Rhubarb and custard pie..!

I WENT TO NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS YESTERDAY... at long last! I arrived there late (as per usual). I found myself having to sit right at the front with people behind me (as per usual). People in the meeting were making me paranoid (as usual). And I missed the chair (as usual) ~ that is my favourite bit, when somebody tells their life story about getting on drugs, getting off them, what happened and why. I love the chairs. I didn't say anything but the guy next to me piped up in newcomers time to say he'd just come outof the lunatic asylum with depression and was being treated by the Nutters At Home psyche team. I was really glad to hear that.

Then a woman spoke up about taking her friend's mother into hospital. Her friend's mother was seriously ill with... schizophrenia. I'm keeping my mouth shut about being schizo. It was quite a revelation to realize it's not a crime to be mentally ill at NA. That's certainly how it felt when I had prominent "issues" of my own. They all thought I was on drugs and more than one told me so. They never listened to anything I had to say, eg if I told somebody afterwards, "I can't take any drugs now" they'd interrupt "of course you can't" probably meaning "because you're like me, and taking drugs will set you off back on the road of addiction". But that isn't why I can't take most drugs. They make such an obvious mess of my head I'm averse to touching them again. Addiction doesn't come into it. Nauseated loathing and aversion very much does.

It's day 2 of my pill-popping escapade. Even though I posted about going back on them last week, I held off, hoping for a hypomanic miracle that might lift me on my own.

I still have distracting thoughts around the exterior of my mind ~ mostly on the right hand side. They're not as loud as the voices even yesterday, so maybe the pills are working. I bought some Valium to wash them down. Why Valium? Well you try taking heavy antispychotics without it. Having to stay awake while your brains are chemically coshed really isn't pleasant and 4mg risperidone from nothing really does feel like concussion ~ minus the headache, but all the brain-whirling dizziness, confusion et cetera all the same. It's not the pleasant wooziness some smackheads seem to enjoy, it's an overpowering feeling of being bashed on the brainbox. I wish the Nutter Club was still going so I had a forum to complain about this to people who understand. I only took 3mg risperidone yesterday, thinking it might make me a little less wuzzy. Tonight I'm thinking of taking all 4 again, but I'm scared of being out of action tomorrow. On Monday I felt done in for the first half of the day. Almost too unsteady to want to risk walking up the street. With time all these side effects diminish, except for the effect risperidone has on sleep. It doesn't make you go to sleep, so it's no good for initial insomnia. But it does keep you under once you get TO sleep.

My friend Buggerlugz has EIGHTEEN tiny roborovski hamsters pinging in all directions in tiny hammy lairs. They keep breeding and having trotterdonkey babies. One is named Reggie, another is named Anchovy. I think Anchovy was meant to be a boy but she's a girl. I thought my "Baby" Itchy Roborovski was a boy at first and persuaded her to walk around on a CD case so I could check this. She was most offended at being examined in this manner and bunnyhopped on the floor and would have pinged away if I hadn't chucked a towel upon her.

And did you know baby hamsters are called Pups. They look like baked beans with paws?...?





Here's Bashful, Itchy and Spherical in one of their old nests before they died. They had about five or six nests on the go at once. Itchy is the drowsy one who looks like she's been nibbling at the risperidone... She used to hear voices saying "Have you been trotting on your wheel?" and "come here you furry swine!" but they weren't schizophrenia; they were me!

I've been scoffing Mr Kipling's rhubarb and custard pies with Cornish Dairy ice cream. They're really nice. Yes I decided to break my diet a bit. There's something really miserable about depriving yourself of food. I lost about 11 pounds but Valium Marilyn's scales aren't very good. You have to bang them twice then clamber upon them. Marilyn has lost a lot of weight, having been in hospital; she looks like a little old lady now. She's depressed because her Mum and Dad both died a few years ago and their house was her refuge from Nasty Old Life... and it's not there any more. Her son stole 3 or 4 strips of temazepam 20s off her. We had to go right through everything looking for them. He's in his late 20s and still smokes cannabis ~ hashish would you believe. Why on earth anybody would voluntarily smoke that psychosis-causing gunk is anybody's guess. Marilyn rants about how harmless it is, yet she never smokes it. There's even a "Cannabis is Food of the Gods" type movement that believes spliffs should be used in mental healthcare instead of stuff like Valium. The sort of people who believe this have never tried Valium and never had a mental health problem. If they had, they'd know cannabis is the LAST thing any psychotic person with half a brain would want to smoke... though having said that I do recall clearly how the 2 favourite drugs in the mental hospital were 1: cannabis (by a long way) and 2: CRACK COCAINE... the 2 street drugs most liable to bring on extreme paranoia are used recreationally by paranoiacs themselves! But not all these people get full-on symptoms in every conceivable way. I once asked one whether something had ever happened to him that happened to me when I went mad ~~ and he looked at me like I really had a screw loose! His symptoms were probably more extreme than mine in many ways... but just different.

Yesterday's NA really helped me focus on WHY I want off these drugs I'm so hooked on. People remind me why I want to stop them, by telling how their lives were messed up.

I pingpong between believing heroin should be legalized and on sale from vending machines and thinking that all addicts ought to be executed by lethal injection (of heroin).

I still have a huge mark at the top of my thigh like a cigar burn. Originally it had a pussing head, but now it's scabbed over. I picked the first scab off but a beautiful second scab has appeared. There's a huge volcanic lump under it that I keep squeezing in the hope some pus might ooze. But it's totally dry. It's not disappointing not to have an abscess, but when I do have one, I most certainly get value for money out of it, with all the kneeding and squeezing and pus-milking.

This song was going round my head as I walked home from the chemists in a thunderstorm:



MADONNA: WHO'S THAT GIRL