HAMSTERS & HEROIN: Not all junkies are purse-snatching grandmother-killing psychos. I'm keeping this blog to bear witness to that fact.

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DIARY OF A SLOWLY RECOVERING HEROIN ADDICT

I used to take heroin at every opportunity, for over 10 years, now I just take methadone which supposedly "stabilizes" me though I feel more destabilized than ever before despite having been relatively well behaved since late November/early December 2010... and VERY ANGRY about this when I let it get to me so I try not to.

I was told by a mental health nurse that my heroin addiction was "self medication" for a mood disorder that has recently become severe enough to cause psychotic episodes. As well as methadone I take antipsychotics daily. Despite my problems I consider myself a very sane person. My priority is to attain stability. I go to Narcotics Anonymous because I "want what they have" ~ Serenity.

My old blog used to say "candid confessions of a heroin and crack cocaine addict" how come that one comes up when I google "heroin blog" and not this one. THIS IS MY BLOG. I don't flatter myself that every reader knows everything about me and follows closely every single word every day which is why I repeat myself. Most of that is for your benefit not mine.

This is my own private diary, my journal. It is aimed at impressing no-one. It is kept for my own benefit to show where I have been and hopefully to put off somebody somewhere from ever getting into the awful mess I did and still cannot crawl out of. Despite no drugs. I still drink, I'm currently working on reducing my alcohol intake to zero.

If you have something to say you are welcome to comment. Frankness I can handle. Timewasters should try their own suggestions on themselves before wasting time thinking of ME.

PS After years of waxing and waning "mental" symptoms that made me think I had depression and possibly mild bipolar I now have found out I'm schizoaffective. My mood has been constantly "cycling" since December 2010. Mostly towards mania (an excited non-druggy "high"). For me, schizoaffective means bipolar with (sometimes severe)
mania and flashes of depression (occasionally severe) with bits of schizophrenia chucked on top. You could see it as bipolar manic-depression with sparkly knobs on ... I'm on antipsychotic pills but currently no mood stabilizer. I quite enjoy being a bit manic it gives the feelings of confidence and excitement people say they use cocaine for. But this is natural and it's free, so I don't see my "illness" as a downer. It does, however, make life exceedingly hard to engage with...

PPS The "elevated mood" is long gone. Now I'm depressed. Forget any ideas of "happiness" I have given up heroin and want OFF methadone as quick as humanly possible. I'm fed up of being a drug addict. Sick to death of it. I wanna be CLEAN!!!

Attack of the Furry Entertainers!

Attack of the Furry Entertainers!

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Post Royal Comedown

THE DAY AFTER THE ROYAL WEDDING. I bet the Queen guzzled too much wedding cake and Philip has a hangover. As for Charles and Camilla I'd imagine he had a sneaky spliff on the back balcony while she puffed away at the Benson and Hedges. Somebody told me Kate Middleton was a notorious crack-whore from Tottenham, North London and that all her punters had been mysteriously killed by the Security Services (I did get told this, the night I was invited to a Charles and Camilla party. Lots of drunk crackheads wearing cut-out face-masks from the Sun newspaper. No thanks.)

Maybe I shouldn't be so disrespectful to the royals. Well what else do you want to hear? How me and Anna both have suicidal ideation? Anna wants to top herself; so do I. Except that I keep laughing all the time. I'm sure my shrinko would have a field-day with THAT one so I'm keeping quiet and asking for lamotrigine (Lamactil).

Of course I was hoping for a manic episode back but I'm pissing in the wind hoping for that one. I know mania isn't cool. All that violent ideation, irritation, agitation, volatility of mood, paranoia etc. It's the euphoria and grandiosity I enjoy, along with the non-paranoid hallucinations (when the voices tell knockout-quality jokes, that's always a good one.) As for sanity I know there's not a hope in hell of that. If sanity means peace, happiness and contentment: not in this lifetime. If sanity means a low grade misery and a feeling of being alive in a bathfull of cold water having recently tried to drown. Yeah, there'll be lots of that.

I slept a good 14 hours last night. Yet another bad sign. Means I'm depressed.

I woke up this afternoon wondering what all the fuss had been about. When I'm in a relationship this usually means a thoroughly pantomime quality argument with the bitch I'm currently with the night before. More recently it meant something to do with having been severely manic, jumping out of bed at 2:30am and gone totally crazy by eleven o'clock, coming down slightly in the evening then taking a sleeping pill which brought me down enough to think what was THAT all about??! Knowing I'd wake up yet again in the very early hours feeling pilled out of my head on Ecstasy, which I haven't touched in ten years, for the whole charade to start all over again. Of course THIS fuss was the Royal Wedding. They didn't even trumpet out the tune I'd been hoping for. It's a fanfare you'll have heard at Royal Events time over.

Well I have to go. I don't want not want drugs rehab anything. I wish I would just fucking drop dead. Not a hope in hell of that happening.

If I do die I want my family to exploit exploit exploit my crappo writings tying in as much as possible with my fortunate death. Get 'em published by Harper Collins or Transworld. Do not self publish or I shall COME BACK AND HAUNT YOU.

If only I lived in 60BC I'd probably be dead by now and happy already. Maybe I should stop collecting my money. Then my heirs could spend all that and I could starve to death. Best of all worlds. Good job antibiotics don't work any more. Means my chances of kicking the bucket are higher. If I was more... whatever I'd just go and live on the street again it was far easier. And in winter you can die. Best thing about homelessness in February was ice cold cyder 1st thing in the morning and chilled corned beef.

Well I have to run. Fucking awful crap on television. Dealer just got in touch. Heroin. Whoopee. You can't hear the unenthusiastic voice behind that. If I could think up more crap to say believe me I'd say it but I can't so I have to go. Hope your weekend is full of eggs and kittens in country baskets.

20:46 gear in system. Direct in right shin. Feeling 100% better. If only they could prescribe something that made me feel OK I'd have no need of banging up gear, But I do need to bang up gear; I need it. Best thing I've heard of so far is Lamactil aka lamotrigine it stabilizes you out of bipolar depressions better than bipolar mania and it's elevated mood and mania I could do with the most. As for "normality" ~ there aint a cat's chance in hell of my attaining that

Friday, April 29, 2011

Royal Wedding Report: LIVE!

WEDDING FEVER has hit Britain. I love it!!

10:07 Elton John came into the Abbey about 20 mins ago. Apparently guests are allowed in up to 11am.

I keep looking at those ladies in hats, wondering what they're going to do when they need the loo. There are, apparently, no "lavatories" available in Westminster Abbey.

Why are all those guests so early. Wouldn't you hang out in the park opposite with a White Cyder then dash in at the last minute? I would.

Why are the royal family departing in CARS. THE BRIDE IS SUPPOSED TO TRAVEL IN A GLASS COACH. THE REST OF THE ROYAL FAMILY TRAVEL IN OPEN CARRIAGES. They're going out in cars; back in carriages. You won't see a bloody thing.

10:12 Prince William has just left Clarence House. He's wearin red. O why o why did he have to go in a vulgar old CAR??!!

And poor Kate is only going to be the Dutchess of Cambridge not a princess. Stingy old Queen.

I was hoping for the title of Duke for myself (or Marquess at the very least). If they'd throw in a (gigantic) stately home I'd willingly accept.

O man I could do with a tin of corned beef. I'm so nervous.

10:15 now they're travelling through some old house. "The horseguards building".

Prince Harry wants be known as "the best man" usually they're known as the copanion of honour or something.

Past the Cenotaph. Lots of saluting going on. They're saluting the royal dead, apparently.

I can't believe they're travelling by car. Honestly. Why not be done with and go in my Aunty Ann's old banger? It's a mark II Ford Cortina. That would lower the tone even more. Wills and Harry are now trotting up to the abbey. We can see the bells from underneath.

When the service is complete there "will be a special peel lasting 3 hours". Yes Camilla Parker Bowles will be peeling an orange.

There are TREES up the abbey. Who planted them, I'd like to know.

Do you know what I'm going out for a fag. I can catch the bits I missed on the rerun. Hey I've found a £5er! Corned beef and cigs coming up!!

10:34 a bunch of nobodies turning up eg lady Sarah Chattham (who?)

10:35 Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles are leaving Clarence House.

10:44 HM the Queen is riding in a barely seethroughable car. Getting out. She's wearing yellow. Philip looks quite funky. My corned beef won't open properly so I tore it half open with bolt cutters and am excavating with a butter knife.

I notice the Queen kissed some nobody on both cheeks. Poor Camilla, the duchess of Cornwall just curtsied and the Queen briskly turned away!

10:51 Kate Middleton has just got in her giant car. The dress looks massive. If it doesn't have at LEAST a 20ft train I'll be livid. In fact it should match or outdo Diana's train EASILY. If it doesn't I'm writing in to complain.

Now the car is riding down the street. We can't see her we can only see the car. Thanks HM the Queen for putting such a boring day together.

10:58 Now they're driving through the old building. I just need a cigarette.

O man the car isn't full of dress. Dianas overflowed from the carriage. That means a pathetic train, I expect.

She's at the abbey. Her dad should get out first and help her out. Sarah Burton designed the dress, we have just been told.

O man the train is barely 10ft long!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ivory and white satin gazelle, they seem to be saying. O Kate you should have got a bigger dress.

Cartier tiara. Loaned by the Queen (too stingy to give it away.)

My corned beef is all stuck in the tin.

Walking up the isle dad in hand. Silence. Hey they're GETTING MARRIED IN 5 MINS!!

Why all those ridiculous hymns in the service. If it were mine I'd have the choir sing the song. Not a load of halfwitted celebrities, military top brass, diplomats, foreign heads of state and British royalty dirging away at the psalms.

Am I the only one who thinks this is very toned down? I was expecting glass carriages, soldiers dressed up like a pack of playing cards, hysterical screaming and a ONE HUNDRED FOOT LONG TRAIN.

A drunk Princess Margaret is another glaring ommission. God rest her soul.

11:08 Wills Harry Kate and her dad standing in line at the altar. Harry looks really embarrassed. He is blushing like a babboon's backside.

11:09 o man FUCKING HYMNS. Cut all this timewasting PLEASE and GET MARRIED.

11:13 who on earth is this man reading out this stuff about marriage's holy estate? Is that the archbishop of Canterbury.

It sounds like the AB of C but that ginormous beard has gone. O the AB of C has appeared from nowhere.

11:17 now they're doing the vows.

11:20 where was the line "I now pronounce you man and wife"? Are they married or not? They've done the vows. The ring is on. Now ANOTHER BORING HYMN.

I'm reading Anna Grace's blog about a woman shitting in the prison shower until this dirge is over.

Although jail was very boring, but there is a lot that goes on day to day that was abnormal. Like this old bitch that was in the Metal health unit with me and she was disgusting. She farted, didn't wear underwear or a bra, so you could spell her sticking pussy. She wouldn't even take a whores bath. Then her tits sagged down to her waist. Watching her eat made me sick to my stomach. Then there was the lady who was mentally retarded, who had put her kids in a dresser and set it on fire. She took a shit in the shower, and the guards tried to make me clean it up. I was like hell no, that's your job. The guards tried to tell me that I would get points as a good inmate. I asked would it get me out faster, they said nope. So I said fuck off and die asshole, you clean up that shit and blood. She was also on her period. That's another little taste of what I faced while in jail. BTW, all three of the retards kids died, but she was found not fit to stand trial, so she was waiting to be sent to the State Mental Institution.

Here on TV its all about the Royal Wedding. Just get that damn wedding over with, and why do us American's care. Its a different country. I'd much rather be English than American, so I shouldn't throw stones in a glass house. I'm mostly Irish, but no English blood that I know of. I haven't done my genealogical charting, but from what I've been told, I'm mostly Irish on both sides. I do like Irish accents. Its English, but you still can't understand them. I need a bloody fag. So I'm going to end this post.


Thanks Anna.

11:31 What am I saying about choirs? Very gormless singing. Just hurry up and get MARRIED why don't you!!

I'm glad the year is not 1492, else I'd end up in the Tower for saying all this. Aristocrats like me got luxury accommodation up there, so I'd be OK, as long as I had a kilo of opium to pipe away on.

11:32 now yet another speech about marriage. From some man I haven't a clue who he is. He looks like he was picked up from a homeless shelter and quickly poshed up. I wonder if that one's had a drink or two this morning.

11:36 this same homeless man is STILL whittering away. Who the hell is he?

"The holy spirit is quickened within us and can refine our lives."... Platitudes galore.

11:38 some grey-clad nun type woman is sitting right by Wills? What is she doing there?

Oh he's not homeless. He's the Bishop of London.

11:39 and now yet more musical interludes. Honestly does this have to go on so long??!

1142 the choir are still moaning away. I'm making a strong black coffee. I need some relief from this.

11:44 yet another "spiritual" nobody from that tamborine-banging church they call the Established Church of England reading out the "Lord"'s prayer. Can't they make up their own words?

11:46 that idiotic Archbishop of Canterbury is on. Sorry if this report is boring. The SERVICE is dull beyond the pale. Blithering on and on about the spiritual unity betwixt Christ and his Church WELL NOT THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, THAT'S FOR SURE. Endless petty repetitions. They could have condensed this guff down to 2 minutes. Cut out all the hymns and got married in 5 mins. I wonder if the Queen is nodding off..? She is after all 85 and must find her tolerance for bullshit diminishing considerably with age. Yeah probably she is asleep. Note the cameras aren't on her. O yes 11:48 they are. She looks suspiciously like she's just woken up. HM the Queen does have an exceptionally squeaky voice; she must be able to hit notes well in excess of a coloratura high F.

11:50 "let us pray" YET AGAIN!!! For crying out loud. I need heroin now. And it's that man who looks like he's out of prison on licence for a sexual offence who's doing the praying.

11:51 trumpet blasts. National Anthem. Hopefully it's all over. And why were they never pronounced man and wife? Are they still technically living in sin as of this moment? Her Majesty isn't singing the National Anthem; she's not allowed to.

11:53 "William and Catherine are now a married couple" AT LAST. They must sign 3 registers. 2 royal, one public. All this signing takes place in the chapel of St Gledwood the Confessor. Supposedly "the holiest part of the abbey" ~ as if any part is holy at all.

11:55 oh no the choir are about to burst into groaning yet again. Those schoolboys look dead embarrassed to be there in ruff collars. I wish my old dealer were on.

O I forgot I'd given up heroin. See how irksome stressfull life events are to the mental health? O I'm truly bored now I'm switching over. BBC2 has a film with a woman tipping her head back; ITV has a better picture than BBC so I've switched over; channel 4 has an advert with a kitten riding the back of a tortoise. I want to go back to bed now. I hate bank holidays. Just an excuse for nothingness, nothingness all day. Now I'm stressing about something to do with somebody else. Akkkh people people people. Spare a thought for Anna Grace she got a habit on 2g of heroin (one china white, one tar) and a few Dilaudid she got off a kindly old dr. Now she's living on her Dad's pain pills and dreading the day he gets back to find them gone.

12:01 I don't remember former Royal Weddings being as boring as this. Princess Eugenie is glancing about in confusion; I don't blame her.

12:02 all those bishoply nobodies are making their way to the Great West Door. Good sign. Means this church bollocks is nearly over and the carriage rides can begin. I only tuned in for the horse drawn carriages; I can't believe there were none in part one.

12:04 "The return of the Prince and Princess is heralded by fanfare" so she IS a princess. Good.

12:05 Aw the married couple ambulate slowly down the red carpet.

That fanfare was composed by an RAF pilot. Sounds like it too.

12:08 Hey the Happy Couple leave the church to roars, cheers and confetti. A spectacular carriage pulled by white donkies awaits them.

12:11 the donkies are trotting away to roars of enthusiasm and applause.

"Four windsor greys pulling the carriage"! Apparently they aren't donkies at all!

12:12 HM the Queen looks in a good mood.

12:13 Trotting up the road with the full playing card style military jingling behind.

12:14 Well i see why they arrived in cars now; it's all about contrast. Glittering donkey-drawn carriages. Lots of waving. Camilla Parker Bowles. Donkeys trotting all over the place.

MARRIED AT LONG LONG LAST!! SMILES AND CHEERS. HURRAH!

MUSICAL INTERLUDE
LAUGHING BUDDHA: TAPU



Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Prewedding Jitters and a Foggy Head!

IT'S LATE. My body is exhausted. I slept nearly 12 hours last night and feel like I'll do another twelve tonight. I woke up with my head all foggy or confused. My thoughts were sticking together. I did a lot of pottering around today and my head is all over the place. It feels good though. Feels a whole lot better than being depressed, so I'm not coplaining. My doctor would want me to take the risperidone pills, I know. Probably they would make my head clearer. But then I'd feel flat and down. I'd rather be pleasantly addled than dullly down.

Sorry there's no great revelations here. This post is more for me, not you. I'm supposed to be keeping track of my sleep and moods; it's for this reason I blog such stuff every day. Not the generalized excitement I know such revelations shall provoke in y'all!

I would say "I hope your day was more exciting than mine" because I know my day sounds extremely mundane. But it was actually quite good. I couldn't focus on anything much, but I enjoyed having a plethora of things in upon which not to zero! A flotilla of thoughts bobbing in my head! I like thinking. I hadn't realized I'd been doing so little of it over the weeks. I must have; for now I feel full of cognition and it feels good.

I'm glad I didn't post earlier. There's a good chance I'd have pasted up a story about Little Trotter Donkey and Little Trotter Horse and a wasp! Told you I was in an entertaining mood today. If you want to hear the story I'll refine it and slap it up in a couple of days' time. What role the wasp plays I'm not too sure; I just liked the name Little Buzzer Hornet(!!)

I have to go: my poor body is exhausted. Gone with the Wind is booming away from the next room. I intend to get up as early as I can tomorrow.

Spare a thought for Wills and Kate. Rehearsing their wedding over and over, so some archbishop-of-cantobratorial-type person reveals on Radio 4. Wouldn't you be a bundle of nerves if you knew you were getting wed in front of a billion folks gawking at their TVs across the world in only three days' time (a day and a half now!)? I would. I wonder if they've given her Valium? Probably in this day and age it'd be low-dose antipsychotics: Seroquel/quetiapine or something similar!

Wills was born into the Royal Family. Destined for greatness, as it were. Middle-class Middleton just thought she was going to an obscure Scottish university where courses last a year longer than in England. Little did she know she'd snag the future King! I'm sure in this day and age they're giving her medication to cope. Imagine if you ran to a psychiatrist confessing you were marrying a prince and destined to become future queen of England? You'd be diagnosed with a Delusional Disorder, slapped on high-dose olanzopine/Zyprexa and offered a preremptory course in person-centred counselling!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Little Trotter Donkey and Little Trotter Horse

MY NUMBER ONE FAN accosted me in Iceland this morning, asking what I was looking for. I said "not pizza; it makes me feel sick" and he ushered me up the isles to the Pakistani takeaway I ordinarily buy.

My head was banging with classical tunes: TOM TOM POM DIDDLY OM POM POM! And I was in a dearly good hyper mood pinging up and down.

Two cups of black coffee were to blam. So I'm drinking it in even MORE moderation from henceforth on!

Later on some friends were meant to be back with some gear but it took them six and a half hours to sort this. They had ongoing health troubles of their own. So I forgave them. I was in a very good mood when finally they pulled up outside my house and dished up a £20 baggie of heroin wrapped in a £10 note! (The money was owed from times past...)

The action of waiting on heroin all afternoon had wound me up into a nasty irritable, anxious mood. Anxiety! Beyond the pale! That's why I took Valium and it helped. Then I realized my head really has been racing. And I'm in irritable, expansive moods, and no longer a depressed one!

It's way better than depression so I'm barely complaining about my woes. They've mostly gone now. What I need back is my fully elevated mood!

No, Anna Grace, I don't actually desire to go crazy. I wrote my words in a fit of despair, believing psychosis and happiness were inexorably intertwined and I'd no choice but o accept one without the other. All my life, I've never been happy. Never truly happy. Never serene. I've been high from a thousand causes. But happy and high aren't the same thing at all ...

Eventually X and Y returned; I had some heroin and it's calmed me down a bit. I had some drink and it did almost nothing. What is pink nothingdust? See my mind keeps racing into irrelevant corners. Over and over it goes again..(!)

I hope y'all are OK. I'll cut y'al off and leave it all there. Take care everybody. NO DEPRESSION FOR TWO DAYS NOW. WHOOPEEEEEE!!!

Here's my half-asleep mind-wondering version from earlier. Reproduced here purely for your entertainment value!!

I had what appeared to be twelve hours' wondrous sleep last night and woke up feeling wonderfully NORMAL. Not depressed any longer! I ran into the sea and recognized... nothing. I keep thinking of nuclear things. Like the nuclei keeping me safe. Sorry my mind is running off in all directions.

This morning I had a wonderful section. If I did a bit of shopping in Iceland. 2 black coffees were enough to set me off into racing elevated mood with me pinging up and down the isles. Classical music was coarsing through my head POM POM POM TIDDLY-OM POM POM!! Variety.

I told myself "you better be careful, security will be on your arse". Sure enough...


Little Trotter Donkey and Little Trotter Horse are in a good mood also. Clopping around their furry fields. Cantering and neighing and saying "hello! Hello!!"

Little Trotter Donkey!
Little Trotter Horse!!


RALPH FRIDGE: PARADISE
j'adore!!


Monday, April 25, 2011

Normal Mood

I AM IN A NORMAL MOOD at long last! It's just after midday and I haven't been to sleep all night. That's because I was up all last night too (and slept yesterday daytime) and I need to get my sleep cycle back. I was feeling tired earlier but I'm fine now. I'm supporting myself on black coffee but striving to be moderate in my use. Last night I had four cups in two hours and started getting racing thoughts, pacing around and feeling hyper. Basically I had drunk too much. I drank cyder to try and bring myself down. One cyder. Which I shouldn't have done. My aim is to be drinking no alcohol at all as soon as possible.

I was feeling horrible earlier on. Horrible and sweaty. But I'd forgotten my methadone. I've drunk it now; I feel fine.

No heroin today. I can't go near it as it would make me sleep, which I don't want. At night I'm hopefully going to sleep anyhow, so gear would be a waste of money.

My sleep has gone all over the place recently and my appetite is lousy. I can't eat very much because I feel this sense of nausea. It's just appetite-loss, not a feeling that I'm actually going to puke. I've had an entire tin of corned beef now. I need to eat the bare minimum anyway. I need to lose weight.

I'm just glad this depressed mood seems finally to have run away. I can never be sure about anything but it's gone for now. I know it always comes back.

There's a mood stabilizer called Lamictal (lamotrigine) that's supposed to counter the downs more than the ups so I'm asking for that.

I'm watching Charlton Heston in Moses. Wish me luck!!!

Corned Beef Wind-up

3:39AM I HAVE JUST had major hassles from a tin of corned beef. Stupid key drizzled itself less than halfway round one single side out of four before derailing, leaving me with an unopenable tin. My tinopener simply will not cut the bastard thing open. So I was reduced to dipping a pair of scissors into this tin's metalic smile and annoying myself with pitifullly small morsels.

I just wrote another post but it's too annoying for words.

I'm alive! I'm alive again! Depression has melted into the darkness for now at least and my mind is pinging alive like a kitchen running with naughty mice.

I had 3 cups of black coffee a few hours ago and a tin of cyder. I only got the cyder to try and calm myself down. I was pacing everywhere trying to remember what I was doing...

... I was actually collecting clothes to wash in the sink. Well they're marinading nicely in washingup liquid now.

Gone With The Wind is on again. I can't believe I ever thought that was an awful film. It's because it was voted best movie of all time in several polls that put me off it. As was Citizen Kane (where Citizen Kane is #1 Gone with the Wind is #2 and vice versa). And Citizen Kane is incontrovertably boring.

Gone with the Wind was a huge bestseller, the Harry Potter of its time. It sold at least 7 million in hardback in the United States alone, which was good for that time. So there was much talk about who would star in the movie and something akin to a talent competition was put in operation. I kept wondering why they didn't cast Elizabeth Taylor as Scarlett, but she was only 7 or 8 at the time. Eventually an unknown actress from England, Vivienne Leigh, was chosen. I like her spirit. And I love the way she shoots that robbing buffoon on the stairs. I especially like her catchphrase "I'll think about that tomorrow"..! What a way to live life. Not necessarily a good way, but what a way.

When I first saw Rhett I thought "what a smarmy man" but I like his attitude. He is accepting of all people, all things. He even keeps up his good humour in a "horse jail" stable where he is confined prior to his hanging. (He never gets hanged.)

O what am I talking about y'all have probably seen the film more times than I have.

Why do they barely ever put classic films on TV? Are they really so expensive to run?

Well I've got to go. I don't know if I'll be sleeing tonight. I didn't sleep last night either, but I slept all day. Maybe I should stay up till tomorrow night.

I haven't touched any heroin at all since Friday afternoon and I don't intend to touch it again.

Drink: I'd like to give up completely but I tend to cling to it as something to brighten me up when I'm down, something to calm me down when I'm up. I noticed the dr didn't sound at all surprised when I mentioned these effects to him. And he never told me to stop drinking. He wanted me to stop so that alcohol could be ruled out of the diagnostic equation. Well I got diagnosed didn't I. It wasn't exactly the one I would have picked myself, but life isn't a Chinese takeaway menu.

If I could pick any mental illness to have the only one I'd go near would be "constant euphoric unipolar hypomania". That's the only one anyone with half a brain would go near either.

Mania makes me too distractable and unfocused, not to mention highly irritable (as well as euphoric). It's the euphoria I love, the so-called Elevated Mood. Psychosis can be entertaining (lots of hallucinations) but I only say that because it happens anyway and you have to make the best of a bad lot. Depression is vile. What else is there... anxiety? Beyond the pale. I don't really get any other mental disorders so that's it.

What gets me is when I have to do ordinary things yet I feel like I'm on an E and a trip. No way in a million years would I drop acid and ecstasy and then attend some kind of group therapy session like the nutter club. Last time this chic opposite me was banging on about her depression and I just couldn't handle it. I had to leave. This caused some commotion but I ran outside and smoked three cigarettes while fleeing up the high road. Then I nearly had a panic attack in Sainsbury's. There's only so much you can push yourself. I didn't feel like going anyway and I pushed myself too far that day.

And I don't touch acid or ecstasy by the way. I once did, but that was more than a decade ago (ecstasy) and nearly twenty years ago (most of the acid). People seem to get confused by my drug allusions, what I'm often trying to say is I FEEL drugged, not that I AM drugged. You'll know when I am drugged because I'll be talking about having used heroin that day. And you'll know that by reading into my past more than my future. Heroin has no place in my future.

I just wish I could give up drinking that nasty alcohol. I know it's doing me no good even though the consumption is LOW. So low it's practically within the British government's stingy health guidelines.

I just know that alcohol doesn't fit in with the pious health food lifestyle I need to adopt. Good thing I actually LIKE lentil stew isn't it!!

Well I'll leave it there, (as I say at NA). I have clothes to wash and Gone With The Wind to watch. Yet again...


PS I'm not feeling like I'm on an E or a trip now. I only mention that because I did feel that way not long ago and it wasn't condusive to doing things outside the home...


Illustrated: corned beef mayhem; Scarlett O'Hara; white cyder; LSD, yes a "trip" is this tiny. In my day, two of these could blow your head off!

BLACKOUT CREW: BAD BOY (NOT ENOUGH DONK)
This tune is a bit rude, but I like the techno donkdonkdonk bit.
I think it would be better just music, no words...




GOA TRANCE
in Goa, Hilltop nr Vagator/Anjuna





06:21 I just went out, got another tin of corned beef (different make) opened it successfully and ate half (hurrah!) That's all I can manage. A small bowl of curry and rice and half a tin of corned beef. No appetite. I'm going to try and get 2 hours sleep then go to bed at the proper time tomorrow night. It's light already. Wish me luck

Sunday, April 24, 2011

The Art of Living and Other Issues

TO START WITH, 2 VIDEOS I SAW LAST NIGHT THAT DISTURBED ME:

BIPOLAR BREAKDOWN ART
How I found this I have no idea. I wasn't looking for bipolar or art but it somehow spewed out of youtube.


I was high on coffee. One single black coffee stopped me sleeping last night. I thought I was doing so well.

It's the last colour picture on part one that I like; it reminds me of visions I have seen when I was out of it (mental out of it not drugs out of it). And it looks like the kind of picture I would draw if I could.

What freaked me out was the energy in that picture. By this time she's gone through paranoia and into grandiosity which is when you're really hyped up. She hadn't slept for seven days straight. Her mind was completely out of control. I somehow related and it scared me.

It pops up at 3 mins 52 it's the blue and yellow one.

[Don't be distracted by my psychedelic mouse: I'm talking about the blue and yellow picture on the Youtube screen Mental Breakdown Part 1 3 mins 52 in.]

Even her phrases like "cycling up" do my head in. Makes me think of a helterskelter. I spiralled up very high and stood on top of the immense cyclone, I stood exalted as high as any human being can ever go.

Then she talks about hallucinations and her art reminds me of my visions:

The last vision I saw, as opposed to a hallucination was when a blank wall suddenly turned into a moving abstract film in full colour. I had had about 4 hours sleep in 4 days (ie I'd done 2 days averaging 2 hours per day then 2 days with no sleep at all). Nothing has ever made me stay up for a week. Most I've ever done is 4 days on that nasty antideressant mirtazapine (Remeron). It made me manic then depressed.
I related to what this woman said being manic AND depressed AND psychotic and the energy and the not sleeping she talked about frightened me. And then I fell asleep. Around seven o'clock this morning.

Incidentally the blank wall was in the mental hospital reception. Where I saw that beautiful psychiatrist with shiny stockings. I was having immense trouble making myself understood beyond simply answering whatever questions were put to me. I was told I kept changing the subject. So no way could I explain about the wall breaking out into a fabulous movie.

I tried to tell her "Usually I need my sleep, but I don't need my sleep now because I have so much energy. Nonetheless it would be good if I had some zopiclone to sleep because then I could have some semblance of a sleep cycle. My body gets tired easily, even though I can't feel it now." And it was just impossible. I got the word Zopiclone out (a sleeping pill) and she gave me a 1 week supply.
That was before I went even HIGHER and started turning from human being (as I felt it) into energy-being.

As the mania came down I suddenly had this sense of being in my body again. My feet felt literally on the ground.

I had been living with the windows as wide open as they'd go in January. Hadn't realized I was cold until my hands froze up too much to type.

If you wonder why all this talk NOW it's because I'm scared of going mad. I'm scared of being sane. I can't handle that one either. I'm scared of being on heroin. Scared of not being on it. Scared of dying. Not scared of being dead.

How much of a mess is that?





I watched Gone With The Wind last night and it's really good.

I woke up this afternoon and have had no alcohol today. I went out and bought chocolate milk. Ironically a half litre of this is more expensive than a half litre of 7.5% ABV cyder!!

I didn't ring the dealer yesterday, didn't ring anyone today. Or see anyone. Or use anything bar a swig of methadone.

So Im doing good. I'm living on black coffee and the minimum food. I have about 4 cups a day (I say this in case anyone assumes "living on coffee" means 40 cups!). Yesterday I had one chicken tikka pilau and 2 full chicken legs. That has to be about 1200 calories. I have to watch what I eat, I don't want to get fat. I find eating offputting when I remember how I used to enjoy certain food directly after IV heroin. Heroin gave the most amazing savour to food. Part of me feels "how can I ever eat again". I knew I ought to work on breaking that heroin-food association while I was still on it.

Now my head has suddenly switched into "not using anymore" mode. The mode, but not the mood (the "elevated mood") I got into before. When I dropped heroin for several weeks on end.

I wish I could live. Actually live. Not just be alive but master the art of living. I know this is my challenge in life, but I don't even know how to start, let alone how to go on...


I hope this post isn't too much of a mess: I can't be doing with editing today

Illustrated: a psychedelic mouse! Yes a psychedelic mousie ha ha

ANNA GRACE: the way this guy talks is the way everybody sounded to me at one point:
http://gledwoodvideo.blogspot.com/2011/04/psychosis.html




HERE IS A TUNE!!
this is Elevated Mood

IT'S EXALTED



Saturday, April 23, 2011

Thunder

IT IS QUARTER TO EIGHT. I am in a thunderous mood and the weather matches it. Lightning. I thought I felt OK earlier, then I went out and came back feeling lousy. I don't know why. I slept 5 and a half hours last night and thought that was really good. I'm doing all I can to sleep as little as possible on the theory that it might make me feel better.

I never bought any gear today even though I have 30something pounds on me. Heroin will still be there next week. What's the difference between using it today and then. Since I don't intend to be using it in the future, I may as well make that future start today. Which makes me want to curl up and die. When I gave up before I was all over the place. Now I'm perfectly sane. All I want is my elevated mood back. That's the only hope I live for. The elevated mood felt better than any drugs; it was longer-lasting and free. That is my only hope.

I'm watching some film called Mary of Scotland starring Katherine Hepburn. I can't believe I paid good money for it. I wasn't even on drugs. There's such a lousy DVD selection in Sainsbury's that one stood out in comparison to the rest of the schlock on offer.

There's nothing else to write about. I bought cold roast chicken from Waitrose but it was horribly flat in flavour compared to Sainsbury's over-industrialized salt-and-glucose version. I prefer the artificial flavouring. Maybe I'll buy one of those £1 dried noodle bowls to chop it up and shove in.

All I'm thinking about today is my drug of choice, wishing the supermarkets sold it at £1 per 1000mg pure heroin hydrochloride. Then you could have a raging habit on 50p a day. If everyone was on heroin this country would be OK. Heroin never caused me any problems. It's just the other stuff surrounding it that did.

I'm so angry with those half-arsed criminals who couldn't even assure a constant supply to this island for the past 5 months. I'd rather stop than be beholden to them. I'd rather die. The main attraction of heroin was that it was deadly. And sure enough more than half of the old crowd I knew seem to be dead. It often has more to do with alcohol, poor diet and lifestyle and the steady consumtion of crack. But they're gone.

I wish I had no feelings. I feel very deeply hurt.

O man this film is awful. Gotta go. Hope Eggster or the Passover is tolerable wherever you are.

Friday, April 22, 2011

Plug Hole

6:22PM I'M IN A GOOD MOOD. Finally. I just took a £20 bag of gear. It looked more like a 15 and didn't smell too strong, but in tis day and age you gotta be grateful for whatever you can get.

I tasted a micro-drop and sure enough the strong acrid taste of Afghan B beautified me back... Which wound me up all the more veinstabbing wise.

I had a lucky feeling and sure enough after a handful of sticks in the usual places (legs only: arms dried up donkeys years ago)... I found a beautiful barely-touched surface vein at the top of my left thigh. And pyoinnngg! in it went like a yellow-arsed hornet into its paper-nest. I'd already skinpopped about 40%; in went 60% straight in and it's beautiful gear.

I needed that gear I really needed it. All the things I'm supposed to do to cheer myself up from depression: they just don't work. Or they even make me worse. I gave up drinking for over a month several years ago when that "alcohol is a depressant" line was being hammered into me over and over. No difference. I don't drink myself into a morose stupour; I drink mostly in the morning, to give me a lift. And it works. I drink in moderation because I don't want to be out of control, dislike being out of control and plan someday to keep to Narcotics Anonymous's vision of "clean". And that means no drink. No drugs. At all.

When I went downtown earlier on to score myself some roast chicken and cheese coleslaw and roll-on antiperspirant-deodorant rather than pushing up, my mood went down. The other people on the streets made me feel slightly paranoid. I don't clike crowds and I don't like people any more. I far prefer being on my own. I know it's "symptoms" of my "illness" but it's felt very deeply in fact.

So all these people were irritating me. I found what I wanted in the shop and used the electronic till. Their self-service counters are far better than Morrisons'. When my mood was yummy and "elevated" (as my shrink called it) I got a real buzz out of the boing boing pipp! sounds Sainsburys' machine makes in comparison to Morrisons' dullardly ones. Also Sainsburys don't insist something like ten washingn up sponges doesn't weigh the wrong amount because it practically weighs nothing. Only hitch was an electronic reprimand for putting my newspaper in with my coleslaw before I had paid.

I tried my #1 man but he was switched off. Still unable to reload on half-decent gear. Sad situation.

For all of 30 seconds I was wound up about this. Then I scored myself a white cyder instead. 85p for a little buzz seemed worth it.

Then I got home and stewed all over nothing. I mean literally there was no irritating or negative thought in my head, this was emotional not cognitive. Some film called The Princess Diaries or some such crap was on (Julie Andrews playing the queen). It's always a fictional version of Monaco named Bolvania, Molvania or something else that all sounds the same.

I couldn't get the negative feelings out of my head. I was irritated at Anna Grace's blog not because of Anna baby but because she's getting messed about by someone promising heroin who may or may not come through with what was offered. Also I am pretty sure she's being ripped off on price. I know very little about American heroin but nowhere I know of has gear weak enough that someone who not long ago detoxed and came off all opiates completely has gear weak enough that you'd have to contemplate hitting up eight points (0.8g) in one shot. Not even hardcore addicts take hits that big. My friend had a 3g a day habit from dealing years back and she took six half-gram hits. I've never known anybody take more than that in a hit which is why I mention taking 0.3. That was my old binge-mode dose and lately I've been hitting up that amount as a matter of course because we've had a Heroin Drought that still hasn't restored back to normal; the gear which used to be lovely. They said it averaged 46% in December 2009 ~ went down to 13% earlier this year.

Eventually after feeling sheer anger, just this miserable unfocused dull rage, I rang up a dealer who sold me absolute rubbish a few weeks ago when I was too mentally ill to care. It literally had no gear in it and he had the cheek to inform me that nobody else had complained. Probably because nobody else was low enough in his estimation to be sold trash like that. That's what I thought. Anyway this one finally said he had something decent so I had to go to a road near my house so his friend could drop it off to me.

I stood there feeling irritable, down and paranoid in a generalized way. I actually felt like I'd been piping (crack) which irritated me even more when I recalled how my old wellmeaning but typically uninformed druggieworker promised me my paranoia would go away when I gave up the pipe. And has it? No crack in weeks*. No crack at all during that psychotic breakdown. And paranoia worse than ever. Hallucinations most spectacular off drugs of my entire life. Manic mood swing so intense I felt literally on top of the universe and higher than I ever went on any drug, ever. All this on nothing. And they never listened. Never listened. Not one of them. When I told them again and again that I wasn't feeling right. And I was not right. For years and years.

So I took my irritable jagged jangling cracked out except not at all on crack self home and hit up this heroin and BINGO!! I'm magically cured. Heroin won this battle for me, but it's up to me to win the war.

So thats me done posting for today. I was partly annoyed because I was thinking of myself as mentally ill. Remember when I was having an "episode", rushing to get ready in time for NA and I heard 2 voices, one in each ear, saying "nervous breakdown" and "schizophrenia". I didn't cry then; but merely thinking seriously that I might have schizophrenia was enough to make me cry. And now I'm told I have not only schizophrenia but bipolar on top of it! That's what schizoaffective means. At first I just accepted that's me. Partially, as anyone would be, I was relieved just to have a name for this thing that has been bugging me for years that I knew wasn't depression, wasn't depression with psychotic features (as one dr suggested it might be), wasn't drug-psychosis (the dr who diagnosed me is a consultant psychiatrist who specializes in drugs cases: if anyone can tell the difference between drug-induced and "real" conditions, he can)... that it wasn't a personality disorder either... I was glad just to have a name, any name. I was ill enough to think it reminded me of a night-club ("schizo-disco") but too paranoid to post that little baby online. He explained to me "it's like manic depression and schizophrenia together" and I did cry afterwards. Because I'm scared of schizophrenia. I have never known anybody with bipolar well enough to have actually been with them and known they were having an episode.

But I've known a couple of people pretty well who had paranoid schizophrenia, so I knew what schizophrenia entailed and knew their medications worked. But they were never going to be normal, either one of them. They would be on medication on life and mentally disabled for life. And stuck on sickness benefits, for life. And I suppose it was right then that I saw any sense of any true recovery to what you would call good health... I saw it drain down the plug hole.

And glug glug glugg away, like the Devil laughing at me.

Illustrated: special sorts of donkeys

PS I hope this all makes sense, I'm not up for reading all my crap back. My attention span is going pretty dire. Again.

*I gave up crack for new year 2009 and have had a handful of pipes since mostly because i was weak enough to give into circumstance (someone else wanted to smoke it in front of me). i hate crack and never intend to do it again. the mere thought of crack makes me feel physically sick

RICHARD MARX: HAZARD
This is for you Anna Grace. Only song I can think of that you might like.
It's was going round my head at some time....




this version is far louder, for anyone who just wants the tune but no video



heroin? what am i doing on heroin? that's sad, sad, sad

21:02 INSPIRATIONAL LINK: American doctor Elizabeth Baxter, a psychiatrist who has schizoaffective disorder:
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/37/2/5.1.full?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=psychiatrist+with+schizoaffective+disorde%2520r&searchid=1098657466879_889&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&journalcode=psychnews

Is schizoaffective disorder a gift:
http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Have-Schizoaffective-Disorder/108188
I like the last comment where the guy locks his furry doggie in the shower-room for protection. I wonder if it bays at the ghosts..?

i like the comments on this story
http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Have-Schizoaffective-Disorder/1187238


Pet Mouse/Royal Wedding/Crazytalk

I HAVE A PET MOUSE. A wild one. It is called Tonkie Ears or Donkey Ears if you prefer. It has been making loud nibbling noises from under my fridge for over a month now, but I never saw anything until the other night when this tiny mouse-shaped shadow appeared, pinging back and forth. It kept freezing, sitting on its haunches with its ears up. Then it ran right up to my feet, but I got scared it would try and nibble my toes. This must've made my foot twitch ever so slightly and it scurried away ~ the swine! I've been leaving out chicken bones and crumbs for it.

Mice love chicken bones. I used to feed my robo-hammies with bones. They like the gristly bits on the ends. I had to use a lot of control not to eat these bits myself because I love them too. I also like eating fishbones from tinned fish. Yummm yumm. I probably need all the calcium for my rotten teeth.

I went to that horrible clinic appointment at 10am. Even though I was up early I was still late. I went in the post office with my heart in my mouth in case my card didn't work (it's split nearly in half, so it doesn't swipe, the magnetic strip is broken but the chip is fine; last time the woman said "give it here" then said "your card is broken" and didn't want to serve me but I insisted on putting it back in the machine and after 2 more attempts it worked.

Anyway I got £50 out and was so happy I could have cried. Now at least I had the option of calling my dealer.

I met a down and out at the main bus stop who said he had £100 and wanted me to score for him but I said I had an appointment and would come looking for him on the way back. We both knew this wouldn't happen. But I got on the bus all wound up over this because I could have given up my appointment, scored, wasted half a day, ran in the clinic just before they closed with a flimsy excuse. I'm not a terrible liar I just really hate doing it. The next day (today) is a bank holiday so I absolutely had to be at this clinic today also my script ran out so I didn't even have one pick-up left. Any mistake on that script and the chemist would have refused to serve me. That's why the appointment was at 10am so that I had time to get back to the clinic if the script was wrong. I got my worker to check the script carefully and he said it was fine.

He asked me how I was and I said I didn't feel very good blah blah I managed to change the subject on to the royal wedding. Guess what: my druggieworker was only ONE year old when Charles and Diana wed. I was about nine. I remember being in my Auntie Ann's house watching her enormous (for the day) Rediffusion television which had 4 buttons like cigarettes poking out and a coin box that took 50p pieces on a timer. 50p in that day was worth about £2 now so that's $3 a pop if you're American. For $3 you got about ten hours, maybe five hours' viewing. In those days TV only came on in the late morning and was off by about midnight. No breakfast TV. No late night TV. Only three channels.

My auntie Ann who wasn't a relative, she was my Nanny's next door neighbour, was ooing and aahing at the screen "aw look at Charlie!" etc. Then there was a street party. The entire road was closed off. We were in Windsor at the time (the wedding was at St Paul's cathedral in London) so we got in Annie's Mark 2 Cortina and went to see this massive bonfire in Windsor Great Park which is basically thousands of acres of Royal back garden at the Queen's weekend residence. I remember missing what was being billed as the most amazing firework display Britain had ever seen in order to do this. But we'd have only seen it on TV as that was held in central London over the Thames.

I wish Wills and Kate's wedding was today. I'm really in the mood for a royal wedding today. If you're reading this on foreign shores you have to understand this is a really big deal. It will be a national holiday and everywhere from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey (which is opposite the Houses of Parliament) will be closed off. So if you want to line the route you'd need to go into the park and go along that road that leads from Buckingham Palace to Parliament Square. This is the most picturesque part of London, far more beautiful than any area of Paris by the way, so it should look really good on television.

I'm glad Prince William finally popped the question at least and stopped dangling that poor girl on a string. It wouldn't surprise me if they'd agreed to this and talked it over three or more years ago and only made it public more recently.

Well that's it for today. I'm still sleeping for hours on end but the mood is more up than before. The gear I got yesterday was real rubbish and I got someone else to score that from me from yet another number that was already in my phone but who I don't actually know. This one's name is B, which is a strange thing to call yourself as a dealer as B means "brown" and brown here means heroin. Almost all our heroin comes from Afghanistan or Pakistan and it's brown heroin base.

I have £20 on me especially for scoring but I'm not sure I want to do it. If my number one dealer is back on I know he'll have something at least half decent. But I keep telling myself he'll be on next week and the week after and the week after that and if he's not someone else will, so I'll be able to chuck £20 away then.

All I've used today is 2 cups black coffee. I was hoping to hype myself up a bit as I require a manic episode in order to be happy. The manic euphoria was better than any drug I've ever tried and it had no side effects, except when it went so extreme I coudln't concentrate or focus at all, my thoughts raced into each other so fast they smashed apart into a garbled mess and I was constantly losing my temper even though I was sitting on my own. Just thinking about something was enough to make me lose it. I don't want to be like that, but the milder end of the spectrum feels really really nice and it's far superior to drugs. That is the feeling I want back. The feeling I had when I was obsessively DVD shopping. I had £150 in the bank as I'd not been taking drugs and I blew the lot on my DVD collection over 4 days. I was buying at least 10 films a day.

Well I'm going down to Sainsbury's to obtain roast chicken of the cold variety rather than freshly cooked. The cold stuff is higher in salt and glucose and pumped full of water. So it's lovely and industrial and I luuurve industrial food.

The only bit I hate about supermarkets is going through the till because I feel the staff are judging me. I can't keep myself together like a proper person would I look like I'm homeless. It's as much as I can do to wash/shower but my clothes are dirty, I have no clean ones. It's a real ordeal trying to sort out washing clothes etc. I got told this is symptoms of this "illness" I am meant to have because I never used to be like this before. Now I just can't handle doing things. Too many details all pressing me at once. Too much to deal with.

I did some research into schizoaffective disorder to see whether I really have it.

I have a mood disorder which is bipolar in type ie I get depressed which can last months and for years I used to have little flashes of something I suspected might be hypomania but wasn't really sure. The last thing I was going to do was fess up to a doctor and go and get the label "bipolar"* hung around my neck so I kept shtum about this. I never went full-on manic until last December and then my brain really was racing out of control. As well as this I've had psychotic symptoms which are hearing voices or having voices coming into my head "thought insertion" and also paranoia. Those are the main ones they started properly something like seven years ago but were really mild. They would come and go but they were bad enough that I remember having to keep stopping the bath running on more than one occasion because the sound of running water set off something that sounded like someone calling my name over and over and over. I never went full-on psychotic until last December and that lasted until some time in March. Now I'm depressed a bit still but not as depressed as before. But I never heard any voices during that depressive episode, which lasted more than a month. And I'd given up the antipsychotic because I thought it was making me feel flat and dull and wanted the chance of some mania back.

The only schizo thing that happened to me a few times was I'd be thinking of one thing eg "chicken" and another totally unrelated idea would stick to it eg "branches" so I'd have a weird confluence of ideas in my head: chicken that was like tree branches. It happened quite a few times. Sometimes I can't bear to say or think of a word because it has really weird associations for me (that it didn't have in the past) I think this is what they mean when they talk of "marked loosening of associations". I can't describe it any better than this.

Does anyone know anything about schizoaffective disorder; and do my symptoms match it? I've only given the main ones else I'd be detailing it all day.

I looked up a schizoaffective forum and found some really good stories that have a distinct similarity to mine in its more extreme stages.

I noticed looking between the lines that schizophrenics seem to have more trouble with "thought disorder" whereas schizoaffectives seem to get a really high incidence of visual hallucinations and illusions. I remember one time I was at nutter club and pretty manic the guy opposite me suddenly grew a purple face out of his neck and it stayed there for a minute then went away. You'd think something like that would be scary or disturbing but I was honestly too high to care. That's the thing about mental illness it doesn't add up logically the way youd assume it might.

*ps my diagnosis is "schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type" and it means i get symptoms of bipolar AND schizophrenia

Here are the links:

I really relate to this. I had feelings like this when I was manic, too:

http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Have-Schizoaffective-Disorder/1146253

A schizoaffective story:

http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Have-Schizoaffective-Disorder/1108308

This describes the entertainment hallucinations of schizoaffective disorder
(You have to see them as entertainment; otherwise you truly would go insane.)
http://www.experienceproject.com/stories/Have-Schizoaffective-Disorder/1518298

Best psych meds site I have found:
http://www.crazymeds.com/

pps i found out the name of one of my more unusual "symptoms" that i still do today, it's called verbigeration and it means "meaningless repetition of words, phrases or sounds as a symptom of mental illness". I do it when I'm stressed or when my mind is racing so frantically from mania I can't hold on to anything else but single words or just bits of words and i repeat them over and over. I dont know why




Thursday, April 21, 2011

18 hours' sleep

IT'S 0013 hours. I'm up so late because I slept at least 14 hours last night then went to bed at midday and slept another 4 so that's 18 hours' sleep. I'm trying to keep track of it. I had more physical energy today because I slept, I think.

I didn't go to the antidrugs course again because I wasn't impressed with it. I felt alienated as the most miserable person in the room. I had to keep acting all perky when I didn't feel it. And I didn't feel anybody in there used for the same reasons as me.

Main reason I didn't go was my clothes are all dirty and I didn't want to sit in close proximity with anyone all reeking. Didn't want to sit in close proximity with anyone anyhow.

Tomorrow I have an appointment at the druggieclinic at 10am. I'm not looking forward to the hassle of going.

Dealer #1 was off today so I scored off the old dealer who used to have good gear but it was so lousy it kept blocking the works. I knew it was crap as soon as I opened it. Nearly half a gram for £17, which there's no way you'd get nowadays. Gear is really expensive now so the bags are tiny but good or big but terrible. I got big and terrible.

After that I regretted buying it at all. I'd already slept my 18 hours when I scored by the way so my sleep was not chemically induced. It was just natural hypersomnia.

I wish I could say I was going not to use tomorrow but I have no sticktoitiveness any more. I only gave up before because my mood was so disturbed shooting high and low that I felt in a different world. Now it's just down down down with no ups at all. I had at least 6 highs and 6 lows in 12 weeks when I was "cycling" now I'm just down down. I don't think it is severe depression it is moderate depression.

I looked it up and that seemed to be what it was. The mania I got went into "severe with psychotic features" the highest you can get, which scares me because as far as I know most people with bipolar problems get high and low in equal proportion. You can read the write up here.
http://www.mentalhealth.com/icd/p22-md02.html
It's the ICD-10 criteria as used in Europe. Much easier to follow than the American DSM IV.

I don't know of any cure for depression except exercise. Stuff like eating vegetables is hardly going to do much when I'm in the grip of an episode already. I know I shouldn't drink but I get a real buzz out of it now. I shoot the drink back quickly, just one half litre can of 7.5% vol, and I do get a high. I noticed today a low about an hour later so maybe there is some truth in "alcohol is a depressant".

It's really hot. Hot for London. About 25C which is around 75F. I am not enjoying the weather at all. Firstly because I'm a dope fiend and heroin addicts loathe hot weather. Second because it just feels depressing. I like to be wrapped up in layers of clothing which I can't do these days.

There's not much else to say. I think I get paid by the DSS tomorrow because it's Easter. I hate easter. It's like Christmas but with horrible weather and less enchanting imagery. Also the Pope seems to figure more prominently in Easter and I find the Pope a real turn off. How the hell that man gets away titling himself "Your Holiness" I will never understand.

Well I hope y'all have a good one. Easter that is. To anyone who believes in that pagan crap. I do believe Jesus kept the Passover, not Easter. Anyway I'm off take care everyone.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Drugsdrugsdrugs

EVERYTHING ABOUT MY BLOG IS ANNOYING ME. I regret I regret. I borrowed a fiver yesterday to score heroin. The main dealer was off, so I had to come round someone's house and let him buy crack with half the money then I took heroin from the other half. The gear was really tiny and really strong. For once. But it came from the local Baby Gangstas who I wont deal with. They're always rude to their customers and their bags are miniscule. Yesterday it just happened to be good gear but usually this one's is sub-standard so I won't deal with him. The number is in my phone but they employ so many people nobody knows who I am when I phone up.

I felt like such an idiot when dealer one was off I thought why am I doing this putting my happiness in the hands of cunts like these.

The answer is I have no happiness. I'm paying for something I wouldn't otherwise not have. Peace calm serenity. At the end of the day does it matter that it's false?

I had years of unhappiness before I found heroin. Nothing to take the unhappiness away. Heroin doesn't make me happy; it just makes me not unhappy.

Still I decided NOT to take it today. If I get more and more depressed, eventually I will kill myself. So it's all good.

What I want back is a manic episode like I had before. It's worth losing your mind to go happy for a bit. When I was full-on manic I could barely understand anything I read. If I could get back just a bit of that mania that would be cool.

I nearly had an argument over crack. A wanted me to buy crack not heroin and I went nuts. Why anybody would want to smoke crack is beyond me, it does almost nothing to you except make you feel jagged, anxious and paranoid.

Sorry to disappoint by talking about nothing but drugs but if I posted on myself, there would be nothing to post.

If you want to hear about my boring life it's 8:20 and I woke up sick, but I had a tiny bit of heroin dust that sorted me out. At 9am Iceland opens where I will buy curry and rice. I am starving. I'll get methadone round the corner. Then I will go home. I have nothing to do today so I will fester at home, like a running sore. Drooling pus. And I really need a cigarette.

Monday, April 18, 2011

No Crack Cocaine

SOMEONE WAS SMOKING CRACK right in front of me today and it didn't trouble me too much. He offered me a pipe and I refused. Crack plays havoc with mood, brings on or worsens psychosis. With problems like mine, it's the last thing I'd choose to use.

I did use heroin. I'm using it as an antidepressant because despite my mood picking up a bit over the weekend I'm still feeling down. I look to tomorrow and can't handle the thought of honouring any commitments. Not even going to the drug clinic on the 21st. I can't handle the idea of doing anything. When I'm with people I find it slightly stressful talking to them, but I feel better for being in thier company eventually, because they're my friends. Then I'm scared of them leaving me, of being on my own. I don't know what's happening.

I was so vehemently antidrugs not even two months ago, but I had a naturally "elevated mood" back then. I called it my "higher power"; my psychiatrist called it mania; NA called it crack addiction and backhandedly called me a liar for declaring myself crack-clean ~ which I was very much so back then; I've barely smoked any crack at all since new year going into 2009.

I missed NA tonight because I was with friends but they said there's a meeting in Central London they'd be willing to go to with me next week, so maybe we'll do that. Not much else to say; my brains have turned to porridge. I have to go; I just washed my hair for the first time in a fortnight and it's dripping all over me.

I suppose I crossed a bridge today because I allowed someone to pipe right in front of me and barely craved a go. If only I could confine heroin to that same dustbin every other drug of my past lives has gone in: cannabis, ecstasy, mushrooms, ketamine, LSD (in no particular order) and so on... Nasty stuff all of it.

As my head-shrinker, who's a consultant psychiatrist specializing in addiction and mental health dual diagnosis, the one who diagnosed me schizoaffective said: "you and drugs and drink do not mix"...

Illustrated: crack cocaine as it's packaged and sold in many parts of the United States, in a vial containing about 0.3g or 0.4g, about £15-£20 worth of the drug in UK terms. I asked an American friend why the vials and he said "so you can see what you're getting". Good point. Here in London it comes clingfilmed up so you could be buying anything. Heroin bags (same principal; coloured polythene) were originally called "joeys". A joey meaning "a stupid person". When you buy drugs you're buying a proverbial pig in a poke. You don't really know what you're getting till you get it back and actually try it... lovely business, innit..?!?

CYMBALTA COMMERCIAL
Cymbalta is the antidepressant duloxetine. I like the little tonkie doggie.
But isn't this voice-over offputting!!


Sunday, April 17, 2011

Feeling Better

YES I'M FEELING BETTER! Hopefully for good. Yes I did use heroin this afternoon and it took away about 60% of my depression. The depression was getting so bad I could barely handle the thought of scoring, let alone the procedure of walking down to the shops, which took 20 mins, to get to a certain back street where the dealer said he would come and park up. He won't come to my house as he's coming from inner London and I live too far out for him. He has a LOT of customers dotted hither and thither, so if you live outside the ten square miles or so he deals in, you have to walk or ride into that zone to meet him.

Anyway I took a 0.3g hit in my leg and felt far better. I'm very well aware of how sad it is to rely on heroin as an antidepressant, but it's the only thing that really works for me. I was in such a negative frame of mind that the staying clean aspect felt pretty meaningless. I felt like an idiot and a loser for using and had so many negative thoughts in my head it barely seemed worthwhile going down the road to get the drug. But I did. And I felt better.

Unlike the other day though my mood stayed higher right into the evening. Now it's even higher than it was when I used and its just after 3am. I don't feel manic, but I barely feel depressed at all. I feel a little bit speedy actually. There's no way the heroin can be causing this. Heroin makes you dopey, not speedy. And heroin mostly wears off within 4-6 hours, unless you take a truly whopping dose, which I didn't.

So I'm hoping my mood is improving by itself. I felt tired and gauwchy earlier on which is not surprising: heroin does that to you. But I didn't sleep. Then I realized it was after midnight so I went to bed but just didn't feel sleepy enough ~ for once! So I'm up and trying to stay up as long as I can.

The research I did into depression said that missing a night's sleep can actually reset your body clock out of depression. So I'm going to try going on just a few hours sleep and a bit of tea to see whether this works.

Wish me luck!

*******


OK the following is a mixed bag of stuff from when I was researching how not to be depressed. The links are really for my own benefit, but have a click if you're interested. You might find the "how it feels" mania and depression ones enlightening if you're wondering what bipolar feels like.



From the Risperidone leaflet. When this fell out I was so high it felt like a character portrait just for me:
Risperidone tablets are also used to treat a type of mental illness called bipolar disorder, which causes dramatic mood swings from overly "high" and/or irritable to sad and hopeless, and then back again, often with periods of normal mood in between. Severe changes in energy and behaviour go along with these changes in mood. The periods of highs (characterised by overactivity, elation or irritability, overly talkativeness, aggression, less need for sleep than normal, switching quickly from one topic to another as if they cannot get their thoughts out fast enough, get easily distracted or show poor judgement or cause injury to oneself) are called episodes of mania.

Only thing I didn't do in all that was injure myself.

I got "54+ severely depressed" on this scale as well.

http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/interactive/interactivetests/goldberg.php

68 "severely depressed" again

http://psychcentral.com/depquiz.htm

Bipolar II disorder, the mental illness from which actress Catherine Zeta Jones suffers:
http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/418725

Bipolar sleep
http://www.bipolar-lives.com/bipolar-sleep.html


What triggers a manic episode
http://www.livingmanicdepressive.com/C_021.html


If you want to know what it feels like to be manic, read this:
http://www.livingmanicdepressive.com/B_010.html

And here's a good description of what depression's like
http://www.livingmanicdepressive.com/B_020.html


WEEBLES FEATURING PRINCESS JULIA: MOIST WOMANLY NEEDS
This is for you, Anna Grace, you nympho tart!



DELIRIUM FEATURING SARAH MCLACHAN: SILENCE
Thanks, LizzieDripping




The fur hat illustration is because I found one today that looks like the top bit of that one without the lollopy rabbits' ears sides. I'm saving it for next winter: my new look!

PS note to self: GET NEW GLASSES

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Tubby Entertainers

FURRY FRIDAY ON SATURDAY


I'm a golden hamster...

I pack my pouches

I'm a tubby entertainer

I love nibbling things in my nest

After a big day pinging, I sleep like a tiny baby...

WISHING Y'ALL A TUBBY-FURRY WEEKEND!


Friday, April 15, 2011

Vile

I HAVE HAD NO HEROIN TODAY AND I FEEL VILE.

That is, I'm in a "low mood". I'm not clucking, not detoxing, methadone is holding me as well as it ever does.

I cleared up my room in one go.
I knew that was the only way I'd get it done. It's far from perfect but I got an amazing amount done between 5 and 10 am. The council lady looked at me and said "you're not coping, are you?" and I said "no" (well I couldn't say yes could I?)

Then I vegetated in front of the television. I've managed to lose that box set of The Wire so there's nothing decent to watch.

This afternoon I slept for several hours. I went to bed around the time I decided against scoring gear, even though the idea was niggling at me. You have to understand if you're not a British heroin user that the quality of the drug on these shores has droped precipitously since there was a blighted opium harvest in Afghanistan last year. They say purity has fallen from 30 or 40% down to 13 or 14% but frankly I find it hard to believe it's even that strong.

Yesterday a friend brought some round after a two hour round trip involving frineds of friends and a trip to the edge of town. This is the best gear you can get and I barely felt it. If I hadn't been in mixed company I'd have banged up the entire £20 bag in one but didn't want the "be careful"s and tut-tutting this would invoke. I don't care if I die on heroin. If heroin wasn't deadly it wouldn't have been anything like the attraction it was to the young depressed me.

So I slept the same as I would have done on heroin but saved myself £20.

Then I went to the supermarket which I hate doing when I'm down I cannot decide what to buy, nothing inspires me and I feel stranded there. Miserable and exhausted with people rushing to the left and the right when all I want is to be home alone with the door locked and the world kept at bay.

Now I'm regretting not using.

I think heroin users should get death by firing squad for a first offence. Or if you think that sounds fascist, make it a voluntary death penalty. I'd volunteer. In fact, I'd be first in line.

Mop

YO WHATS UP DUDE. I'm watching the Wire learning American drug talk. I now know that a g-pack means something like an ounce or a thousand dollars worth of heroin or crack. Anna Grace put out a desperate shout on her blog for anyone to sell her some gear in Yuma, Arizona or New Mexico (somewhere down there) and got this message back:

Yo Babe dis Boomer from Yuma. I king o dis town. You want some Venom? I got da best Venom in Yuma. Dimes, twenties, you name it I do it for ya. You suck my cockie I giv y'all 50% discount. I'm only 13", dat be easy for a big ho like you to handle. I smear chocolate sauce on my cock and dip it in chocolate cheerios you lick that shit off. My cell number be 7252217 so gimme a tinkle any time, mothafucker

Anna said she laughed her head off and she's got depression worse than me. So Boomer did her a favour, even if he didn't supply her with "venom" (the local heroin brand). I hope Boomer isn't offended ...

I am up at 5:30am to clear and mop my floors for when the council rats lady comes round. I ain't got no rats but I did have a psychotic break and leave my house like a pigsty. The landlord came round when I was manic and hadn't slept for days. O man the look on his face was a picture to be observed! Then this mad lady came and asked whether I was in touch with mental health services. Did I have eyes on stalks or something? Far as I was concerned I was having a whale of a time. Only problem was I was too manic to think sentences. Just random words pinging back and forth across my brain and funny boing boing boing noises. When I got really manic the ceiling kept talking to me.

I could do with some mania back as I'm stuck in depression (still), sleeping ALL night long from as early as 5pm some nights... sleeping right through sometimes to 10am. When I wake up earlier, I just make up the "lost" sleep in the afternoon.

Reading back that "down but not out yet" post annoys me. My ranting about drugs drugs drugs and how much I love the needle and hate people who don't love it too (that was my point: being bundled together as "addicts" when our patterns of use and degree of dependence varies as much as red does from violet. The full spectrum.

I skipped day 2 of the Intuitive Recovery Course and regretted it instantly. The course tutor phoned me up and said I can still come to day 3 next week so I will. I felt like the biggest idiot for babying out like that. And I know I sound like a snob talking about the other people in there. I don't look down at them, more to the point I feel like they are looking down at me as the bigger fuck-up. And I don't relate to hardcore crack addiction. Shoplifting, robbing for crack. Crack is a high; heroin is a medicine. Heroin soothes me. Crack just winds me up. I don't know why I was sounding off so empty like that but it's just how I feel and I felt very uncomfortable that my heartfelt answers were unacceptable. I use not to feel high but to feel OK, maybe an exaggerated OK. That's why I call it medicine. That's no excuse to use, but it is my reason. Heroin smoothed out my mood swings dramatically from day one.

Yes I was having mood swings that seemed suspiciously "bipolar" long before I ever medicated them with heroin. Only difference then was the downs went further down than the fleeting high ever lifted me up. It was early this year that I had a full blown mania with no drugs to blame and no withdrawal. I was no longer medicating with heroin so the only medicine in my system was methadone and methadone never cut it mental-problems-wise. Hence my continual use of heroin. Anyway this mania took me way up high. The doctors saw it (there was no hiding it). One doctor saw me when I was so out of it I couldn't even answer a straight question without babbling on 234 subjects I thought were desperately pertinent to what had been asked. They kept cutting me short saying I was "derailing topic".

Why am I babbling away on this. O yeah because I got to mop my floor and I don't want to. I'm having a cigarette now. Wish me luck. I'm going to need it. How I'm ever going to live my life off drink and drugs I have no idea and there's no heroin coming today. I've had an alcoholic drink and I've had caffeine. Caffeine does nothing for me when Im down, but when I was high I had this thing going on that coffee comes from Colombia, so does cocaine, there's cocaine in my coffee ~ that's why I feel so high. I also thought (or more to the point felt) that I was turning into electricity.

Well I've got to run. Take care y'all and hi Boomer.

Illustrated: this mop is far more clean and white than mine!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

We've all got bipolar


CATHERINE ZETA JONES has just been released from a Connecticut mental clinic suffering from type 2 bipolar disorder. Type 2 bipolar is the milder form of the illness where severe depression alternates with mild mania and there are no "psychotic features". The illness is said to have been broughton by the stress of her husband, Michael Douglas's throat cancer. Get well soon, Zeta!

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Down and not out (yet)...

I'M EXHAUSTED. My depression is getting worse, bad enough now I feel it constantly ~ like a migraine headache, or like nausea, going right through me. I don't know what to do. I exercise by walking but am so truly exhausted I literally have to go to bed afterwards. Yesterday I did day one of 4 on the Intuitive Recovery Drugs Course, which I had been really looking forward to, but everyone was a typical crackhead ~ full of shit, full of front. They were all young and being punished on probation, meaning I was the only one their truly by choice (just like when I was in rehab, where I was literally the only one of about twenty inmates NOT on a prison-swerve). I also deduced I was literally the only injecting heroin addict in the room, which offends my inner drug snob, if you want to call it that. Heroin is my drug of choice, IV heroin. The slam, the gauwch. These people were crackheads and a lot of them incinerate their gear on the end of the pipe and say they have a habit on B. Then when I say I need over 100mg methadone to hold me they think I'm neurotic and just dosing myself up as high as I can for the sake of it. I'm on a large script because little 50mg doses will not hold me. When I was with Maple Syrup the bitch worker who pushed me into public group meetings this fat black man who looked every inch the brown-piper, ie he hadn't the first idea what it's really like to have a gram plus IV heroin habit, declared categorically that 50mg methadone could hold anybody. I really wasn't in the mood for such bullshit and pulled him up on this causing a huge row. I was hoping he would storm out but he didn't and we just glared at each other until the meeting was over.

I don't think of myself as an expert because I'm not one. I'm just a heroin addict who has researched my drug of choice. Then I'm confronted by people like that who don't know what the hell they're talking about and they truly do my head in. It was one such person at another meeting who claimed that 2g a day heroin was "ridiculous" (the sort of person who'd do 2g or more crack in a few hours and think nothing of it). I gave up meetings after that (these were run by the druggieclinic and have nothing to do with NA or Intuitive Recovery). I was fed up of being made to feel like an old junkie by people who have been on the crack pipe for a couple of years and think they know it all. Good on them for sorting themselves out oafter such a short time. But don't pretend you understand hardcore heroin addiction because you smoke crack, a drug that's all about chasing a high. Heroin is about smoothing yourself over. You take heroin and watch daytime TV and munch on a McDonald's Double Cheeseburger and sip a cyder. Heroin is a comfort drug. Heroin has long been my medicine. It's harder to give up heroin precisely because it is so very unexciting and mundane. Crack is a ridiculously intense high. Heroin feels soft and mild. Once heroin gets you it's a far more profound addiction than crack. Less intense. But still waters run deep.

So I went along with this course yesterday not agreeing with everything they said. Eg a multiple choice question "I take drugs because A it makes the daisies grow" (some such nonsensical answer) "B they feel good" (the supposedly right answer or C: life is crap". Well I'm sorry I use for answer C, life is crap, life on drugs is better. Drugs don't feel good, not really. I can barely feel anything off my drug of choice even when it knocks me unconscious ~ and this is heroin heroin, not benzoated heroin. I was buying benzoated heroin for months about a year ago, by choice. I knew it had benzos in it because I'd obtained some piss tests which came up benzo-positive even though I'd not popped a Valium or temazepam in months. I know what benzo-heroin feels like and I know what real heroin feels like. I've overdosed at least five times on heroin heroin and wouldn't mark the strength of the drug (not the niceness, the actual feeling of how strong the niceness is... even an overdose of heroin doesn't feel much more than a 4.5 out of 10. Compared to crack which is an 8.5 or more, ketamine which would be 9 or hard brainfrying can't understand what anyone's saying LSD which would be 10. Of course in niceness, heroin scores 10, but it feels by necessity WEAK. It was the love of my life and I never took it because it felt amazing as such. My true reason for taking heroin was that life was unbearable without it. Methadone stops all physical withdrawals provided you take a whacking great dose (and I needed far more than the drug clinic would admit you do to equate even to one £20 bag IVd per day (and I'm talking about traditional proper strength gear, not the weak post-drought rubbish on sale these days)). I took gear because I felt bad when I didn't take it. Gear was the only thing that made life feel worth living. Methadone didn't. Whatever those researchers believe, they believe what they want to. We all know methadone is no true substitute for heroin. If it were, junkies would not use constantly on top of their scripts. It's not that methadone is weak. Methadone is like comparing a raincoat to a fur coat. When it's cold you wrap yourself up in sheepskins. No amount of cagool is going to do it for you. Methaone is like a cagool. It's waterproof as you can get. But it's not cosy. Heroin is cosy. Addicts like heroin. Not methadone. Heroin. By and large, the clinics are wasting their time with methadone. Beggars can't be chosers, but addicts can use on top of an inadequate methadone script, which is why they do, almost without exception. I'm willing to use methadone as a vehicle to get me where I want to be. Off opiates. But most addicts aren't ready for methadone. Asking someone to give up needles, give up feeling high, give up the rituals associated with using all at once all sounds very doable on paper, but it just doesn't happen.

The crackheads who smoke heroin on their pipes, burning up most of the dose before it ever has a chance to enter the bloodstream seem to have a far easier ride on methadone than the heavy IV addicts I hung out with. This is because these people have barely any habit on heroin and so the methadone holds them very well. For those heavily dependent on heroin, doses well in excess of 100mg are required, which the clinics don't like to prescribe. And so it's the same old story. The willingness is there but the methadone doesn't work well enough and it doesn't soothe the fixation long-term junkies have with needles. And so they take their scripts gratefully, but continue to fix up whenever they can. Just a little bit less.

When doctors do a naughty and dip into the drugs cabinet it's never the methadone they swipe, is it? They go straight for the diamorphine! So doctors do know. Addicts only accept the status quo because the punitive philosphy is built into our group mentality. They believe they should suffer on methadone, so they accept this suffering. Methadone has no antidepressant effect. I waited two hours for a friend to drive another friend to their Turkish friend who buys enough personal to keep his habit and sell a little bit on and this guy gets good heroin. So I got a £20 bag of this and my depression is magically cured. As much as anything cures my misery this Turkish heroin has done the trick. I don't feel marvellous, but I feel tolerable. Before I took it I was in pain. A constant indistinct nagging ache going right through me that nothing could cure. It's bipolar depression and I know of nothing that can treat it. The pills I was on are antimanic not antidepressant. Lithium stops the mood swinging but doesn't actually cure depression. Antidepressants have sent me hypomanic or manic the last few times I took them. And they were prescribed by doctors. My sleep shrivels down to six hours, then down to four. Last time I got so hyped up I went four days in a row with no sleep whatsoever. I was hallucinating and so euphoric I wrote the most ridiculous letter to my poor gran who I new was dying of cancer. I'm just intensely glad I didn't post it for I was in the type of mental state you get into when you've drunk too much. It's what psychiatrists call an "expansive mood" ~ and I was very exansive indeed.

I was well aware that the mirtazapine (Remeron) was to blame, but far too high to care. And then, a week into it, I crashed so badly I was in a "spiritual crisis". People who knew me took one look and asked what on earth was wrong. I could no longer put on a happy act. Everything in life seemed bleak and empty. I even lost the desire to use heroin. Not knowing what else to do I scored, then took it home and opened it and stared at the open bag of brown for what felt like hours, knowing heroin wasn't the answer ~ wasn't even the fake answer it always had been ~ yet knowing I would take it anyway. Which I eventually did, shooting up in my big toe. As expected, it barely did anything for me.

So no I don't take drugs just because they feel good. I take them because life is shit, and that's always why I took heroin. Because to be frank, life felt meaningless and empty without it. You can argue all you like what I "should" feel, but these are the facts. I know I have a mental illness and I now know what it's called. Just knowing this does nothing to help me feel any better. The diagnosis, in case you don't know is "biolar schizoaffective" which just means severe biolar manic depression. The schizo bit means I get florid psychotic symptoms when I go manic. But I'm not manic now I'm depressed. Underneath the heroin in my system I know I'm miserable.

I know more than one of you will be irritated to hear me fessing up to heroin use once again. Well be irritated. You don't feel how I feel. If you had zero self esteeem, self confidence in the gutter and constant relentless depression that has gone on for years you'd use heroin too ~ if heroin found you. Without heroin I don't know that I would have made it this far without killing myself. Sorry to sound shocking or childish but that's the truth of the matter. I have fought against suicidal thoughts for years. I didn't fight my drug addiction, I simply gave into it and used, nearly all the time. But my suicidal ideation as they call it, I really have fought and not given into.

I just wish I could get some energy back. A touch of mania would go down very nicely. When I was manic between December and early March I went higher than I have ever been in my life. Cast all thoughts of drugs from your mind or you're missing the point: this was an entirely natural high and it got so intense I actually got higher on mania than I've ever been on any drug, including crack cocaine. It felt truly wonderful knowing I could be clean and on nothing bar prescribed methadone which I only took through sheer necessity and feel that good. During this phase I was more antidrugs than I've ever been. Knowing that heroin would if anything bring me down (being a CNS depressant) I avoided that like the plague. Crack I had no need for at all. Crack is like a jittery, unpleasant and weak version of the manic high. True, as the mania span increasingly out of control I got the same negative effects you get off crack: an ultra-hyped up body that just would not sleep (didn't NEED to sleep), paranoia and hallucinations, inability to focus on anything, inability to stay still. The paranoia was horrible but the hallucinations were mostly fun. I saw amazing visions in walls and floors, some as full-colour movies. The voices I heard were more entertaining than frightening. The best one was the cockney costermonger trying to get me to buy tangerines off her stall. I know I was crazy but I wasn't on drugs. NA annoyed me. Members nod-nod-nodding their heads when I proudly affirmed I was off drugs and sticking to my methadone script, as I was. Then I'd get comments back that confirmed my suspicions "when you drop the drugs..." etc. Yes they were assuming that someone who turned up hyped up and high, too high to sit still or follow a meeting for more than a few minutes at a time, someone who couldn't stop pacing and fidgeting, someone who talked at several hundred words per minute absolute had to be on crack. No it couldn't be a natural high, oh no! Why on earth do they give up drugs if not to finda higher power that brings them happiness WITHOUT drugs. Well that's exactoly what I'd found. My higher manic power that made me higher even than a heroin-crack speedball. My higher power that gave me this amazing euphoria absolutely free without any need ever to score or reload. My higher power that manifested my truest inner self. And nobody would accept it was real. One assumption I thought I was justified in making was that at NA I should find acceptance. And yet I found no acdeptance. I felt judged and misunderstood. Badly misunderstood. And when I explained to my home group why I had been turning up week after week unable to sit still, unable to follow the meeting and then raging during my share ~ not because I felt in any way obliged to tell anybody anything about my medical condition but because I felt it would be nice to give an explanation, I was so nervous despite my still-"elevated" mood my voice was literally quavering when I told them I was having mental health problems that made me hyper and high. I told them this was bipolar disorder, because I do have a type of bipolar. And not one single person, of all these members who'd had so much to say when they all thought I was using and lying about it. Nobody not one single person had a word to say to me. I went home disgusted.

So this is me. Still unhappy. I don't know where it will end. I don't feel at all like going to this course but I will go. I committed myself to going for myself. No probation officer is on my case forcing the issue. It's just me, who's decided to do this. I'm not impressed by our trainee course tutor reading the booklet aloud. As I said, I can read it myself in a fraction of the time. And I have a nasty feeling the brain science they mention is oversimplified. Though maybe not: what do I know? They say gave a colour illustration with the brain in blue and red. Blue is you; red is "it". The focus of "it" was the amygdala, an almond-shaped nub in the temporal lobe that is the seat of pleasure, displeasure and memories connected with good things and bad things. They're saying that this amygdala is what tells us druggie users that it's good to take drugs. The amygdala does not and cannot engage in logical reasoning, it just tells you drugtaking is good. So when the amgydala is activated, you wanna use drugs. You don't even know why. It just tells you drugtaking is good; that you need drugs and want drugs. It's "you", it's up to the rest of your brain that engages in logic and reasoning, to put it right and say NO!

All this makes perfect sense, but it doesn't take a two and a half hour session to explain.

And I wasn't happy that my reason for heroin use, that life is shit, was considered invalid, a wrong answer. If I considered life worth living, I would never have experimented with heroin. I was well aware that heroin was deadly: this was much of its appeal.

In my Mum's words "you took it because the antidepressants didn't work, didn't you?" and that's right.

*******


THE DRUGGIECLINIC has offered me another hep C test. I've had symptoms of depression-related extreme fatigue for years before I ever IVd heroin so I doubt my current fatigue is viral, but they're supposed to be offering a hepatitis C finger prick test which I'll go for if it really is available there. The old test involved me stripping practically naked so every battered vein was on display, and a hoary old woman stabbing away at my extremities until enough blood could be tapped to fill up a vial. Why on earth they won't just slit the back of my leg with a scalpel and capture the dribbles into a test-tube I've no idea.

I have the classic needle fixation: love stabbing myself with the heroin works; hate anybody else having control of the spike.

But I need to know for a fact that this fatigue IS just depression. It gets severe enough that I can sleep all night: eight pm to eight am flat out, do what I have to do in the morning. A mere walk to the shops is enough to tire me out enough that I have to go back to bed and sleep another four hours. That's sixteen hours' sleep and on a bad week I can sleep that long every single day for days in a row. The sleep only tapers off when my mood lifts slightly maybe for a week or so, then on a bad week like this week I'm back to sleeping fourteen, sixteen hours a day everyday or even longer. I'm fed up of living like this. If I take a mood stabilizer it'll block my mood ever going higher than normal and I hate mediocrity. I want to be high. Remember this is my own high, my natural high. And though I do believe my mood swings are the sum of my experience (ie years of drugtaking) it's also true that bipolar and schizoaffective are indisputably genetically transmitted illness. Something like 60% of sufferers have one first degree relative with bipolar disorder or recurrent depression (my Mum has recrurrent depression, every year). And I first had bipolar symptoms LONG before heroin, drink or crack ever became issues. I first became hypomanic on Prozac when I was just 23 years old. I first got major depression aged 19. I first had depressive symptoms (and symptoms of OCD) in childhood. The how much, how bad and how bad for how longs are impossible to establish this long after the fact, but I clearly remember obsessing about having cancer, feeling like I actually was ill and in moments of despair just wishing I would die now and have it over with. I was ten years old.

Throughout most of my life I have had very low self esteem. I didn't particularly like school. The academics I was fine with, but in the sixthform (age 16 to 18) particularly I had a very small group of friends. I certainly was not depressed all the way through school, but even then I went through periods of lethargy and mild depression where I was labelled a dinosaur and even a drug addict. I certainly had the gormless demeanour, even back then.

I wasted the year between school and university, and when I did go I was totally unprepared for life in the real world. Within ten weeks I was showing signs of clinical depression. By the second term (the semester system didn't come in until my second year) I was complaining of severe insomnia and got passed from my GP to a psychiatrist. I remember the utter terror of seeing this man who had all the clinical and offputting manner psychiatrists were famed for. He said "I understand you're suffering from low mood" and promptly asked whether I was hearing voices. Ironically when I wasn't hearing voices they asked me about them all the time. Then when I did start hearing voices nobody asked about them for years! Bear in mind these voices started off as indistinct mutterings and murmurings. They only became intrusive and loud and clear off drugs when I had that manic-depressive breakdown last December. The walls started talking to me. Loud. That breakdown, as dedicated readers of this blog will recall, coincided with a drought in the heroin supply and my decision to kick heroin for good. The very first day without heroin was the day I went floridly psychotic and my mood continued cycling up and down between mania and depression for about three months.

Now I'm stuck in depression. If a friend hadn't obtained the only good heroin I know of in London this afternoon I know I'd be feeling despair right now. I really was pissed off and down this morning and nothing was making me feel any better.

I can't go on like this. I can't afford to treat what I now know is a mental illness with an illicit drug and I'm unwilling to do so. This friend will probably be back tomorrow with more heroin, but I doubt he'll be around the day after that. I'm going to have to get used to living in misery. I have no option. If it gets really bad there's always the mental hospital but the worse I feel the more I feel they'll just laugh at me if I go in there. They probably won't want to take me in anyway unless I'm "actively suicidal", which throws all manner of negative ideas into my head.

Well I don't know what else to say. Hey maybe somebody somewhere will read this and somehow get "helped" by it. What help my dullardly life story can possibly give to anybody I honestly have no idea, but if you are an anonymous or a person I don't know and you read this and have something to say, please do leave a comment. I'm interested to know what you have to say about anything I've put, or anything that what I've put brings to mind.

Comments please!

*******


ONLINE DEPRESSION TEST: HOW DO YOU SCORE?

The other day, when I felt far better than today, I had a depression score of 24. It says I may indeed be suffering from clinical depression and ought to contact a medical professional.
I noticed the sleep question is totally skewed the wrong way I'm OVER sleeping not under sleeping. So I got a zero for that question, quite ridiculously.
The test is here: http://www.psymed.info/default.aspx?m=Test&id=63&l=3

What did you score?

I did this test this morning when I felt truly dire and got 38 according to your score you are rated as SEVERELY DEPRESSED; you should consult a health professional for possible treatment. If you are having suicidal ideations, please seek treatment immediately.

See I don't know what to do. What is a health professional possibly going to do for me? Last appointment I had, at the new clinic, some Indian nurse with an attitude problem kept asking me why I was there. I said "because I got a letter telling me to come in this morning". He demanded to know how much heroin I was using (he was just being nosey and judgemental in my view) then brusquely asked how many voices I had heard and how paranoid I was and curtly said he would get me an appointment with a doctor. I thought I was there to SEE A DOCTOR not some half-arsed nurse. I just got a heavy duty diagnosis which means when I really get ill I do totally lose it, and this guy expects ME to have all the answers. Well next time they'll be disappointed if they want to gloat at my heroin use because I've decided it's going to be nonexistent, no matter how much I suffer. Life is crap. Heroin is crap. I don't want life without heroin. I don't want life if the truth be told. I don't want to kill myself either I just want to curl up and sleep.

I WANT OFF METHADONE AS QUICK AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!

METHADONE ~ A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH







Heroin Shortage: News

If you are looking for the British Heroin Drought post, click here; the latest word is in the comments.







Christiane F

"Wir, Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo" by "Christiane F", memoir of a teenage heroin addict and prostitute, was a massive bestseller in Europe and is now a set text in German schools. Bahnhoff Zoo was, until recently, Berlin's central railway station. A kind of equivalent (in more ways than one) to London's King's Cross... Of course my local library doesn't have it. So I'm going to have to order it through a bookshop and plough through the text in German. I asked my druggieworker Maple Syrup, who is Italiana how she learned English and she said reading books is the best way. CHRISTIANE F: TRAILER You can watch the entire 120-min movie in 12 parts at my Random blog. Every section EXCEPT part one is subtitled in English (sorry: but if you skip past you still get the gist) ~ to watch it all click HERE.

To See Gledwood's Entire Blog...

DID you find my blog via a Google or other search? Are you stuck on a post dated some time ago? Do you want to read Gledwood Volume 2 right from "the top" ~ ie from today?
If so click here and you'll get to the most recent post immediately!

Drugs Videos

Most of these come from my Random blog, which is an electronic scrapbook of stuff I thought I might like to view at some time or other. For those who want to view stuff on drugs I've collected the very best links here. Unless otherwise stated these are full-length features, usually an hour or more.

If you have a slow connexion and are unused to viewing multiscreen films on Youtube here's what to do: click the first one and play on mute, stopping and starting as it does. Then, when it's done, click on Repeat Play and you get the full entertainment without interruption. While you watch screen one, do the same to screens 2, 3 and so on. So as each bit finishes, the next part's ready and waiting.

Mexican Black Tar Heroin: "Dark End"

Khun Sa, whose name meant Prince Prosperous, had been, before his death in the mid 2000s, the world's biggest dealer in China White Heroin: "Lord of the Golden Triangle"

In-depth portrait of the Afghan heroin trade at its very height. Includes heroin-lab bust. "Afghanistan's Fateful Harvest"

Classic miniseries whose title became a catchphrase for the misery of life in East Asian prison. Nicole Kidman plays a privileged middle-class girl set up to mule heroin through Thai customs with the inevitable consequences. This is so long it had to be posted in two parts. "Bangkok Hilton 1" (first 2 hours or so); "Bangkok Hilton 2" (last couple of hours).

Short film: from tapwater-clear H4 in the USA to murky black Afghan brown in Norway: "Heroin Addicts Speak"

Before his untimely death this guy kept a video diary. Here's the hour-long highlights as broadcast on BBC TV: "Ben: Diary of a Heroin Addict". Thanks to Noah for the original link.

Some of the most entertaining scenes from Britain's top soap (as much for the poor research as anything else). Not even Phil Mitchell would go from nought to multi-hundred pound binges this fast: "Phil Mitchell on Crack" (just over 5 minutes).

Scientist lady shows us how to cook up gear: "How Much Citric?" Lucky cow: her brown is 70% purity! Oddly we never see her actually do her hit... maybe she got camera shy...

And lastly:

German documentary following a life from teenage addiction to untimely death before the age of 30. The decline in this girl's appearance is truly shocking. "Süchtig: Protokoll einer Hilflosigkeit". Sorry no subtitles; this is here for anyone learning German who's after practice material a little more gripping than Lindenstraße!































Nosey Quiz! Have you ever heard voices when you weren't high on drugs?

Manic Magic

Manic Magic

Gledwood Volume 2: A Heroin Addict's Blog

Copyright 2011 by Gledwood