Bedlam Nutters Unearthed in London Rail Link

KENNY THE CACTUS is sitting happily on the TV in Donkey Ward at St Spiny's Cactus Hospital. He is looking forward to being transferred to Horse Ward next week... All is cool here; we had excellent weather. I say cool ~ I actually think I was a bit drug sick this morning. I felt freezing cold then boiling hot, then drank some methadone then felt OK. Then I realized I was a bit tired. Then I cleaned up a tiny bit. Then I realized I was exhausted. Then realized I was a bit depressed still. I can't snap out of the scrag-end of this depression. My sleep is still far too long for my liking. A good twelve hours per day still, which is too long, considering spring is popping like a champagne cork all around us, Kenny cactus is recovering from his cruel toothpick-inflicted wounds and everyone else seems to be happy. They're all raving about this amazing weather only I can't feel it. Except I feel sweaty, that's about it. And I want to feel normal. I'm tempted to stop taking my antipsychotic to see if I get more energy back, but know I shouldn't really do it. I don't know... I met Paddy Daddy Daddster today he was talking about being prescribed diamorphine, as our mutual friend was for many years (I saw the dry-amps). And he was talking about how the youngsters today don't inject, they smoke it. And I said it's a North-South thing. The Londoners always tended to be more prone to injecting because Britain's heroin habit started in earnest in the early 80s when it hit the housing estates across the North, and it was smokeable middle-eastern "brown". Before that heroin was Chinese "white" that was carefully prepared to injection quality. But brown was cheaper, less adulterated and imported in huge quantities and that's when Britain's first heroin epidemic kicked off. The next wave of addiction crashed across Britain in the mid-late 90s as the rave generation, used to dabbling in new drugs, had a collective comedown from all the uppers they'd experimented with in the late 80s/early 90s. I got caught up in this second wave. The price of street heroin had just halved when I started to take it. You could now get 0.4g for £20, instead of 0.2. By the early 2000s it wasn't unusual to get 0.6g or more for £20 and a weighed gram was £30. This was the cheapest heroin has ever been and the street purity passed an average 50% at one point. This was my heroin heyday. It was like Christmas every day, and though I had my down days, most of the time I loved being addicted to heroin, because it meant I "had" to take heroin, which I loved. Perfect excuse to carry on using. After the first couple of years of daily use, I gave up on the idea of giving up. And then I came to an acceptance with myself. Since I've been blogging y'all have seen my desire to stop using grow. I took some today, and it was good. But it never hits the spot it used to hit, so I'm wasting my time. Please remind me that what I take it for I never get now. Heroin has only ever been a waste of time, now it actually feels like a waste of time.. And I don't know what else to say about it now.

I think one reason I was so addicted to it was that heroin had a lithium-like effect on me, noticably flattening my mood swings. Every single time I've tried to swap (or even switched meds, eg going on Subutex) I've had a noticable mood swing either up or down. I think now at last the doctors will take me seriously when I say this. But before I think they just thought I was digging up excuses. I used to get mental health treatment totally separately from methadone, so nothing ever threaded together or added up.

I'm just dreading this Madness Assessment I have tomorrow. Last time I was in a mental health waiting room this man sauntered up to me with a birthday cake on his head, asking for a light for his candles! OK slight exaggeration but I'm scared of leaving the building in a straitjacket...

Speaking of which some dead mad people were dug up in the street today in London when they excavated the former graveyard to Bethlem Hospital, better known as Bedlam, in the City of London. They're digging a new rail route named Crossrail and these corpses were dug up in what's shortly to be a ticket hall. I wondered what lives these people had met. People who had schizophrenia and manic depression in the 17th century. People whom the chattering classes used to pay a penny to go see as an amusement and chuck sticky buns at. What lives they must have lead...

... Oh well I have to go. Wish me luck tomorrow. I hope I don't get diagnosed clinically insane. Then I'll be able to go home again :-)

BBC link: archaeologists unearth Bedlam skeletons