Be Here Now

WE'RE HAVING FULL-ON SUMMER HERE. It's been sweltering. I have behaved myself most of this week (haven't stabbed myself in the foot for a few days and am not intending to stab myself anywhere ever again).

I have switched to drinking my methadone in the morning rather than at night. This seems to prevent excessive sweating. I'm less "peeved" with methadone than I was a few days ago. That was depression talking. I find it hard to accept that it's supposedly "better" to drink a sticky gloop to get off street heroin, when the gloop's a lot more addictive than the heroin.

Knowing that heroin is used extensively in British hospitals as a first-line treatment for serious pain and that a small number of addicts (and a larger number in central Europe; Switzerland being the only country prescribing heroin to addicts as a matter of course) muddies the waters. It would be far easier to convince myself that heroin is pure evil and I'm better off without it. I console myself that I'm better off without it, and whether or not heroin is evil, or how evil it is, doesn't matter. Because I don't want it any more.

I believe it's better to be off heroin than on it and I want to get off it. The practicalities of heroin involve placing your wellbeing in the hands of ruthless criminals and being treated as a social pariah ~ especially by the medical profession. It's true that most of the damage caused by heroin is a direct result of "prohibition"; but as I say, I'm moving on from wanting anything to do with heroin at all. So the ins and outs of legalization and heroin prescription to addicts concern me no longer.

As Shane of MemoiresOfAHeroinHead fame pointed out, methadone clinics are no more "caring" (or reliable, for that matter) than your friendly neighbourhood drug dealer. They're often little more supportive. Shuttling "clients" at whom from worker to worker. Motivated more by box-ticking than any true measure of your personal welfare. My fellow blogger Sid has run up against the NHS's predictable "one size fits all" mentality in drug treatment clinics. He's worked for years and feels the system is set up for "junkies". I would say it's worse even than this. I shambled into my old clinic for years with pretty obvious "mental health" symptoms that were never, ever addressed. Nobody ever asked how I was. They were totally obsessed with drugs. Only interested in what drugs I had and hadn't been using. Never asked about me or my history. One was surprised to learn I'd "only" been a heroin addict since 2000. I'd had depression for many, many years before I ever got involved in heroin.

I used to marvel at the fables some of my friends told down the drug clinic. About how little they were drinking. About how little they used. People on the gear and crack constantly, who the clinic appeared to believe were doing ever so well. Until the Heroin Drought last year, in fact, everybody I knew used heroin at every opportunity. Most of my own circle had given up on crack or never really been into it. That drought gave a lot of us the option, at long last, of putting our weariness into practice and finally giving gear a miss. I know at least three people who are still clean to this day. One is in her fifties. The other two are in their sixties.

I was always pretty frank down the clinic about my using. I wanted a bad record so when diamorphine prescription got brought in I'd be first in line.

Now I see things the way everyone else always did. You help your worker out by saying all the right things. Then they can tick the right boxes and look like a successful worker. You take your methadone scipt and go. You sort out your own life yourself. The tedious group therapy they costantly try and bully you into is yet another cosmetic exercise. Sounds good on paper. In reality I found selected fellow "service users" too exasperating for words. Parroting what they knew was expected of them. I don't remember ever going to such a meeting without drinking heavily first and hitting up smack afterwards. That's what drug-talk does to you. Makes you wanna use.

I'm fortunate in that my new worker is Africian. I'm hoping she'll be to teach me whatever mysterious language she speaks. That's the best use of our time as far as I'm concerned. Considering I'm not intending to be ON any drugs, there won't be any drugs to talk about. And I'm not considering group therapy yet again. I've had enough therapy to last a lifetime..

I think the standard of personnel these clinics take on has actually gone DOWN in recent years. When I first got scripted methadone nearly ten years ago I got the distinct impression most people working down the clinic were ex-junkies themselves. That does not seem to be the case now. My new worker didn't even know what schizoaffective disorder WAS. I wouldn't expect a normal person to know this, but I would expect it of a drugs worker. Also, they seemed obsessed by the suspicion that I must surely be using something else apart from tiny bits of heroin on top of my script, which just isn't true and which irritates me, because I'm so over cannabis, crack et al that the mere thought of them offends me. Both the doctor and the new worker pushed this point. They seem to have this expectation that the more drugs you take the less together you will be. When in actuality most opiate users (in contrast to stimulant users) take their drug to hold themselves together. So of course, when they stop taking it, they crack up big time.

I gave up on Intuitive Recovery when the course leader talked about "self-medicating" on crack. Self-medicating, as I understand it, means gaining a very real symptomatic improvement through taking an illicit drug. Not getting high or losing yourself in an excitingly new criminal lifestyle. I only accepted I had been self-medicating after I stopped doing it! The whole issue makes me angry. If they knew I was self-medicating, why the hell didn't THEY medicate me properly?! I suppose I always had low expectations of the methadone clinic. It's just that now and then I get these little flashes of what is supposed to be. And a methadone clinic is supposed to offer psychosocial therapies. Which they never did.

Anyway I'm beyond all that. And trying to STAY beyond it. And never again allow depression to mire me in such a morass of bitterness. I was getting to the state where I couldn't distract myself with anything at all. Whatever it was my mind chose to occupy itself with, something about it would irritate the hell out of me.

I have tried to focus on finding out all I can about methadone therapy ~ something I never bothered about before because I had so little enthusiasm for it. I'm going to have to wait and see whether it agrees with me in the longterm. I found it so extremely difficult to stick to the stuff before because the moods I experienced on methadone were so intensely nasty I continued to use heroin at every opportunity. Even tiny doses on top of my script produced marked "improvement".

My mood was exaggeratedly good earlier on, which is why today I'm able to view the situation with some detachment. The more I think about the whole situation the more motivated I am to just get OFF opiates of all varieties. I know heroin made me miserable. However you want to argue it, whether I was or was not self-medicating and whether or not I was successful it's a simple law of life that whatever you do, you'll get used to it. You can develop "tolerance" to rollercoasters if you ride one every day. If you marinade your brains in hard drugs, your brains come to accept such pickling as "normal".

I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't gone on heroin for over ten years. I suspect I would be a lot less messed up. To be fair, the drug gave me something I'd never really experienced before. It killed the multifarious discomforts I'd entirely got used to living with because they were parts of me. For a brief while I had the luxury of not being me. But I still don't think heroin made me happy. What I really wanted was to kill myself off ~ both literally and metaphorically. In a metaphorical sense I think I've achieved my object, because I'm a different person now to who I was then. Totally different. I'm very glad of that.

So now the truly mysterious part begins: I have to start from here, not knowing where I am. I've somehow to learn Mastery of Life. That's my goal.

I never set my sights low, except when I don't want to be doing something anyway.

I do want to live and be alive, because I have chosen life. If I hadn't, I wouldn't be here now.

I'm reminded of one of NA's sayings about accepting life on life's terms and living in the moment.

It's all about being here now ...

Just Be Here Now ...


Link of the day ~ Drug Abuse: UK Guidelines for Clinical Management

Positive Positive

I KEEP TRYING TO POST Positive Positive Positive but when it comes to it I just cannot keep the bullshit up. I'm trying NOT to think about Death, Suicide or Drug Addicts being round up and shot because doing so makes me unbelievably angry. Angry that our deadhead dimwit government won't DO something drastic about this problem for once and for all.

I woke up wishing I was dead with the phone ringing with Valium Marilyn saying she felt intolerably low. She asked whether I ever felt the same. I told her exactly how I feel. Marilyn has been depressed for years and it took me quite some time to recognize that. She clings to Valium as her last remining hope. I don't think it helps her. Marilyn no longer touches gear at all; she only ever takes pharmaceuticals. Benzodiazepines are not antidepressants. They're only good for anxiety and agitation. Some are licensed as sleeping pills. I only ever take them in small doses occasionally when I get anxiety attacks. Last thing I want is to get a benzodiazepine habit. Withdrawals from that are said to be the all-time worst, with some ill effects continuing for years after the pills were last taken.

I know I probably need some kind of mood stabilizing agent, but I don't even know who my doctor is any more. Technically I'm between clinics. But the new one hasn't written to me. And I need to see a doctor FAST.

As time marches on I feel more and more depressed. In the beginning, the tail end of mania was preventing me from going down too low; now that has gone I feel crap. The medication I'm prescribed is an antipsychotic and I'm not taking it. I don't think it helps with depression at all.

First thing I saw on wakening was a dead space alien. It was staring back at me from the cover over my bed. This is another symptom of depression: ugly twisted faces in walls, carpets and ceilings. They're nearly always set off by the wrinkles in piles of clothing or carrier bags or the play of light and shade against a wall. But knowing this isn't "real" does nothing to make it go away. Sometimes they stay for a long while. I know antipsychotics would help with that type of thing. But you have to look on the bright side. Visions and voices do add colour to life.

This glaring dead alien just made me get up quick when all I really wanted was to stay in bed. That's the worst thing about hospital: being made to get up in the morning when really you want to do nothing. I wish I had some kind of permanent housing so I could go in hospital without risking homelessness. As I said yesterday, next time I go in I don't really want ever to come out again.

If depression is a lack of energy I don't think I'm depressed. I feel energy. Just negativity as well. Every chronic malady I have had was a disorder of the energy.

Drug abuse is said to misaleign the energy system.

The first illness that really messed me up was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Here the energy is massively misaliged. It's less a case of no energy (as in some depression) more a case of it being massively misdirected and running out very quickly. Mania seems to be a huge surplus of energy: I don't understand precisely how it occurs, but again some kind of short circuit must surely be responsible. When I was truly manic I felt thousands upon thousands of volts running through my brains.

So that's what's wrong with me: something to do with the energy system. Because I am prone to low self-esteem it often manifests as depression. But I'm not totally lacking in energy. As I say, there's some fault on the circuit that is making it run out faster than it should. Strangely when I was manic my self esteem soared higher than ever. I swaggered down the street and people visibly backed off from me. When I was angry (as I was a lot of the time) no words or actions were necessary. I merely had to look at people and they recoiled. Sometimes I wish I had the high energy back but it's only another "illness".

The opiates misalign energy, or at least align it differently, but heroin also seemed to put the breaks on my mood swings. Without heroin I'm definitely far moodier. Whether or not methadone actually provokes instability or merely fails to stabilize me it's hard to say. I still think the doctors are wildly negligent for prescribing anything that leaves me in the state methadone does. There are other treatments that wouldn't do this. But they're only available privately.

If I can get off all opiates I can at least give my brain a chance to restore itself. But it wasn't well before I started! I only went ON heroin after years of depression, then chronic fatigue syndrome and finally bipolar type mood swings. Yes the bipolar manifested BEFORE I ever had a habit on heroin. It's quite normal to experience depression for a few years and for mania gradually to interweve and kick in. This is why I say I cannot hope to be "well" off drugs. If the past is anything to go by, I'll just be drug-free and still sick.

I suppose the ideal would be to be "well". But that's probably too much to ask...


Here is a perceptive and partially nonsensical article about the misaligment of energy in bipolar disorder. The author states that people get the disorder due to bad karma from previous lifetimes when they were executioners and torturers. You wonder why I keep thinking about being executed? It's all down to my past lives!

Shut Up Gledwood!

"SHOOT 'EM DEAD!"... methadone stinks!... blahblah. I want to die. Blah. I've been turning into a real stuck record of late. The most positive thing I can think of is that I'm into detoxing off this crap I've been on for all these years. The downside is that I'm not sure I can hack being on methadone, and that's why ... you see that's why I end up saying I want to die because I'm THINKING. Thought is the root of all human problems. Man's greatest achievements ~ the buildings, bridges, railways of the world ~ all started life as thoughts before they were ever realized as physical constructions. Why are my thoughts so negative?

See maybe I should stop blogging because I can't THINK of positive things to say.

I'm not SO lost I know what I want. I want to get this infernal house move OVER AND DONE WITH if it's happening. Then I ~//~

See I'm thinking about the council tax again. The tax I'm NOT SUPPOSED TO PAY. The tax that has resulted in piles of letters threatening bailiffs. I just wanna kill myself. When I started fucking up my life it was done with the deliberate intent of backing myself into a corner where suicide would be the only option. ~//~

OK this is what I was saying: I want to move house so I can just give up and go in the mental hospital. I've had enough. I want to go in the nuthouse. I don't care if I'm mentally ill or depressed or not depressed. I don't care about any of that. I just want to go in that nuthouse for the longest possible period of time and ideally never come out.

I even started wondering about committing a crime so I could go in prison at least in there you don't get bailiffs on your back for Council Tax your solicitor says you shouldn't be paying because you're "severely mentally impaired". I have no idea how to sort this out. I never open my mail and haven't for years because it only ever contains threats. Threats of making me homeless. Threats of Bailiffs.

No I started thinking about prison because it's the only place they'll look after you now that the mental hospitals have been emptied out.

See it's all negative again. I don't know how the hell I'm going to come off drugs and survive.

Does ANYONE have any ideas? I see no future.

A Fate Worse than Life

AKH. I was in a BAD MOOD earlier. I wrote some crap some of y'all would find truly histrionic, if not truly upsetting. This is my problem. In my mind, opiates and death are thoroughly intertwined. To ANY established junkie, coming off Heroin is a fate worse than death. To ME, being ON methadone is a fate considerably worse than death. I want OFF methadone. O yeah and I was in such a kerfuffle earlier today I went and USED HEROIN AGAIN (straight in the vein, which is a miracle with my collapsed Blood Highways. WHOOSH it went straight in. On a dose of methadone that supposedly blockades the high. All the manifold receptor sites left uncared for and bereft by methadone were suddenly salved. The information given to methadone prescribers is patently FALSE. The criteria methadone clinics use are FALSE. You only have to check the analgesic potency of methadone compared to morphine where 1mg methadone is said to equate to 2mg morphine. Now diamorphine is typically reckoned to have a double potency to morphine, which would put pharmaceutical heroin and methadone at equal potency. Or to use the bullshit on the website they are "equianalgesic". If this is the case, I should have been on at least 350mg methadone. Not 150mg. Last time a doctor spouted the usual crap about 150mg
being "a big dose" (I have since reduced a small way) I shot her down in flames by quoting the average retail purity of street heroin (40-50% until late last year) and the heroin-methadone equivalence tables. She quickly shut up. These clinics underprescribe MASSIVELY then fingerpoint at the "Service User" for not being able to cope with a gargantuan reduction in their dose. Methadone is not heroin, does not substitute for heroin. Causes me mania, depression and psychosis ~ which heroin doesn't. When I do die I hope my family SUE the NHS for their negligently inflexible prescribing policy. The doctors "treating" me know very well that I get severe flare-ups in symptoms that get worse the longer I rely on methadone to "stabilize" me. Yet they have done nothing at all to address the issue.

Some American websites parrot the lie that methadone somehow quells moodswings and gives equilibrium. I have never witnessed this. Not in myself, not in anybody else.

Depression and hallucinations are listed side-effects of methadone. Google it and see.

If all this sounds like junkie whingeing, I agree with you. SHOOT 'EM ALL DEAD. That's what I say. Save the beleagred NHS some pennies. This is what I believe. Institute DEATH to all drug addicts. Not for possession of drugs. For BEING ADDICTED. And if that sounds to Fascist: make the death penalty voluntary. Junkies will line the streets waiting to die. Heroin is a fate worse than death; and methadone how much more so!




One day, when I Grow Up I will start a drug clinic of my own. It will have to be private, because of the way things run in this country and most other countries. My clinic will be like an anything-goes version of Dr Colin Brewer's. At my clinic you'll be able to get once a day dosing on oral morphine or hydromorphone (Jurnista). We will prescribe heroin amps, methadone amps, morphine amps and hydromorphone (Dilaudid) amps. Dextromoramide (Palfium). Subutex. Suboxone. Oral methadone (to the truly deranged). Rapid anaesthetic detox. Naltrexone therapy. And so on. I probably will NOT be able to open this clinic on British soil. My clinic will be a sweet shop to every famished junkie. They will come there for a true range of substitution therapies.

And I will do my bit to put the Drug Dealers out of business.

Which the government patently don't give the tiniest shit about.

"Home Detox" kits will not feature on my Fantasia of Druggie Delights Menu.


PS I'VE ANSWERED ALL YOUR COMMENTS FOR THE LAST COUPLE OF DAYS. WAS IN TOO MUCH OF A BAD MOOD EARLIER.







PS the roborovski Japanese says ケッキ食べてリリの "Kekki tabete riri no" which translates as "Lili's ardour to eat"!

I hate methadone and want to die

OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF I WANT OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF METHADONE. OFF IT OFF IT WANT OFF OFF OFF. FED UP HAD ENOUGH. I WANT TO DIE DRUG FREE. HA! That's my biggest motivation. I wanna die and I wanna die OFF DRUGS. I'm already fretting that bitch worker won't cut my script down fast enough so I'm probably going to have to insist on seeing a doctor ~ hopefully the irresponsible one who offered to switch me straight from over 120mg methadone to Subutex ~ to INSIST on getting off this CRAP as fast as I can. I want the dose lowered every single week until it's well under 100. I'm not worried about withdrawals. I can cure them my own way and no chemicals are involved. I want OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF.

My house looks like a bomb has hit it. My Mum cannot move me; she will be away. But I know someone with a car who probably will let me down but it's a chance. I'm dumping all my kitchen stuff at Paddaddaddaddadd's house, if he will have them. I have stuff like a 5ft high fold-out clothes drying rack that I am NOT taking with me, but I want to keep it. Once I've got rid of all that ilk of stuff I just have to pack these tartan bags. Once I've left my place will look post-nuclear because I'm leaving two thirds of my clobber behind. Clothes that don't fit. Clothes with holes. Books I don't want. Etc etc. I'm not fretting too much I have to GO.

I want OUT as fast as possible. I want OUT of this God-forsaken outer London borough and back IN to London. I hate living in the middle of nowhere. Soon as I get OUT of this house I get BACK to the decent druggieclinic I used to go to. The new one has an atmosphere like the cavern by the River Styxx.

It was a nice day yesterday and I slept through it. Woke up at 5:30pm. Longer you sleep the better in my book. It's too hot though.

Akkh WHY did I ever go on shitty heroin? I want CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN OFF IT OFF OFF OFF and if I can't handle it I swear I will kill myself and I'm not fucking lying like Anna Grace.

Off off off off off off off off off off off off off off off off off! Hate methadone. Goodbye and good riddance to all drugs.



THE DRUGS DON'T WORK
this is supposed to be about terminal illness ...
if you were terminally ill, would you accept anything but palliative care?



Sorry to everyone who finds this depressing. This is how I feel. Depressed.

Tigers Off Drugs

HERE are some fiercer animals.



I'm still depressed.



I still want OFF methadone. OFF drugs.



I had £££ today. I walked past Heroin Corner.



I had only to remind myself how piteously weak the "best" gear is to get it together to WALK ON.



Heroin is a waste of time, a waste of life.

Little Furry Animal Aspiration

IT'S 2:30 AM and I'm in a "mood" ...



... I just want OFF methadone...



... OFF all drugs ...



... no longer to be a pariah ...



... no longer at odds with society ...



... maybe a chance to be happy ... ? ...


?

Off... off and away!!!

I HAVE BEEN looking into doing a methadone taper and how steep can I make the taper with any chance of longterm success. The gist of the research seems to say you can reduce in 10% or 10mg steps (whichever is the smaller) in increments lasting one week to ten days. Because scripts are one or two weekly I would opt for weekly steps. Ideally I'd just reduce down by one milligram a day: I can't see that I should feel anything at all reducing like that. You certainly wouldn't feel anything reducing heroin by that amount, but methadone is different, which is why I rant and rage about it being "more addictive" it IS. Which is plain ridiculous and plainly true. My own whingeing and complaining annoys me so much I just want this reduction got on with as fast as possible, so the Whining Junkie Persona can be left in the trashcan of the past, where it belongs.

I'm on over 100mg of methadone a day, by the way so I have to think of the reduction in three phases. Phase One: taking the dose down to anywhere between 90 and 60mg. 70 or 80mg used to be the ordinary highest dose an NHS methadone clinic would allow in days gone by and prescribing practices seem to be reverting back, with people who once were on relatively generous doses complaining the clinic won't reinstate them.

Oral methadone is said to have an equivalence to IV diamorphine of anything from 4 to 1 to 1 to 1. 4-1 meaning that 150mg methadone would cover a habit of 600mg diamorphine ie about a gram and a half of street heroin as it used to be at 40% purity (about a year ago). Since the Great Heroin Drought in this country heroin is only a fraction of its old potency, making methadone very much easier to stomach for me. It holds me way, way better than it ever used to.

Once I get down to Stage 2, which will be hopefully not much more than 60mg, I'll push for them to reduce it at 5mg a week until I'm down to about 30mg.

From 30mg methadone you can in theory transfer over to Subutex or Suboxone (same difference, from what I've heard). I would like to go on Subutex but I'm scared of the upheaval it involves. You have to go days without methadone until you're in pretty florid withdrawal, then switch over to this stuff that made me feel hyper, shrivelled my sleep down to a maximum 4 hours for days on end. Even when it started coming back I was only sleeping 6 hours. I felt so high on days 2 and 3 of Subutex I barely noticed the withdrawals. Looking back I had quite a few symptoms of hypomania during this time. I don't mind being hypomanic but my moods and sleep are so incredibly sensitive to withdrawal it would seem unwise to rock the boat unnecessarily.

From much below 20mg if I stayed on methadone I'd want absolute control of how swiftly and by how much I reduced and if the clinic won't accommodate me, from here on I would just score methadone myself and drink it to suit my own timetable. I don't trust drug clinics. The new one I'm at offered to transfer me to Subutex from over 100mg methadone. Which all sounds very nice but would probably put me in a mental hospital. They don't care. So when I have to, I'm looking after myself. The ONLY reason I'm sticking with an official clinic during the cutdown, apart from the will to save money, is so that if I ever DO end up in a nuthouse I'll get my methadone automatically without having to go through "titration" (chemical torture when they won't give you enough for days on end).

When I'm near 1mg I'm just diluting the stuff in a huge bottle of water and supping it all through the day. I would cut down to zero over several days ending up on microscopic doses so tiny they couldn't possibly be doing anything (why not?)... then finally at some point many months from now... I SHOULD BE CLEAN!!!

BTW I have to be heroin-free for anything bar the very beginning of my taper to be worthwhile. So I count myself off the gear as of now. My methadone dose goes down 10mg as of the middle of next week.

********



Ha! Becha all thought I was going to post exclusively about Anna (again). I have little to say about her. Except that I put her book up here because if she wants attention HERE IT IS. She says she faked her suicide because she wanted to end her blog. The post by a "friend" does echo this:

Anna wanted me to say Good Bye to everyone who reads this blog. She's sorry she couldn't keep it up.

I'm not at all convinced she properly thought out what she was doing or going to do.

On 4 June she mentioned an Hispanic guy named Jose staying at her parents' house. On 14 June 2 news reports appeared about a Jose Machiote, who was in possession of drug paraphernalia, being arrested for armed robbery at a corner shop. Which does chime with Anna's post on 24 June:

That homeless guy I had staying with me ended up sticking up a store and getting caught.

~Fox 11
~Green Bay Press Gazette

So that seems to be true. But...

I really wish she hadn't lied like she did...

...o well.

I feel depressed enough and stressed out enough (about coming off this methadone (and moving house)) as it is. I keep waking up in the middle of the night in horror. My head kind of resonates with stray words in an odd sort of way. The way I wouldn't be surprised if I'd smoked a spliff and it did that, only I don't smoke spliffs at all. And I'm pretty fed up with methadone clinic staff for having lectured me that all my problems would evaporate if only I gave up drugs and they plainly haven't and didn't when I was just on methadone. (My depression was constantly blamed on crack. They no longer lay my moods at alcohol's door, as the amount I drink is so tiny now.) I want off drugs because I'm fed up of them, not because I believe life will be any better. What I want to do most of all is just up and away and get out of the country, which I cannot do on methadone. So that's my goal...

Silly Girl

ANNA GRACE IS ALIVE. **I am rolling my eyes**.

She's posted an update on her blog today.

Anna WHY did you do that? What reaction did you expect?

Well you did find out what I would have put if you HAD died, because it's 2 posts below.

When I found out you definitely weren't dead I was so happy I laughed.

I just feel bemused now.

ANNA YOU SWINDLING SWINE!




Her book is doing OK. She said it's sold 300 copies "most to a bookstore in Green Bay" (her hometown). When the second edition comes out I reckon she should publish under her full name Anna Grace Young, it's a lot more memorable than plain Anna Young. She wants her book to get as much attention as possible and I'm only too happy to help her. I still think what she did was ridiculous and in very bad taste. I think I know why she did it but I don't agree with any of it. I don't think she should delete her blog.




I've got to go now; I'm still pissed off.

ANNA WHY DID YOU DO THIS??

Anna Grace: what happened?

I HAVEN'T A CLUE WHAT IS GOING ON WITH ANNA GRACE. A notice appeared on her blog by a "friend" who had suspiciously similar punctuation to Anna (no spaces between brackets and the surrounding words(like this). A ghost post appeared promoting Anna's memoir I Hate Myself And Want To Die, then was quickly withdrawn, but you can still read the front of it by glancing down the blogs I follow on my sidebar. Last thing I knew Anna was bingeing out on heroin, had a homeless Hispanic man staying at her parents' house while they were away (recipe for disaster). And she was talking about going back on methadone, although she had already cleaned herself up in a minor cold turkey. It's not at all unusual for people to go 100% clean and then decide they just can't cope without a tiny dose of daily methadone or Subutex. Which is why when I finally get to that position I don't care what the clinic say, I'm buying the one milligram of methadone or Subutex on the street and dividing it into micro-doses myself. If it takes six months to reduce from one milligram to nothing, I'll do it. But I'm not following some run-for-the-convenience-of-the-staff-and-for-the-glory-of-their-statistics clinics's schedule.

Anyway I don't know what to think now. If you read Anna's mother's Facebook pages there's reference to Anna's book dated yesterday yet no mention of her death which is supposed to have occurred on the 16th. Which just does not fit.

I haven't heard anything from Anna for over 2 weeks. My feeling is that she is alive and unwell. But I do not know. COME BACK ANNA!

Maybe Anna does have the oddest family in history. Their daughter dies and they carry on posting away as if nothing happened. Maybe Anna is just trying to sell her book. So I'll do her one more favour: her UK Amazon link is here; the US Amazon link is here.

*******



Here's what I wrote yesterday:~~

NOBODY SEEMS TO BELIEVE Anna Grace really is dead. Just because the "friend" who posted on her blog sounds a lot and punctuates a lot (brackets without spaces) like Anna doesn't mean the situation isn't true. She could have posted that a week ago and instructed Blogger to hold on to it and post it up yesterday, when it appeared.

This ghost post showed up: MyTrafford Dashboard: "Title: I Hate Myself and Want to Die Subtitle: Project ID: 297745 Author Name: Anna Young (edit profile) Pen Name: Anna Young Genre: F...

it means a post appeared and was subsequently deleted. Which still doesn't mean Anna is alive. The "friend" could have posted this.

Oh I don't fucking know. ANNA GRACE COME BACK!

I can't believe I'm doing this, shouting at the dead: COME BACK ANNA!

Because if she isn't dead she's not going to WANT to "come back" now. Oh Anna why did you do it? I'm checking the public records office for Green Bay, Wisconsin because I just want to know. None of the online searches I've so far done have shown up anything, which isn't really surprising because it could easily take the relevant government departments a month or more to process paperwork.

In this country a death certificate is usually issued straight away. Nearest kin are called upon to identify the body. Any case where illicit drugs may be involved, or suicide is suspected goes forward to the coroner's court. It's not uncommon for the body to stay in cold storage for a few weeks if the actual cause of death is uncertain. Example: my friend Lucky was a long term (30 year +) heroin addict but died suddenly probably of multiple system failure, not drug overdose. She stayed in the fridge for at least three weeks.

O I can't believe I'm writing all this about Anna. Can anyone who knows anything please get in touch. I want to know for sure now.

*******


Brown County Medical Examiner:
http://www.co.brown.wi.us/departments/?department=a8040c9a2d7d&subdepartment=314cc7fc2b2d

Wisconsin Death Certificates:
http://www.atozdeaths.com/usa/wi

Social Security Death Index Interactive Search
http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi
this is useless. no Anna Grace Young but no Juan Lopez born +/- 5 years from 1983 and dead last year!

*******



Anna Grace's Dad's Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002265318789&sk=wall

Anna Grace's Mum's Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sfrm=1#!/profile.php?id=1389806408&sk=wall

Anna Grace Young's own Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1523894330&ref=ts

*******



I don't know what to think. Yesterday I was upset, today I'm walking away.

If you really are doing this to draw attention to your book Anna congratulations: attention drawn. But I really can't believe you would do this. Because whether or not you're living and breathing and hiding offline, you're dead to me.


Anna Grace Young 1983-2011
Rest In Peace

RIP Anna Grace

ANNA GRACE is dead. A week ago today, she stuck a gun to her head, pulled the trigger and blasted herself into infinity.

Anna why did you do it?
I know why, you don't have to tell me.
You don't have to be sorry.
You did what I would have done.

Anna had bipolar depression and had been addicted to a variety of opiates for over a decade. Nothing except heroin or Dilaudid ever seemed to make her truly happy.

Her blog is at ppfaceannagrace.blogspot.com.



ANNA GRACE YOUNG: 2 February 1983 to 16 June 2011



She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

New Spectacles Horror

FINALLY, nearly three years after the issue hit boiling point and my first pair of glasses disintegrated and having found a pair on the pavement three minutes from Valium Marilyn's house and that pair having disintegrated so badly the donkers look like they're doing the splits and both lenses pop out freely when I'm trying to cross the road, I got it together not only to make a sight test appointment but to order in TWO new pairs of glasses at $100 each (two for one special deal; £69 the pair and thirty-something pounds off thanks to a Government Voucher so I pay £33 and get two new pairs of glasses. And from the 2nd of July onwards I'll finally be able to see!

The kindly Indian testing my eyes said that with the new lenses intact my vision is as sharp as human vision can go. I was able to read the very bottom line of print, which seemed readily to surprise him.

I begged him not to give out an over-powerful prescription: one optician once did and I spent the next six months being astonished by jutting angles jumping out, everything in 4D, ultra sharp and scarily detailed. He said no that's fine, you don't need a prescription for your slight astigmatism.

Then the horror of choosing my own spectacles ensued. The school leaver who processed my forms looked like she was trying not to laugh whenever I picked up a pair of frames, glanced at my gruesome refelction for the shortest possible interval and grimaced. Then a really stern Indian girl took up position and kept asking if she could help me. I think she was convinced I was into shoplifting the empty frames, which is a useless thing to do. I remember meeting a nutter in NA who wore a pair of very obvious show frames with POLICE in the lower lefthand lens. I do believe POLICE used to make "designer" glasses. But I do believe also it's pretty bad form to walk the streets wearing the plastic lenses they come in on the spinner. Everyone kept a straight face. This is the one who "relapsed" on zopiclone sleeping tablets and within days was back on the heroin and crack. And that's why I take NA's philosophies with a pinch of salt. If I'm a heroin addict who can't sleep, I don't believe I'm "using" when I take a presription sleeping pill at the recommended dosage, and I will not be brainwashed into believing that medicating my mental state is the same as using heroin. But hey.

Anyway... the first frames I looked at were the £100/$160 ones in science glasses style. Black at the top; just bare lenses underneath. A third girl, who seemed less anxious than "can I help you" but more scared than the school leaver said to me, "if you had these really you'd need our special lens thinning technology" and how much is that? I asked. "Only" another £40 ~ that's $60 ~ extra. So those went back on the shelf.

Then I found a pair in bronze in the same general style but fully enclosed in metal, and I kept putting them on then taking them off, then trying the same ones in silver. But I did look like a Danish serial killer. Other frames made me appear variously like a Slovakian double-murderer, a Bulgarian child molester and a German exchange student with Delusional Disorder. I think the pairs I picked make me look like a deranged axe-murderer. Or more to the point, like a deranged axe-murderer wearing glasses. The ation of looking in the mirror was so traumatic that 20 frames into this process I just wanted to up and run. Oh yeah and the girl said you're not allowed to put down a part deposit: all spexx must be paid for in full before you're allowed to order them. As far as I understand it, my luxury glasses shall be ready the Sunday or Monday after next. I do believe she said July 2. So I'm scuttling around between now and then like a myopic roborovski with a surprised look on its face.

I went to see my friend Paddster afterwards and either I'm paranoid or he was treating me like I was mentally deranged. The doctor at the methadone clinic asked me whether I thought I was manic the other day which did my head in. I thought, on balance, that I was in a "normal" mood. That is, if you averaged out the peaks and valleys of the day the intervening line would be pretty rasonable. Not that I was in any way on a flatline. Who knows maybe she was just winding me up by asking me that. I thought manic people were meant to gesticulate a lot and I don't think I was doing that. It has been pointed out to me that I jump from one topic to the next with nary a rhyme nor reason as to where I'm going (unless I consciously rein myself in) but that's my ordinary thought process. It only goes truly off the wall when I'm truly hyper. I have to say my head has been jumping with alien thoughts in massive quantities, y'know, kind of like I'm tuned into Radio Gaga again, but that's pretty normal too. I quite like it when they get very bizarre. It's free entertainment for all the family!

My new drugs worker seemed to think rehab was a really good idea. I didn't tread into Truthfulness Territory ~ giving my real opinions on those places. That they are run for the convenience of the staff. That most people are only there to avoid prison. Etc etc.

Oh yeah and they seemed very surprised that I only tested positive for heroin and methadone and was vehemently against hashish, cocaine, speed and the reat ~ in thought as well as deed. Only teenagers (or really withered old speed-freaks) use speed in this country. Crack is lousy stuff. And frankly I'm offended that anyone would even ask me about cannabis. I last bought cannabis when hash was the norm: ie before the trend for premium grass came in in 1993/1994. Yes I have been stupid enough to have the odd toke between now and then but I've regretted it more and more and more each time. Last time I smoked grass I picked up a dropped spliff at a bus stop. Believing it to be a roll-up cigarette I puffed away until the grotesque smell of skunk stoppered up my lungs. Even the tiny quantity inhaled offended my brain and I went into a peculiar mindstate. Why on earth anybody smokes that crap is beyond me.

The workers at these clinics seem to know nothing about drugs. If they did they wouldn't be surprised to see someone steadily fall apart the longer he's off drugs. That's the meaning of self-medication. When you're on the medicine you're better. When you're without it, you're all over the place. I only use that phrase "self-medicating" beause the drug-clinic drummed it into me (then offered no alternative medication, I noticed!) Something in me seems to have changed and opiates no longer have the effect they once did, which is why I'm steeling myself for a life solely on the gloop. Next week I start a gradual gloop reduction and I can't wait. Once the dose gets to 30mg or below, which will take weeks to achieve, I can consider switching over to Subutex or Suboxone. My friend Paddadadster recently went back on that, having singularly failed to handle life on nothing at all. He's expecting to stay on it till he dies.

Well I was supposed to be focusing on positive things. I feel a lot better in general than I did last week. I still don't know where I'm going or what will become of me in the future. I don't know how to survive. If I am going to be moving house I want to get the move over and done with as quickly as humanly possible. Deshane says three or four weeks. I am holding on till then. No shiba-inus today... I have to run. Take care y'all..!

Back from the brink (of unconsciousness)

I HAD A LOST WEEKEND: lost to sleep. I know I have been a bit depressed; I'm trying to pull myself together. Today I did everything I had to (wow). Right down to acquiring the huge tartan washing bags I'll need if I do move house. I'm TOLD I'm moving, but I really need to know for sure about this. I see Deshane tomorrow. I'm off to bed now. Another early night!

Fed up of being myself

UKH. I JUST GLANCED AT THE TRIPE I typed out yesterday. If only I could claim to have been drunk when I posted. That's my problem, I'm too stone cold sober these days. The lack of drink and gear is driving me mad.

I'm hoping the manic depression has bottomed out. I had actually got so depressed I had forgotten there was a chance, albeit a very slim and unreliable one, that I could get suffused with false manic happiness again and have a lovely brain-melting few weeks of excitement.

I do have this mysterious sense of hope in the dark though. A dim light shining in deepest space.

You see I should feel very excited about the future. But it only stresses me out a LOT.

I need to see a dr and get new meds. That manic depression book in the library says bipolar people are like junkies. Always hanging out on the next high. Which is why hardly any of them actually take the meds as prescribed, for years and years. Now I'm almost ready to drink the stupefied chalice of mediocrity. I do feel if it is natural to be nuts, so by taking meds I'm going against nature. If they would give me that lamotrigine stuff I would consider taking that. Lamotrigine (lamictal) is a mood stabilizer that is said to work better against bipolar depression than mania. Whereas lithium makes you feel cold and tired and causes difficulty concentrating and even worse requires regular blood tests. Worst of all it's far more effective against mania than depression. Ie it's a no-fun drug. I want something that totally fills in the valleys and only chops the raving mad tops off the hills. The Foothills of Hypomania are where I want to live.

I'm not looking forward to next week. Not at all.

It's the No Gear Idea that's intolerable. For a long, long time it was the only point to my day. I bribed myself to do things by turning life into a series of sandwiches. That is: I took heroin before and after I did anything. Knowing a lovely dripping shot of gear was waiting there for me was the only thing that made me want to come home. Knowing I had heroin for breakfast was the only thing that got me out of bed. Now life is one long stretch of blank meaninglessness. I'm counting the years until I die. Being as I'm nearly 40 I might have 20 years left. Most of the people I knew had been on the gear 8 or 10 years when I started it in ernest (10 years ago after quite some time messing about with it) they're mostly dead now. They're lucky, sleeping in their graves. I have to drag myself around in the dark. I know I should write something more sugar-coated and full of shit but that's the truth of heroin addiction. Life is meaningless without the gear and every day on methaone is a day more addicted and more hopeless. I'm actually starting to get to like the nasty buzz that gloop gives you. The buzz of methadone is a feeling of normality seeping into my iceblock of a body when I wake up. So it's not a high; it's just feeling (physically) OK instead of not feeling OK. If you give addicts methadone, they'll stop craving opiates so much and crave death instead.

OK it has to stop now before I get too truthful/morbid.

The Tory government now think the sick and disabled should work for less than the minimum wage. One of them let this slip yesterday. I don't know why they don't just kill them all. That's what they want to do: they just won't come out and say it. They already want the sick living out on the streets. And I would vote Tory!~!!!!

I have only 2 major political opinions: 1 a national health service that is free for all (like we have today) and 2: low taxes for the rich (so I can be rich and pay low taxes). Number 3 would be proper effective treatments for drug addicts so I could have gone on IV diamorphine when it would have made a difference. It's too late now.

If I could have gone on prescription diamorphine years ago, as about 500 UK addicts are (and contrary to popular view this is ONLY available on the NHS. If anyone knows a private clinic dishing out maintenance diamorphine PLEASE GET IN TOUCH.)... if only I could have had a treatment that works instead of one like methadone that just makes you more addicted (methadone has a 4% success rate: frankly I find it hard to believe it's even that high), I might have had a chance of being rehabilitated. The rot set in some time around 2004 when I started hallucinating. And ever since then it's been a slow ride downhill. I didn't know it was "shizophrenia" did I?

My gran used to think because I was intelligent I should have got a good job. But I applied for jobs left right and centre and never got ONE interview. I would quite like to work for the lcoal council because it's easy. I just need a job that is easy where you don't have to deal with people and don't have to do 2 things at once. I used to be good at multitasking. Not any more. That's one of the impacts of my brain melting on me. I couldn't think straight any more. My ideal job would be to be Queen. I think the grey perm and white gloves would quite suit me. You get free housing for life and don't pay proper taxes (even though she does make a "contribution" ~ if the sovereign paid inheritance tax withi a couple of generations there would be no Sanringham House or Balmoral Castle. I would quite like to be the Queen. I like posh dinners, diamonds, palaces, politics and history. I'd do barely any engagements where I had to meet the public. I'd spend my days at home, drinking.

Oh crap. That's another thing. When I used to work nights years and years ago I never had time to EAT between sleeping and going back to work. I literally slept every hour I wasn't working or on the way to or from work. Now I sleep even more. So how am I going to fit that in? I'm only working fulltime. Part time work isn't worthwhile. I was going to do volunteer work but all my clothes are dirty. My shoes have holes in them and they stink. My coat has cigarette burns on the sleeve and also reeks of BO. See it's all too depressing for words. I just want to curl up and die.

I was watching a film set in World War II. Everyone seemed so capable back then. How did my grandparents cope? My Nan drove the buses around Windsor and my Granddad nearly got killed in Libya. They were allowed to smoke cigarettes whenever they liked. I couldn't be a bus driver: I haven't even got a normal driving licence and I drink too much. I'd quite like to be an engine driver though, if I could drive the Eurostar train to Paris that would be cool. I'd also like to be an American freight train driver. Or a British one for that matter.

O when am I ever going to be OK again.




OK this was a stream of consciousness I bashed in while watching the film On The Buses. I'm in a bad mood all the time, just posting on the internet makes me feel worse.

CROYDON TRAMLINK
buses are boring. this is really fucking exciting



RUSH HOUR ON THE TOKYO METRO
Hey I thought the Tokyo subway was the most crowded in the world? London is considerably more crowded and opporessive than this:~~~



This is much more like it. Look at that bloke having a really good shove
nah London ain't this bad; we don't have professional door-closers like this lot



My Japanese is really awful. I saw loads of characters I recognized on the walls but couldn't read them. Didn't even know what 住 meant.

This is a Japanese news story about an inconvenient shutdown on the transport network



PS:~ What the hell has happened to Anna Grace? Anyone who knows, please getin touch ASAP... Any assistance gratefully accepted. Anna, if you're reading this GET IN TOUCH thank you.

Pre Move Jitters

I'm not doing clairvoyancy by the way, as I'm afraid of getting possessed. I think the Chinese characters I see in the air from time to time are eidetic memories, not clairsentient distance-vision.

I got up after midday and wasted ages trying to get it together to take my socks off and go into the shower and go outside and up to the methadone chemist. All the time I was out I wished I was back in bed. My bed is full of rubbish so I've been sleeping on the floor. I think it's good for my back.

As well as panicking how on earth am I going to move house, I tried to fill out a government form but it was so depressing and I got a fullblow paranoia attack from doing so.

On Monday I'm buying some more huge tartan washing bags and I'm just piling my stuff into them. My Mum said she would drive me to and fro. As long as she's not in France.

I would rather move into a nutterhouse than stay where I am. But I don't want to do anything. I just want to curl up and die. Then I tell myself not to be so damn childish, that life has a purpose and I feel this sparkly light. But I have no energy whatsoever to engage with this mystical purpose in life. So that's today and here's Lady Gaga:~~~



O yeah and re heroin, I know it's bad to be a heroin addict, that's why I want to stop taking the crap. I mean "want to stop" I haven't had it for a couple of days and when I had it, it was too weak for words. THE ONLY THING THAT EVER MADE ME FEEL GOOD (APART FROM PSYCHOTIC MANIA) AND I'M GIVING IT UP! I MUST BE TRULY DERANGED..!!

Rehousing Challenge

I'M GETTING REHOUSED and I'm living in terror. I even know where the house is. It's within easy carting off distance of the nuthouse. I say that because everybody in that house will be raving mad (like me). So now I have to pack a bag or ten and try and feel positive. I don't actually feel very positive at all. When I found out I was in sheer terror, then I fell asleep. Then I'm meant to be changing drugs clinic (again) then I'm meant to change back (again). You see why I don't understand anything? It's incomprehensible.

I've decided yet again to try giving up "gear" for good. Yet again. It does nothing for me. I mean I can't feel the bloody stuff when I take it, so I know I'm wasting my time. I wish I had never got into heroin. I can't believe I'm here now. Me! Talking about me being on heroin. How ridiculous is that. I was never like Anna Grace Young in that all my heroes were junkies and all I ever wanted to do was try heroin. True, I had a sneaking fascination and if someone had presented the naive young me with Drugs of the World on a silver platter saying I could try just one, I probably would have tried the heroin. Because as far as I knew, heroin was the strongest drug there was. So that's the one I would have tried. When I did dabble in drugs, heroin was always in a class of its own. It wasn't available. It was frowned on. The way I saw it, if drugs were bad then all drugs were bad so if you were going to try drugs you might as well try heroin. The fascination was there, but that's all it was. I never intended to become a heroin addict.

If only I could relegate that crappy stuff to the same dustbin every other drug from my past has been chucked in, I'd be OK. I feel no compunction whatsoever to take any other drug ever. My brain can produce a free high anyhow (I now know). Why bother wasting money on drugs to be high? I now get more of a buzz out of Japanese than heroin. Which either says a lot about the Japanese language or a lot about heroin, I don't know.

I keep seeing Chinese characters, not just with my eyes closed but with them open. They appear against blank walls and doors while my head is dreaming. See, I'm a clairvoyant. I can see into life's mysteries... I used to own a crystal ball, but it got left behind in an old house, or stolen. I'm not sure which. I don't need a crystal to scry into, just a blank door will do.

Today, for the first time ever, I was leafing through my kanji dictionary, this huge list of radicals (the graphic components that make up characters) and there were so many of them I couldn't name. And I briefly experienced self-doubt. Usually I view the 2200 basic characters as a linguistic chocolate gateau, to gorge into.

I learned a new one today: 獣 kemono. It means "animal". Because ke can mean fur and a mono is a thing a 毛物 kemono could be a furry thing. Just a 着物 kimono literally means "something to wear". The Chinese reading of 物 mono is 物 butsu, the old slang word for heroin: worlds apart, the words are the same... Butsu means exactly the same as the English word "gear". Another word for animal is 動物 dōbutsu, a "moving thing". I like the way they're so basic in their vocabulary. When you know these words you can actually see the constituent meanings.

Now it's quarter past midnight and my head is spinning. I'm scared to death of moving house. What am I going to do? What's happening? What will happen? I tell myself it has to be a good thing.

PS far as I know the council hasn't OK'd it. So I still might not move. Then I'd be even more disappointed.

PPS far as I know, it's a normal house, not a tower block


An American akita.



These are akita-inus. In the film Hachi, starring Richard Gere, the baby Hachi (an akita) was played by a brushwood dog...