonating. She's not actressy but she's the best natural actress I've ever met. And I've met a few. It's a shame because she was so pretty when she was younger. Model-pretty. I've seen her modelling photos. She's slightly vulnerable, the sort of woman who would rely on a man to sort her business affairs. I would never let another person do that unless I was so mental I just couldn't do it. Anyway she was telling me about this manic depressive she knows. "'E says yeah come raand tomorra night I'm avin' a party, then ya come raand and the miserable bastard just looks at ya and says 'what you want?'" she's so funny. Specially when she uses her ultra strong London voice to say how common she thinks other people are. Or does an impression of her late deaf mother (Marilyn is nearly 70) she used to say "oooh! Would you go out looking like that. Ain't she a trollop!" at the top of her voice. I couldn't stop laughing. I had "elevated mood" then too. One day I came round totally out of my tree I was so hyped up I was dangling feet from the ceiling. That was the day I got lost coming out of her house and the police nudged each other and tried not to laugh when they saw me. I was deliriously manic that day. Got lost on the way to my own house!

Valium Marilyn thinks I'm really posh by the way. I once showed her a photo of The White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace (which is tennis court sized) and said "that was like our old sitting room only theirs is a bit pokey" and she BELIEVED me!

I kept hearing voices inside my ears just now saying half of words. It really annoys me when they DON'T SPEAK CLEARLY. I'm not like Pinky. Actually I avoided the schizophrenia diagnostic slam where you need just ONE symptom because i don't hear voices conversing about me and I don't hear voices doing a running commentary on my behaviour. They do sometimes summarize what Ive thought in single words (lots of voices make a sentence between them in spaced out words) but they never tell me what to do. This would make me yell at them and tell them to fuck off. Nobody tells me what to do.

0056 I remember when that dr asked me "what do you know about schizophrenia" ... this was in reply to my "a ha ha! you can't say i'm manic i've only been up for six days!" which wasn't strictly true though i did believe this at the time i'd already been up a week in manic depression (both) and stayed out of it a good ten days. Days 3 and 4 were the lost weekend where I really went more psychotic in a hallucinatory way than I've ever been before or since. O man why is all this me? Only other people go cuckoo. How can I of all people be CRAZY LAZY DAISY MAZEY CRAZY phase me. I'm not crazy. I walked through the park earlier in pitch black. I choose this park because it's Prime Mugger Territory and THEY ought to be scared of ME I would go NUTS if someone dared try and rob me and I'm not scared of dying. My head kept going over the same words again and again like Leonardo Di Caprio in the Aviator. I don't know why I do that. When I went to the shop earlier I was thinking in music. No words in there, just tunes. It was fantastic. Then this man in the shop was SQUEAKING pretending to be a little mousey! I thought "oh it's that time of night" ~ why do people always do weird stuff when Im feeling weird? To weird me out? Or weird me outter than out? I don't know.

No I don't go into the park to mug people. I started to go into the park after dark same as you go on a ride in Disney Land for the Fear Factor. It makes me happy and high. I get a buzz, a rush off of it. And like I say I may as well attack them as them attack me they had better be pretty sure about what they're doing, like I say I'm not scared. If I got killed I get a passport into Eternity without God having a go at me for committing suicide so it's all good. If someone pulls a knife my line is: point to pulse on neck, draw an imaginary line down my pulse, and say "CUT HERE". Stupid fuckers will probably run off in terror. I never carry a weapon. I never make threats I wouldn't carry out either. Which is why I never make threats to anyone. Only promises.

LIZZY I HAVE PUT UP THAT SEDUCTION JUDGEMENT DAY SCREEN BIG SHOUT NUFF REESPEC GOING OUT TO YOU!!!!!!!!

0149 i saw a thing earlier about a Scottish women's prison. hey i keep seeing eyes at the bottom of my screen. that means i'm titted on manic depression. anyway i saw this thing about the prison. the woman who wanted us to think she was clean when she could barely keep her eyes open at the end was... i was going to say sad but that's unfair. "Pretty predictable" is most spot-on. A lot of these girls actually say they feel better there, safer there than at home. The screws WERE on camera but they did seem genuine enough. I'd never go within a million miles of a prison. Reason? I was ON DRUGS. No way no way on earth would a situation like that where you're separated from ya drugs, NO WAY would I let that happen. Early decision in my druggie career. When they still used to pull you off methadone over 14 days. No matter how bad your habit you were forced clean in 2 weeks. Not surprisingly lots of people went nuts and were put on suicide watch over this. One thing I would definitely lie about in prison is my mental health. I would pretend to be sane so they took me off suicide watch. [deletion: prison suicide details] but i think (when i'm in that state) that people who are anti-suicide are pussies. I get very pro death. More than suicidal and wanting to kill myself I want to die and sleep for ever. That's what I want. And this idea I have had when depressed that I will live for ever in despair puts me off. Not hell. I don't believe in hell. But I sometimes have thought my mortal body was immortal. When I say "thought" I mean "the idea passed through my mind repeatedly" not "i believed that" I don't "believe" anything. I was at one stage Christian and Buddhist at the same time, so what DO I believe. Because I don't believe I cannot be delusional, so that gets me out of THAT one! Ha ha!

0204 Just wasshed my hair. See I have good self care now. I really need to go in the shower but without heroin insulating me against the feeling of water it's hard. Do you know what insulated me so well I didn't even realize I was cold until my hands literally seized up and could barely type? Mania in January! Yeah man.

I went back to January on my blog to find some tunes I liked. Looking back I realized I've been mental for 3-months flat with continuous high or low mood and maybe one or two days of normality (but the schizoaffective kicks in most noticably then so I still find I have little people living in my coat pockets etc) so it's all highly inconvenient, highly commendible, highly entertaining and highly o shit! my life down the draining.

O cripes the auto save isn't working and this will go walkies. I do apologize if this is not that together I'm kind of going off on one a bit tonight I'm stressed because Deshane wants to see me tomorrow and then there's this über-horrible mental health appointment where I get a Hitleresque new methadone team and I'm so stressed about that I'm not going to sleep between now and Friday I can just tell and I'm not going to bed either. No way am I lying in bed feeling shitty when I can be listening to music feeling high and putting everything out of my mind. You know?

0209 it is autosaving now but I've decided to post or it'll get too long and everyone finds me boring anyhow so BOREDOM AHOY!!

Are psychiatrists crazy? Read this story:~

DOES ANYONE want to read a psychiatric short story? It's here. A fictional story about a "patient" who begins sleeping poorly and eventually comes out to his rather concerned girlfriend with a story about being in possession of a multimillion pound offshore account with which he will feed the starving and the needy. Enemies are out to get him and he can identify them by the colour of their eyes. Different versions of the story were circulated to psychiatrists in which 1. he had a verbal argument and 2 hit his girlfriend ie there was a violent and a nonviolent version. The Royal College of Psychiatrists wanted to see what possible effects violence might have on diagnosis. Not surprisingly the violent version of the story scored more schizophrenia diagnoses than the nonviolent one, which rated higher on bipolar disorder (poor sleep, grandiosity and paranoia are all symptoms of mania AND paranoid schizophrenia though schizophrenics tend towards oversleeping (I learned something Googling!) anyhow...)... even MORE interesting was the fact that female psychiatrists were more likely to make a bipolar diagnosis than male psychiatrists who preferred schizophrenia and this was irrespective of the violent/nonviolent version they got... you can read the write up here.

Here is the table. NB there were FOUR versions of the story but you really need to click the link to get the detail or I'll just repeat them.

The overall diagnostic breakdown from male and female psychiatrists went like this.
Male psychiatrists: schizophrenia 35%; schizoaffective disorder 20%; bipolar disorder 45%
Female psychiatrists: schizophrenia 27%; schizoaffective disorder 19%; bipolar disorder 54%

Dreaming

I sleep for hours and hours dreaming. I dreamt I was with people in a giant glasshouse world. Some threat came in from outside and this isn't exactly what happened (it was a dream; very mixed up) but the world we were in was failing and eventually the glass broke open and bright sunshine was outside and a better world to live in.

Kind of an obvious metaphor for what is going on today. You could say that is my life, you could say it is the world we live in.

I had no idea Japan was in ruins except that somebody mentioned it on their blog. Isn't that a sign of the end of the world? "Wars and rumours of wars... earthquakes in divers places"...? But these are just the beginning of sorrows. It gets much worse. Then it gets a hell of a lot better. I always imagine paradise has fresh air.

I dont know why...

I DON'T KNOW WHY I was so intersted in medicine last night. Talking about being better. That is one thing I have never known how to be. Well.

Skip the bit in italics to avoid today's anti-methadone rant.

That is why I must make myself a fortune, the biggest one possible and leave taxatious British soil to keep my money safe. I'd rather live in Switzerland and pay for heroin therapy than here and pay for nuclear weapons we're never going to use (if I were prime minister I'd nuke any foreign power that annoyed me), overcrowded prisons and ineffectual methadone programmes. Though ineffectual and methadone together is tautological. For most people most of the time (that is for long-term addicts) methadone is ineffectual. According to a friend of mine 60mg of methadone drunk is equivalent to £10 of good gear injected IV. It took me years to realize this person was absolutely right [it only became true after about five years' heavy heroin]. Anyway that's the methadone rant over.

Safely skipped? And now we'll continue. I feel dull and empty. I decided to be a Great Poet and to be worth a hundred million euros cash. A decent house costs over seventy million which is frightening. A decent London townhouse. I think I would move out to the country and live in a Swiss Disney Castle, y'know with turrets.

I can't think of any other positive thing to say. How does a bird learn to sing, except by hearing song? I'm surrounding myself with culcha until it comes out of my very pores. Then I can be a culcha vulcha and make a living spouting crap. No heroin works on me any more even stuff strong enough to knock me unconscious, it still doesn't work. Doesn't hit whatever spot it used to. I can only put this down tothat risperidone, it is a psychic insulator. With one psychic insulator already in place, I don't need another.

Now skip the next paragraph.

You know that manic phase was the best I have ever felt, despite the craziness of it all. How sad is that. That I can only feel good by being drugged or mentally deranged. But it's true. I've never ever felt OK when I was normal. Yeah I've been passable but I was not OK at all as nobody can testify and nobody ever will after I'm gone. They will all lie about me. Because they will think the person they saw when I was depressed (even mildly depressed) was somehow me. No. The true me is the manic person who would xxxx xxx xx xxxx xx xxxx xx xxx. That might be a character flaw but at least it makes me colourful and not dull. I can't live this way trapped in eternal mediocrity I was never meant to be mediocre and I hate mediocre things. I hate things dull, dowdy, quiet and tuneless I like bright and glowing and rainbow and blue and full of music. I like power. I like feeling power and energy. Everything that has happened to me has drained me of power, lack of energy makes you ill, that's what sickness is. Either a lack of energy or energy misdirected within the system.

That's all; goodbye.


Illustrated ~ limes: sourer than lemons

Schizoaffective Disorder

AS REGULAR READERS will know I have been diagnosed with a relatively rare psychiatric condition that affects approximately one person in two hundred and accounts for approximately five percent of all patients with serious mental illness. Not much is known about this condition. Varying opinions put have it as a variety of schizophrenia, or a variety of bipolar disorder, or a cross between the two or "the unlucky convergence of two psychoses" (that is that I am bipolar and schizophrenic at the same time.) The name of this condition is schizoaffective disorder.

The name "schizoaffective" originated in 1933. And as I say, nobody knows quite what it is or how it comes about. And though it is widely considered to be a midpoint between type 1 bipolar and schizophrenia on a "psychosis spectrum" it is acknowledged that schizoaffective disorder "has a flavour all of its own". For example, schizoaffectives seem particularly prone to "seeing things" as well as "hearing things". For example, when I'm ill I can see animals in the floor. Just as one can see faces and forms in clouds, I can see them not only in clothes an carrier bags but in floors, on walls and even on my computer screen. I sometimes see pairs of eyes at the bottom staring back at me.

When I was in the mental hospital years ago I saw an angel staring in at me through an upstairs window. At the time I had contact lens problems so I had in one constact lens. So through one eye I saw a blurry angel and through the other the angel was clear. Just as if a real form was at the window staring in at me. What shocks me today is that I never saw fit to tell my doctor about this. I think I was minded at the time to get out of there as quickly as possible without saying too much.

Oh and just to complicate matters there are two subtypes of schizoaffective disorder: a depressive type and a bipolar type. My hyper, manic phases are higher than my depressive lows are low. It's totally normal for mania to be more florid an psychotic than depression but my mania has reached, for short periods of time, the outer extreme of how manic it is possible to go. I'm so grateful that I don't go as depressed as you can go. And, because its quite possible to be schizophrenic and depressed at the same time, it's necessary to have more serious depression than I do to qualify as socalled "unipolar" or depression-only schizoaffective. My friend Pinky is depressive schizoaffective. She gets the faces in the floor thing; but her depressive episodes are generally worse than mine. And I don't think she's just describing them more "dramatically" I think she really does get more intensely depressed. Another difference is that her system will tolerate antidepresants while mine goes haywire on them. My mood cycles quickly. I can be quite horribly depressed, suicidally so, for just one day (an would usually have some degree of mania each side) whereas Pinky's depression is like mine used to be: constant lasting months on end. (Some of my depressions lasted years on end.) Another difference is that if you plotted it on a graph, my depression would be a wobbly line "under the water" as it were (that is under the line of "normality" in other words it used to cycle even back then. Now I cycle between high and low rather than merely different levels of low with infrequent flashes of high (I've had bipolar [manic] symptoms off and on (mostly off) since my mid-20s.)

I found the best schizoaffective stuff by googling "schizoaffective bipolar". The best link so far is from McManWeb: http://www.mcmanweb.com/psychosis.html

I've had a couple of comments expressing surprise that I'm not on a mood-stabilizer as well as an antipsychotic. I now know why. My doctor suspected I was schizophrenic not bipolar when he first saw me "ill". So he treated me using antischizophrenia drugs to see what progress I made. And sure enough I have stopped hearing voices and my mania is damped down. But it doesn't seem to do much against depression. I'd rather NOT be on a mood-stabilizer as no mood swings would just make my life too vanilla for words. If he thinks I'm OK on just risperidone, I'd rather go on purely on risperidone, experiencing some mania, because I love being a bit manic. It's like purely natural excitement (this is why it doesn't fit any drug signature if you wanted to be really precise about it, it doesn't match any upper even though being hyper is like being on uppers. I'd say being mildly hypomanic is like being on a bit of amphetamine; being moderately manic is like cocaine; being ultra high is like trippy Ecstasy type drugs; you could go raving in this state on nothing and actually be the most vibed-up person in there). Mania does take you higher than drugs. You just have to think: how many times have you or anyone you knew thought they literally Ruled the World, or felt like they were literally changing into an angel, because they were high on drugs? These feelings are par for the course in severe mania. In other words severe bipolar (or schizoaffective) takes you higher than drugs ever do. You'd fit out, foam at the mouth, and eventually die on uppers before you ever got that high. Which explains how I could stay awake as my head eventually went into a brainfrying high when on drugs, as I say, you'd just fit out or even die.

Sounds lovely, doesn't it!

Well I'm finding out what I can about this mysterious syndrome named bipolar schizoaffective. I can see that I match it perfectly. All I saw before was that I was bipolar. As a "patient" it's the pattern of ups and downs that is easier to grasp than the fact that you actually are in a mania or a depression or a (mixed state). The mind has a way of convincing itself it's not severely ill so I was in depression for months and seriously considered myself not to be ill and not to be worthy of any psychiatric diagnosis. That would have explained behaviour that was to me inexplicable.

My psychiatrist is a consultant who specializes in dual diagnosis (that is diagnosing people with drug problems and serious mental conditions) and he can weed out drug psychosis from bipolar or schizophrenic psychosis. Schizoaffective disorder has socalled negative or deficit symptoms for example you can spend hours or days staring into space. This is a part of my illness. I avoid social contact with people and I have impaired motivation, meaning I'm content to do very little, despite being largely off heroin. All the stuff that was blamed on heroin turns out to be "what I was like anyhow". As I myself was starting to suspect. I only had to look around at other addicts to see that no matter how badly addicted they were, they weren't in the mess I was in. They tended to be experts at taking psychiatrists for a ride which is why my "not bothering to try" attitude got me written off. I wasn't going to come in presenting a picture of misery just because I felt down. They only got a florid primary-coloured portrait of me when I was manic, highly expansive and unrestrained and very vocal. Then they saw who I really was. Acting manic must be one of thee most difficult psychiatric states to "put on" because you can't fake the presence of excess energy. It's just too exhausting. Another sign that I was real not faking. I grew to suspect that they considered me a fake or an exaggerator. I used to say that I needed to address my mood issues and I'd get nothing but nods and more nods. Then I went floridly mad and suddenly help is forthcoming. I'm just annoyed it had to get THAT BAD before anyboy listened.

I have sudden flashes of insight as I did today where I suddenly realize how deeply messed up some of the stuff is that I come out with. The glib way I talk about death. It really disturbs me to see that I'm this person in such a mess that I'd say the things I say. If it wasn't for my "no embarrassment, no deletion" policy I'd take a lot of it out to save my own face. But I just leave it all in. It's my own record of where I've been, that's my main motivation for blogging when "ill". My blog posts are my own postcards from the edge. Postcards to myself more than to you. I just am horrified at some of the things I thought. What was going through my head? It's sad, very sad to be this person so desperate he's talking about death as if killing myself shows some kind of character strength, when actually it shows desperation or even delusion. I'm much more disturbed about this than about my using heroin every now and then. All I learned from today's gear was that even though it was top-notch by today's low standards, it's still not doing the job it used to do.

All I can imagine is that being on antipsychotics that have squashed my more extreme manic symptoms and stopped me hearing voices or feeling dissociated from my own thought process (so my thoughts don't feel like my own, they feel like something I'm hearing on the radio). Risperidone stops most of this; heroin used to keep my mood on a far more even keel than it otherwise was, an it did a great deal to keep me sane. This is pretty obvious when you consider how badly I lost it when I suddenly jacked gear in last December. I had the most florid psychotic episode with both high and low mood, of my entire life. I have never ever hallucinated auditorily that vividly. Not on drugs, not on anything. When I became manic in February I was far higher, yet less "psychotic" in that I hallucinated less. All this is schizoaffective stuff. Unlike a bipolar person, I have psychotic-type experiences not related to a high or low mood. I remember some years ago feeling heavily stoned on cannabis with very LOUD thoughts, mild auditory halluciantions and racing thoughts from a COMMON COLD. This was while Maple Syrup my "it's all down to drugs" worker, the one who tried to bully me, the one I sacked. If Maple Syrup had even glanced at my files she'd have seen that I was 38 years old and hadn't become addicted to heroin until age 28. Meaning that I had 28 years of issues at that time. Meaning it was ridiculous to pin all my troubles on a drug. Meaning my intuition was right and hers wrong. I always did envisage myself losing it when I eventually came off. This wasn't "bad attitude" it was me seeing myself the way an insurance assessor would. That every single time without exception that I'd detoxified, dropped dose or switched medications I had experienced manic-depressive symptoms to some degree. I got extra meds in rehab BOTH times I was in there. I spent hours in the counselling rooms crying BOTH times. I spent all night wide awake every single night unlike everyone else who said they didn't sleep and promptly took up snoring for hours on end, BOTH TIMES. In other words something was going on with me that wasn't with them. If everybody had been as upset as I was they'd have employed a team of twelve full-time counsellors every day to meet demand. Somehow other people seemed to do a methadone or dihydrocodeine taper and though they had low points they didn't crack up. Yet somehow I did.

What I didn't expect was to go as floridly crazy as I did, or as rapidly as I did (literally the day I left heroin behind was the day I started hallucinating so floridly I literally could not tell whether I was thinking or hearing, I experienced that many voices.

In a way I look at myself from afar and feel sorry for someone who is a desperate mess. Self-pity is only useful when it gets you the help you need. Otherwise it's a waste of energy. My energy is going into finding out more about this mysterious condition with which I live.

It's diagnosed differently in the USA by the way to the rest of the world.
The World Health Organization's ICD-10 specifies that bipolar and schizophrenic symptoms are experienced together or within a few days of one another; the American DSM IV-TR insists that I must magically be free of any and all marked mood swings for a fortnight and still exhibit psychotic features. So whether or not I'm merely severely "bipolar 1" in America, I've no idea.

I know I have all the features associated with a poor recovery: mood-incongruent hallucinations, deficit symptoms between the severe mood swings, rapid cycling of the mood and mood switches directly between manic and depressed... all these are associated with poor medication response and a poorer prognosis. So whether or not I'm bipolar or schizoaffective in whatever country I am at the "severe end" of "severe mood disorders" and without medication become "severely manic". This word "severe" is cropping up far too often for comfort and it's my googling that has brought it up.

What I'm after now is to be "severely clean" with a "severe recovery" from "severe mental illness"... so there we go.

"Severely well". That's what I wish to be.


Illustrated: schizoaffectives can see amazing things in trunks of gnarly trees!
And I bet you can, too. Especially in the top one!



SCHIZOAFFECTIVE DISORDER

this guy says he took amphetamines as a youngster; but his mother is bipolar
i took amphetamines (etc) as a youngster; my mother has recurrent depression



this one is more like me
someone asked what i talk like this is the accent i have without the northern bits
without medication i go through periods of hearing voices every day
and i get depersonalization too (that means nothing is real)

Pity the Joy Man

WHO IS IN A MESS? Not me. Not.

I glanced over the bullshit I have written over only FOUR DAYS.

Did I really think it showed strength of character to kill myself? Why do I say these things.

Then I want to switch to a drug I know will make me suffer. While it makes me cleaner. Subutex is amazing. But only for those truly ready to be clean.

Now I want to be a poet (and don't I know it).

Today I am waiting for a misery bag. Yes high grade shit is coming my way.

Last week I got a couple of free samples, one was amazing. It knocked me out, literally. I didn't blog it as I was in such depression, the heroin barely cut through.

So this is me, still lost. If I were somebody else I should be sorry for myself. But I can't pity myself. That is too indulgent.

And here we are. I'm on basic German lessons via teach yourself, to patch up the gaps in my knowledge.

And waiting, waiting, waiting on the Joy Man to show his face and a little bag of powder costing £20.

Wherever you are have a nice day. And don't pity me or yourself. Pity doesn't pay the rent and it doesn't feed you. It is a waste of love.

*******

McMannWeb best schizoaffective page I've found so far
http://www.mcmanweb.com/psychosis.html

Poetry and Truth

DOES ANYONE KNOW A SHOP SELLING HUGE WHITE SMOCK SHIRTS? I have decided to become a poet, you see. So I need one. I already have a fountin pen bought on special offer for 30p. It came with 3 blue cartridges but I need poetical black ones. And thick acid free Sketch 100 paper for manuscripts and lots of lovely red wine to leave poetic winestains all over my poetic manuscripts. I already have a special notebook for copying poems into. Problem is I haven't really written one for 20 years. And I have a halfarsed poetry blog not even I read.

Thing is if someone said "here are some oils, paint a portrait after the manner of Leonardo da Vinci" I'd be stumped. But if someone said "knock out a Spenserean stanza, two sonnets, a Shakespearean and a Petrarchan and ten stanzas in terza rima" I could do it and I've found some of my best stuff (with my habit of copying out other people's work) and wondered who on earth wrote it! It was only fragments so nothing ever got copied up and saved. Only finished stuff is saved.

Once I have the shirt and the wine and a finished opus I'll put a bit online. I have thought up a way of promoting my opus that has never been done before, especially not by a living poet and THAT is how I want my work published. If I give away my idea somebody else shall only take it so I can't tell it till it's done.

I dearly would love to switch on to Subutex but don't want to put myself in a mental hospital thinking I'm being sucked through the vortex of a spiral (ie severely manic) so I'm indulging that idea with great care. Ie doing absolutely nothing about it for the time being.

Beatrix Potter is on my television. I got the Renee Zellwegger DVD. She's just like me.


Shakespeare's Sonnet 73. Isn't this sublime?

My Special Tonkie Plan

I HAVE A SPECIAL PLAN. I'm in a good mood now and planning my future. My DRUG-FREE FUTURE. YES A FUTURE WITH NO MORPHIA, NO METHADONE NO NARCOTIC SUBSTANCES.

See I feel hypomanic enough without needing shitty drugs to bring me up here. Why am I hypomanic? Because I scored methadone on the street a while ago and indulge tonight in an extra dose. [A tiny dreg that I had extra, not a whopping huge dose.] That little bit extra plus lots of sleep, plus depression which cycles anyhow (high and low and I really do mean HIGH at the extreme ~ even higher than crack) so this has switched my mood. I was NOT taking illicit methadone during my most intense mania, I ought to add. If anything I was FORGETTING to take the shit, forgetting until I wasn't too far from having my head down the toilet puking from withdrawal [I felt physically sick and didn't know why]. I was so high I not only went into a literal spiral whirl where my words broke up into noise, a brain full of roaring NOISE without words I was turning into literal pure energy and felt invincible. My friends told me not to fuck off the methadone clinic but that was my plan. To tell them where to go and hike along the high speed rail track to Paris. Knowing that withdrawal perturbs my mood severely I would in this state have probably gone so manic I literally didn't know my own name. I was already out of it enough that I didn't grasp what people meant when they said my name in front of me. I wondered who they were talking about.

This was on NO drugs bar a couple of cyders per day as I'd been drinking for eyars on end without mania, and just enough methadone to survive. No speed, no crack, no E, no psychedelics to put me in this state. This is what I mean when I say my highs are higher than my lows are low. And thank God. I've heard tales of manic people believing they are Emperor of the World or at the very least multi-billionaires. And they very often take other people in and get first class air tickets New York to Paris, leaving chaos in their wake. Because I'm schizoaffective I can barely get it together to keep self, house keys and phone in the same place. In my most severe mania I had no glasses (I just lost them) and no money at all (I lost the card). I was pretty badly disabled and only able to post because I type by touch, have been blogging for years and know the procedure for posting back to front. Otherwise I'd no way be able to put up my experience online as I went. All that weird spelling mistake stuff with U U U A A A, that stuff was literal stream of consciousness. I didn't edit because just as I'd keep my private journal the way it was, so I wanted my blog to caputre the moment. This was like holiday photos from the Light Side of the Moon.

How did I get on to this? Oh yeah because I'm UP and Addressing My Drug Problem.

Here's what I'm doing. I KNOW SOMEONE WHO DEALS IN SUBUTEX OR SUBOXONE.

[They're the same stuff: buprenorphine one has a useless added ingredient so you can't inject but I wouldn't waste a vein on it anyhow. I don't know which he's on now but he sells his script and offered it to me several times.]

I'm willing to switch methadone to heroin for a week to sweep the Mean Green out of my system. If you don't sweep it out you have to be down to 30mg AND do 36 to 48 hours of NO METHADONE which is just not something Im going to do, not something Paddster ever did and he's the man as regards Drug Knowledge. He's now 100% opiate clean ie on NOTHING and he achieved this using the same manner of scheme I came up with. So Im going to clear out evil methadone which is MORE ADDICTIVE, WORSE WITHDRAWALS and ONLY superior to heroin in that it can be dosed orally under supervision once daily. Paradoxically methadone's advantage is key to all its disadvantages. The long half life means it's a slow drug, taking ages to take effect, ages to detox out of the system. Most people agree it is better to die than to detox off methadone. Sorry to be realistic. Life ain't too hot. Life without opiates when you're addicted to them is utterly bleak and meaningless and during detox you feel this in all its realism and intensity.

To any person reading this in a state of withdrawal I urge you to keep hold of how you feel and to make an adult decision. Is this really what you want to be doing with your life? You don't need to commit suicide. You need to come off these drugs that are making life not worth living.

There is no need to suffer unduly.

This is why I choose the Subutex option. You do the suffering BEFORE you come off. The worst suffering occurs during switchover. I'm going to switch over under NO medical supervision. I will wait a couple of hours and use heroin to cover the receptor sites Subutex has left wide open leaving me partially sick. I'll start off on 4mg day one, 8mg day 2, 8mg day 3. I'm not going over 8mg. Then I'll tell the clinic I'm on 8mg Subutex and don't need methadone and they can treat me or not treat me but this is what I'm doing. I MUST switch to heroin first as my methadone dose is way too high it would take months to switch down. I'm doing 18 hours clean before I pop a Subbie. Then I'm crushing up the 8mg pills and reducing by approx a single milligram every couple of days. I've BEEN ON SUBUTEX AND DONE THIS. I felt NOTHING. No withdrawal whatsoever after the 3 days of "suffering".

A lot of people say buprenorphine makes them feel terrible for 3 days but I felt fantastic. I now realize I was hypomanic! Music on TV sounded luscious. My mood was soaring, particularly in the mid-morning. I was sleeping approximately midnight to 4am. On the zopiclone the dr prescribed the next week I got another 2 hours; midnight till 6. The pattern of my moods (the precise swing in intensity; my sleep pattern; the way music sounded so amazing) all this matches the mania I get now which is why I can confidently say I was mildly hypomanic in my first few days on Subutex. I was high enough to feel about 95% physically OK on day 2 but not be AT ALL bothered by these slight withdrawals. On day 3 I was about 98% OK and again simply not bothered by the sweats and shivers I had I was so hyped up. I had all the upsides of hypomania, which is mild mania and all the positive feelings people use cocaine for. Unlike cocaine which makes me feel ragged, brittle, paranoid, anxious, and often extremely jagged this was a wonderful smooth secure feeling. It's more like being a kid excited over Father Xmas than being an adult on drugs.

So I'm switching MYSELF to the substance I wish to use. I'm withdrawing myself far more quickly than the clinic would allow (which is why I'm not telling the clinic till it's done). I know my family will worry but they needn't do. I'm NOT doing this next week I'm keeping myself on the most even keel I can manage for several weeks before I even consider putting myself through this. Eg I had NO DRINK YESTERDAY. Not one single alcoholic unit. I need to get used to being FREE, being EVEN, being SURE OF MYSELF OFF DRUGS. Because for the rest of my days, be they many or few I'M OFF DRUGS FOR GOOD. Once I get off the shit that somebody chose to name after a female hero Heroin, once I get off this, that's us DIVORCED.

TILL DEATH DO US PART?

No darling. You cheated on me, you abused me, you nearly ruined my life. WE ARE THROUGH.


Illustrations: with the obvious exception of the perky-eared tonkie house mouse, I found these by looking through schizoaffective and schizophrenia and they sum up how I feel. The most accurate two are the top two, the red one is me when blurry and the woman is how I feel when I'm crystal clear but "ill" I'm all there, just not there as I was when I was "weller" ....

Rethink (mental health charity) schizoaffective disorder fact sheet.


Lizzy, thanks for this
Radiohead - Street Spirit Funkagenda's Spandex+Ketamine Mix
"ketamine mix"



A little tonkie poem.
Byron: Childe Harold Canto 1; XIX

The horrid crags, by toppling convent crowned;
the cork-trees hoar, that cloathe the shaggy steep,
the mountain moss by scorching skies imbrowned,
the sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep,
the tender azure of the unruffled deep,
the orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
the torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
the vine on high, the willow branch below,
mixed in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.

Sour Saturday!

DONCH' ALL LOVE MY LEMON TREE? If you want to see some wondrous colourful birdies go one post below. Two of the pictures are purloined from my Aussie friends' back gardens. Baino and Bimbimbie live along the Eastern Coast of Aus where rainbow lorikeets flap about in profusion.

Last night I was up until past four. I was intending to stay up to go to the chemist then languish unconscious all day. But I slept till nearly midday. Then I went to Morrisons and got Value cheesy pasta (boil in water and milk for ten mins, add grated cheeese it's wondrous, considering especially that it costs 35p a pack and has nearly 500 calories, so you can literally live on 2 of thsoe da day (if you want to be thin) or 3 a day (if you want to be normal). Shit I keep getting my calories wrong I used to live on about 1250 to 1500 and was pretty skeletal but I wanted to be thin. This was the stage where everyone thought I should see a psychiatrist but I didn't want to go. The opposite to when I was on heroin and I thought I needed a psychiatrist and my undertrained drugs workers didn't. Then I get diagnosed clinically manic which means I most certainly DO get depression and I'm putting in a formal complaint. Not naming or shaming, but saying look this is my tangled history please train your staff to spot the obvious. I was an absolute mess.

Anyway I went to sleep all afternoon and had vivid dreams about squating an enormous theatre-type building (one that would seat about 4000) and meeting these nice girls in the foyer. They were hippie chicks. Ie my own kind. The old ones wanted to mother me and the young ones kept following me around, like when I went clubbing and gave out vibes. Sometimes I gave out a vibe that made everybody smile at me. I was very into energy and vibes ta that stage of my life.

Well I got up between 7 and 8 pm meaning I've slept approaching 14 hours today. But I was highly "somnolent" and very tired and slow and sour and down. I managed to put off the idea of glugging back alcohol and bought brown bread instead.

I glugged back a lovely huge dose of methadone and now feel better than I did.

I am forcing myself into daily exercise. I only got myself into bed today by telling myself I was "ill" (an excuse to laze). I don't over-analyse myself (bear in mind my blog is a way of capturing how I was, I don't think how I am by day I just am how I am). The dislike of self-analysis is what puts me off counselling, which I've done three times majorly. The second time, when I was tilting down into full-blown heroin addiction (but not yet physically addicted) was when I had the most issues. My counsellor said I spent one session "in the foetal position, crying" that I "needed more help than she could give me" and all this stuff I hated to hear. I don't remember curling up in a ball crying, I just remember being very upset.

I can't remember why I am telling all this it's supposed to be my diary of my winning the battle over depression. If you want some info on the condition, take a look at the three Youtube screens from the Open University a couple of posts down.

I'm not very good at taking the middle path. I have to not self pity yet self care. And not despair when I hear other people talking about similar problems and realize I'm in more of a mess than any of them. Not more ill, just more of a mess.

The Shawshank Redemption is on. I got it because I thought a little trumpet-ears tonkie was in it. In plain English that equals a wild house mouse. I wanted to see the mouse. And I like prison films. Anything in a prison or a mental institution is for me. Next time someone asks do I want to go in a nuthouse I'm saying YES.

Mental hospitals are nothing like prisons, not as far as I can see. Though long ago I made a decision that no matter how bad I suffered for it, me and prisons were NOT coming together. NO WAY would I tolerate being a junkie separated from my drugs. No way. You can get heroin in a mental hospital dead easy and it's proper dealer bags not "prison bags" (a match-head sized dose of heavily adulterated brown). So the drugs issue was a non-issue in hospital. Guess what's the 2 most popular drugs in the nuthouse? Cannabis and crack! Thee two substances most likely to send you fruiloops are the two drugs fruitloopers most likely smoke. But I asked someone what cannabis did to him: this man was paranoid schizophrenic. He didn't get instant hallucinatory voices. He didn't get extreme paranoia (he had paranoia but the meds brought it down to mild/moderate). In other words his symptoms on cannabis were nothing like mine. I also asked someone whether he ever hallucinated so much he couldn't tell whether he was thinking or hearing and he looked at me like WHAT!??!

This had only happened once at the time when I stood up and voices rushed into my head for a few hours. But it happened again when I was manic. I was very surprised a repeat hospital inmate, and one of my own posse (I hung out with the paranoiacs, the schizoaffectives and the maniacs: birds of a feather, as they say, flock together!)

I hope this isn't too boring for y'all this is personal journal stuff. Not really for public consumption but y'all are welcome to read through.

I have had depression for over a week, apart from Hypomanic Thursday when I felt FANTASTIC I've been down down down. Next week all my care gets transferred to a mental health methadone centre. This fuckup occurred because the idiotic council who housed me put me in a different burrough, so I'm shoved pillar to post but it might be a good post because I'm dual diagnosis now. I'm scared of coming in there down and out as they'll laugh at me. I talk a lot when I'm up. I talk so much they barely ever ask a question. I know the shit they want to know. How much do I eat and sleep, how high (or low) how fast (or slow) and is anything upsetting me or anything transcendently amazing (like the lights are when I go manic) and is my thought process intact. They can tell this last thing by how I speak so I don't need to self-analyse.

When I feel down I have very little to say so I either put on a big act and fill the void with babble (very deceptive babble, so it seems as nobody ever thought I was in desperate need of help when I really was) or when I'm badly off I can't say very much at all but no point dwelling on this. If that happens it happens.

I feel I was meant to say something here that I didnt say. I hope y'all are having a good weekend. Good evening America; good night UK and good morning Australia. And hello to everybody else!

BOY GEORGE: THE CRYING GAME
i love this song; it's from a fantastic film of the same name