In which Gledwood says some more ratty things then tries to change the subject in order not to be too dismal

I WAS TRYING NOT TO SLEEP in order to reset my sleep pattern. It didn't really work because I ended up really tired lying in bed, woken by two people on my idiot phone, neither of whom I wanted to deal with. So I didn't deal with one and did deal with the other. Both probably wanted to borrow money but I don't mind lending it: I get it back next week ~ meaning I cannot spend it between now and then ~ and all is fine and dandy.

I missed the Horror Recovery Group Meeting this morning as I couldn't face it. Couldn't face the world. Couldn't face anything. I told my friend I was a manic-depressive and he said "yes, I know". I have been told I was bipolar since the mid 90s but I never believed my friends' diagnonsense. What did they know except having a mother and a sister with the disorder in one case, actually having it in another, and having spent over a decade in various mental units with depressive schizoaffective in the third. Most experienced nutters can not only spot another nutter at one hundred paces, but usually distinguish what flavour of madness they are customized by. And probably have a better grasp than doctors on what is real, what is exaggeration, what's a lie and what lurks hidden. Because mental states are far from straightforward. I call myself a manic-depressive now as I fit the descriptions in Emil Krapaelin's 1920 classic Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia for "delusional mania" (though I was hallucinating heavily, not delusional as such), even "delirious mania" (when you get so excited you go into frenzy and automatic behaviour takes over. This is when I was so out of it I was losing the ability to speak English and this is why the neighbours gave me a wide berth for weeks afterwards. Because I expressed what I felt. Loudly. And what I felt was loud, loud NOISE in my head. Like a road drill of manic euphoria perseverating through me. It's quite depressing to know you have gone mad and yes I will talk about it again because it's an issue still ongoing, still unresolved and not being treated. The one bit of consolation I found in that book was that I'm not the only one to have been depressed enough into believing ~ or more to the point, feeling that no method of suicide would ever kill me; that I was immortal. That even when I did finally submit to that train, I would lie by the trackside cold, wet and naked and in pain with trains rushing past me for ever afterwards.

This is what Kraepelin writes about "fantastic melancholia" (page 93)

The ideas of annihilation, alredy indicated in the foregoing pages, may experience a further, wholly nonsensical elaboration. The patient has no longer a name, a home, is not born, does not belong at all to the world any more, is no longer a human being, is no longer here, is a spirit, an abortion, a picture, a ghost, just only a sort of shape. He cannot live and he cannot die; he must hover about so, remain in the world eternally, is as old as the world, has been already a hundred years here. If he is beaten with an axe on his head, if his breast is cut open, if he is thrown into the fire, he still cannot be killed. "I cannot be buried any more," said a patiet, "when I sit down on the weighing machine, it shows zero!" The world has perished; there are no longer railways, towns, money, beds, doctors; the sea runs out. All human beings are dead, "poisoned with antitoxic serium," burned, dead of starvation, because there is nothing more to eat, because the patient has stuffed everything down into his enormous stomatch, and has drunk the water-pipes empty. No-one eats or sleeps any more; the patient is the only being of flesh and blood, is alone in the world.

I used to be obsessed with the idea that The End Was Nigh. That only suffering and death awaited us. That Armageddon was coming soon. And let's face it, something is drastically wrong with the world so there's some truth in that feeling (and these were feelings, not "delusions" that I had). I'm quoting the book at some length because finally, at long last, I find I'm not the only one to have thought the way I have thought, to have felt the way I have felt.

And people wonder why I continued taking heroin!!

The only food I can bear to eat these days is live yogurt. So my insides are very clean indeed. I felt as though I had no sense of humour at all this morning. But a couple of drinks and a shot of heroin cured that. The day is now tolerable. I don't know what I would do without my drugs. And I do want to live without drugs, no matter what you feel on the matter: I know. I only find it so difficult because my motives are mixed. Like I said I want to die clean. I want to die. We all want to die sometimes. Old people ill in hospital want to die. Young people, lost and abused, often want to die. We all want death at some time. Addicts are famous for their unwillingness to live life on life's terms. It's not death they're scared of: it's LIFE. So when I say I want to live, I'm not lying. My problem is, I just don't know how to. It would be so much easier to die. And the lower you go, the more death seems like the only sensible option. I've heard suicide described as an escape from pain. But I think if I killed myself I would be doing the world a favour. I'm only a drain on the state for money. I am a manic-depressive junkie ~ and this is the point I was making earlier on when I got distracted. A manic-depressive junkie. The lowest of the low.

Maybe that's why heroin addicts invariably crave death while undergoing withdrawal. Even the supposedly gentle taper at detox units is enough to induce severe melancholia in the susceptible. Ie me. Which is what annoys me about an African nurse, who has no experience at all of opiate addiction and probably none of mental illness telling me with a wide smile that the detox and rehab group session would be really good for me. This clinic I have no option but to go to, really sucks. I am never listened to. There is no dialogue. I wish the staff would do what they're effectively paid to do. Dispense methadone scripts and let you go home. The NHS could save a great deal of money if they would only install a swipe-card activated machine on the wall. It could spit out our scripts and then let us go our own way to sort out our own lives. The way we have to do, every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week that we are not in this clinic with its bullshitty group therapy and Nazi nurses.

You know why Buta was angry with me the other week? Because I came in, stone cold sober but zombified. I don't know whether I was depressed or not but all I did was act the way I felt. And I know now what that bitch assumed. That I'd been using gear. So she was persecuting me for being ill. Doing something no kinder than tipping a man out of his wheelchair and trampling all over him. That's what she was doing to me and I would love to be Christian and forgive her for it, but I never can trust her again. I always knew this clinic's agenda was to cut me off the methadone on the highest dose possible, to do all they can do to push me into suicide. That is what they are about. That is what they're there for. I want to make a formal complaint about them to the local Health Authority. If racist and homophobic language is forbidden, so should persecution of the sick be, and that's what they're doing to me. If I'm not sick then I'm simply a wastrel and I should die. This is the truth of the matter.

I need to get OUT Of this fascist drug clinic and ideally into one that is privately run. Or else I'll just get my script cut down as swiftly as possible because I would rather be off methadone and ill than on it and ill. I'm going to feel ill whatever way; whether I actually am ill or not.

Then I need to write all these amazing books. Problem with writing about myself is what you read here and what you've read for days. It puts me in a bad sour and aggrieved mood because I do not like myself. But I don't mind writing about other things. I never intended to be a memoirist though I did consider penning memoirs to make cash. What I'm doing now is following a passion of mine and writing for children. I looked around the kiddies' section of WH Smith, the major bookseller in the UK (though they actually sell more stationery and magazines than books). I looked through the childrens' books of the ilk I want to write. And was disgusted on the one hand and heartened on the other that NOBODY appeared to be writing anything remotely similar to my ideas. Nobody at all. So the field is wide open. I have bovver boots at the ready and I'm willing to give this nasty world what it fully deserves: I'm going to KICK IT'S FUCKING HEAD IN. Long as my book achieves sales into eight figures I'll be happy. What am I saying: nothing will make me happy, I know that. But I'm angry enough to be all loving and kind and spin enchanting webs of mystery and illumination for the inner child in us all and to spin this luscious entertainment forever on in glorious ever changing forms like shadow puppets playing the Play of All Ages against the wall.OK so I’m bracing myself again. To kick the world’s head in yet again. O Gledwood just write this fucking thing and stop fretting about it. All I can think is how I’m not going to children’s schools, not giving interviews. I think I’ll be like Lemony Snicketts or the other one and be a recluse. Better to put your energies into producing masterpieces than to do the rounds of primary schools full of screaming brats. Ukh. And can you imagine what the parents would think if they knew the author of this amazing non-wizard-oriented book was a dirty HEROIN ADDICT? Ukh! Beyond the pale!

Well I’ve said enough. Sorry this is a ratty post. Maybe I should start blogging about the world in general or just anything else bar my self self self; know what I mean?... Will anybody ever comment or are my posts now un-comment¬¬¬¬-on-able...?



CYBERNAUT: BOO MERINGUE (HYDROPONIX)



HALLUCINOGEN: LSD
unreleased "official short film" accompanying the track...



ETNICA: MOON INFLUENCE