Better off Clean

ANNA POSTED UP A TRIBUTE TO ME today. We are both in bad moods. Anna has got herself a habit and is miserable over having swizzled her Dad's pain pills in order to stay sane. I'm in misery because I've been using heroin again and it's not helping. I've only just realized it DOESN'T HELP. I wish it did but it doesn't. I put what I put yesterday in italics when I'd just taken a shot. I captured what I think when gear is flooding my system. That I can't live without it.

And yet I did live without it, for the best part of three months I went day in day out with no heroin. I might have been raving mad, but I survived. I actually felt better being mad and not on gear than being sane and on it. I don't know what that says about me or gear, but it surely says something. Just as miserable on it as off it. I have to hold on to this. There will be no money to use tomorrow. Or the next day or the next day. I'm not starving myself in order to use heroin. I'm not committing crimes. Not spending all day trudging the streets. And I'm not going back to begging. I'm tired of it all. Drugs have taken away what little stability I had without them.

But it's not true to say I was a well-adjusted kid whose life was ruined by heroin. Before heroin came along I never had the life I wanted. I'd been diagnosed with depression and chronic fatigue syndrome. I'd lost the best years of my life already when heroin and easy access to it finally came along in the latter half of my twenties.

Heroin gave me a feeling I'd never had before. A sense of contentment, of confidence and stability. The first thing the daily use of heroin did was to even out my previously unstable moods. Suddenly I was living on a very comfortable flat-line. However faked up it may have been, this new-found "happiness" was too intoxicating for words.

The "happiness" story has come to an end. I use now because I'm an addict and I'm miserable on methadone. I always said I'd be willing to live on methadone, no matter how miserable it made me ~ someday. That day is now. Somehow must learn to live unstable and unhappy.

Being off street heroin has never helped me before, so I don't expect it to help now. Remember what happened last time I gave up and went straight to methadone? I had a very obvious psychotic break.

Over the years I've cut out all the substances that obviously disagreed with me: cannabis being the worst offender by far. It precipitates psychotic-type attacks which encompass all the bad aspects of craziness with no fun. Pure paranoia, insecurity, unease. Speed I hate, it's like low-quality coke. The high is short-lived and the comedown jagged. Ecstasy I loved but strictly at dance parties only and though it gave an amazing experience that sstarted disagreeing with me also. I saw maggots writhing in my contact lenses case and had no option but to take out my lenses and insert them into this seething pot of pus. LSD was too strong for me. The trips were spectacular but they blew my brains out. My acid-phase ended nearly 20 years ago. Mushrooms I only took in moderate doses, enough to feel euphoric and stoned, not enough to be tripping anything like full-on. Ketamine was interesting but you're on your own with that one. It's very intense and not something I felt the need to experience too frequently. Snorty coke I never got on with. Overpriced crap. Most of the time people who couldn't really afford it were sniffing up rubbish and convincing themselves they were high. Perhaps the stuff worked for them, but it barely ever worked for me.

Crack cocaine did work. A kind of "ultimate high" but I had no intention of ever making that a part of my lifestyle. The thing about an ultimate high, to my mind at least, is that unless you're somehow going to disconnect and float there for all eternity, you may as well let yourself come down and cherish the experience. It only needs to be experienced once. Crack only hung around so long because crack is supplied by heroin dealers and a lot of people I knew were into it. I only say I was addicted to it because the tiny bits I smoked and speedballed (tiny bits of rocks to pep me up; the ultimate high idea had long gone out the window) were difficult to give up completely.

Heroin is the only drug I went nuts over. The only one I contributed far more money towards than I ever intended. The one that took over my life, that I coudln't stop repeatedly coming back to despite everything. Heroin heroin heroin. Heroin turned me from a drug-user into a drug-addict. I drink because alcohol complimented heroin's effects. Heroin. It all revolved around heroin.

I wish I'd given up drink in that manic episode when it barely did anything to me and I could barely feel it. I couldn't feel heat, cold or hunger. I barely felt drugs either and I did use heroin a couple of times while manic. It barely touched the sides.

The concept of post-addiction "serenity" came to me from Narcotics Anonymous. I suppose what I'm after is stability more even than serenity and NA don't understand that. They expect one to be morose and depressed without drugs. I came in hyped out of my brains so they all assumed I'd been using. My family seem to think my mental problems are all down to drugs. I think they have been exacerbated in a large part by drugs. But they're not the common or usual outcome of drug-using such as mine. If they were, then NA, the drugs clinic and so many others wouldn't have been so bemused by my manic behaviour. Manic behaviour would be normal for drug-addicts. And it's not. Drug addicts take drugs to get high. They don't get higher off drugs than on them and remain that way cycling up and down for weeks on end. I've met a few people who developed bipolar or psychosis on giving up drugs; but that condition stayed with them for as long as they stayed clean. One had depressive psychosis and killed herself. The other is bipolar and self-medicates with drink as well as a drawer full of mood stabilizers, antipsychotics and sleep meds. She hasn't touched gear in years, wouldn't go near crack. And yet the mood swings continue. So I don't know.

I had a good doctor (I'm now in the process of getting my "care" moved from one provider to another so I haven't a clue where I presently stand....) From our very first consultation I discerned this one's good as psychiatrists go. That first time he was talking about personality disorders because I'd had an assessment and nothing concrete flagged up. Then I had a series of intense mood swings, went paranoid, then grandiose and was seeing visions and hearing voices. Knowing this was considered "abnormal" and that I had to live in the "real" world, despite my personal unreality, I ran to the doctor so at long last someone could see what really happened to me. I thought he would say I had a substance-induced disorder.

But no he told me I had a mental illness, and it's not even bipolar. It's bipolar plus schizophrenia. How's that for a double-whammy. I looked up this guy's credentials. He's an expert at addiction medicine and dual diagnosis, holds a teaching post at a top London hospital and practises privately on Harley Street. He happens to be the consultant psychiatrist at my local drugs clinic and that's how I met him. I looked up the symptoms of schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia. (Bipolar I already knew something about; depression I knew quite a lot about, having had varying grades of depression for years.) Schizophrenia is so difficult to pin down; I don't think anyone who thought they might have it could ever diagnose themselves; it's only when somebody says you have it that you can see this and that and the other characteristics are me. And they are. So I don't know what to do about that one.

I could try ignoring it and hope it might go away, but I can now see I've had certain symptoms for about seven years. I'm talking about the so-called negative symptoms (apathy, avolition, unsociability etc) more than the positive ones (thought disorder, hallucinations). My life has been in chaos all this time. A different chaos to drug-addict chaos. Addicts can put themselves together when needs must. I just give out this vibe I can feel other people picking up on. That's what bothers me the most. Whatever I do I never seem to pass as normal. I'm not talking about online I'm talking about real life where people read my face, my body language and judge me and keep their distance. I need to learn how to act normal. How to stare people straight in the eye, even though it hurts. Et cetera et cetera. A couple of people said to me I ought to keep better company. But in general I keep no company at all. Nobody is welcome at my house. I'm too paranoid to let them in. My home is my lair. If I were a caveman I'd be at the front door, waving a firebrand at wild bears.

I realized not long ago that I've not made a single new friend in about seven years. I've lost one good friend (for good). People don't want to hang out with me any more. Or perhaps they see that I don't want to hang out with them. I don't get lonely and I only feel truly comfortable on my own now. And my friends are cyber ones thousands of miles away. Anna is nearly 3000 miles away and she's my best friend in the world. So you see, in order to be "well", I need a personality transplant. And this is now what keeps me so depressed. Knowing it's not good enough being me; that I need to become someone else. Or else I will never pass through those magic doors marked "success". As for the doors marked "normality" ~ I avoid those ones at all costs!