Thought for the day: 7am

IT'S just before 7am. I've been up since 10 to 5. Terrible trouble sleeping. I keep waking up again and again in the night. Even when I try and get my head down my brainbox is chattering shite at me. Random words and phrases pinging about. It's like listening to a deranged band of nutters chatting down the mental hospital bar. Radio GaGa.

When I woke up the second timme I watched an episode of the Royle Family and had a fag. Then I pondered on why I had been so depressed. A lot of it had to do with me having a breakdown that turned everything upside down, then finding out I was labelled a schizo. My parents think I have taken it to heart too much. But what would you do if you found out you were a schizophrenic. Hearing voices and all. I haven't heard any lately, apart from the odd murmur. The walls don't talk these days. Point being: all my hopes for a future had instantly vanished. All I could see was myself half mad and overweight, off drugs but terminally lazy. Watching television for the rest of my life. Basically the life I've got now going on for ever. When I was young I had dreams and ambitions. I wanted to get in the Guinness Book of Records. I never thought I was a schizo. Even being bipolar was bad enough. I kept those mood swings hidden from doctors for years. Until they got so extreme I was just annoyed at having to accouht for why my life was a mess (on forms etc), writing "depression and drug addiction" in the medical box and knowing that was far from the entire truth.

I'd just about got my head round the fact that I appeared to be a type 1 bipolar (that's the nutty sort who hear voices); Katherine Zeta Jones is bipolar II which means horrible depression and hypomania which is an exaggerated good mood. Anyway I'd just got my head around the idea that I might actually be a manic depressive, when the doctor tells me I'm schizaffective! Manic depression and schizophrenia at once! I was totally stumped. Despite my persistent elevated mood that one really shut me up. I'd been jabbering away in that office not caring that I was mad. I was really careful not to give an overblown impression of the hallucinations. Left all the best ones out (parking meter turning into a really fit police woman; spectacular full-colour Northern Lights type display in my own house; Barrack Obama talking to me; fantastical psychedelic movies popping out of the walls etc) I never told him any of that. In fact I was quite careful to underline that nothing nutty happened all the time blah blah blah. I couldn't lie. I wasn't in a state to discern what was relevant from what wasn't so I just told all...

Loads of successful people have been bipolar. Ted Turner, founder of CNN; Beethoven; Lord Byron; Vincent Van Gogh; Virginia Woolf to name just four. Bipolar disorder is really trendy. Nobody's scared of it any more. I could still be a successful writer and be invited to lots of bourgeois dinner parties with bipolar. Schizophrenia is a totally different kettle of fish. How many famous schizos can you name? Apart from that bloke from the film A Beautiful Mind?? Yeah don't tell me: I'm going to have to be the first.

Well this is what was on my mind. And all I could think was how schizos are fat and slobby and lazy (basically what I am now). And how, even when I kicked heroin, I was never going to be OK. And how I would live the rest of my life on corned beef, methadone and daytime television. And how I might as well end it all now on the railway line. And how even if I didn't do it now (British trains don't run in the early hours) my lifetime odds of death by suicide were running at around 80%. I wasn't depressed when all this came to me. Just thinking clearly.

So I don't know how to fix my problems. But I'm still not taking heroin and I am cleaning my house.

Anna Grace is clucking off heroin. She actually wants to detox, and the detoxing has given her a manic episode.

I'm neither manic nor depressed. Just undulating. I get really excited over nothing. Then really depressed and want to cry. Then really tired. Then I can't sleep. You know: an in-between stage.

I hope Anna Grace is going to be OK. I thought she was going back down the methadone clinic. She said the local one wouldn't take her on because of her bipolar issues. They insisted on a 90-day rehabilitation sesh before they'd consider her. Anna was all set for a stint in a dual diagnosis place when she bottled out. I'm no-one to talk about bottling out of rehab. I was in twice in one year and ran out the door within days of entry, both times. I wouldn't mind a rehab full of nutters as much as one full of criminals. The criminal type all look down at me these days for having mental problems. Having been in both rehab and the nuthouse, I can vouch that nutters are far easier to get on with than crackhead junkies. At least nutters go mad in different ways. Addicts are so same-same-same they're frankly boring. I couldn't handle going nuts again in front of a bunch of junkies. That's what happens to me in rehab. So I'd have to go to a dual diangosis place, wouldn't I?

I hope Anna does manage to sort her problems. She never seems happy without drugs. Never was happy on them either. She's done far better than me as regards sticking to programmes. I never gave in a clean urine test until literally this year. Anna actually reduced her methadone, switched to Suboxone, which is an excellent treatment for anyone genuinely ready to be clean. She actually followed through on Suboxone until she was 100% clean and serene and sober. Still was miserable afterwards though. I don't know what Anna wants in life. She's been writing memoirs.

I wanted to be a writer too, but I much prefer fiction to fact. That's why Valerie flows from my pen so much more easily than my boring old self. As well as Valerie there's Boomer and Bruce and a new character I've invented but I'll let this person speak for themself when the time is right.

I know this post says nothing knew. But it's what was on my mind tonight. It's half past seven now. I don't know whether or not to go back to bed. I can get to the methadone chemist in the hour. Then that's today over and done with.

WISHING Y'ALL A FANTASTIC WEEKEND!!