Making a spectacle

OK FINALLY ~ AFTER WALKING ROUND IN A BLUR for months on end due to a pair of broken glasses so wonky they made me look like a human percentage sign %-/ I HAVE NEW SPEXX and look exactly like the guy in the photo. Cept I had less clothes on as I wandered down the high road this sweltering afternoon.

Here's another samey post I bashed out earlier. I don't know whether there's really any point saying any of this. I'm only trying to convince myself I'm doing the right thing by coming off drugs. My brains got confused enough not to know what was right or wrong... so here's what I said earlier...

I only started wearing glasses in a fit of suicidal depression. Yes I hate glasses that much. For years I simply didn't wear them. Or took them off in the presence of anybody important. Eventually in the mid to late 90s soft contact lens technology improved enough that even my fussy eyes would accept them. (Before that I was only able to wear contacts on special occasions; I had to constantly take them out early etc etc. It was the dreaded "daily cleaner" (the only part of the cleaning regime with warnings on the bottle NOT to get it in your eye) that was playing havoc. As soon as they scrapped that and introduced one-step solutions I was fine. To be frank I'd rather get my eyes lasered so I never have to wear glasses or contacts at all. But I do quite enjoy looking intellectual from time to time. And as I get old and knackered anyway there's less point being vain. I usually feel about 85 years old. I was so depressed last week I found myself sitting round pondering how fortunate old people are, knowing how litle time they have left. While I calculate my remaining years like a serial killer in prison, wondering when I'm ever going to be free ...

My main priority now is to get OFF all opiates as quick as I possibly can. I did OK earlier this year on methadone, but I did have a persistently "elevated mood" helping me through. Right when I could really have done with NA as a focus, NA refused to listen to me, assuming that anyone who comes to a meeting hyped up, dishevelled, happy one minute, raging with fury the next absolutely had to be on drugs. Well I think the whole lot of them are hopelessly naive for thinking that. It begs the question, if you believe people are only ever "high" thanks to drugs why give drugs up? Natural highs are far superior to the drug-induced variety. That's why I know I don't need drugs.

If only I could convince myself that heroin was evil, life off gear would be so much easier for me. As it is, I don't believe methadone is any safer or any better than heroin. I'm using it solely as a tool to reduce a habit I got off street gear. Street gear is unreliable; the people who sell it are scumbags. Yes there might have been an element of "self-medication" in my heroin use but I still believe I should be happier without an opiate habit than with one. And I know it takes a year totally opiate free even to begin to feel OK. I'm glad that my moods swing to two opposite poles. This means there's a chance I might actually feel higher than normal off drugs. Most people feel lower. I got a high switching from heroin to Subutex some years ago. I got a little bit hyper reducing from 60mg to 12.5mg over a few days several years ago. So there is hope.

I'm a bit upset with my old methadone clinic for having totally missed my mental health "issues" for several years. I looked up the national treatment guidelines for drug addicts and discovered mental health problems should be highlighted and treated. Instead you get this ceaseless obsession with drugs drugs drugs. That if you give up crack you'll feel a lot better (a lie). That stopping drinking will stop you being depressed (another lie). Nobody ever asked what had brought me INto drug addiction or what I'd done before I was an addict. It seems typical to get a habit in your late teens or early 20s. Not me. I was 28 when I finally got hooked on the "brown". That's 10 years of misery and failed coping mechanisms. As soon as I found heroin I had a focus. Life was suddenly very simple: with heroin I was OK; without it, I wasn't OK at all.

My main reason for getting off opiates (and I see methadone just as much as an addiction as heroin) is that I feel they don't bring happiness. How many truly happy heroin addicts have any of you ever met? I'd like to know. I resent my happiness being in the hands of ruthless criminals and uncaring drug workers. Shane in France says:

The tragedy is this: the dealers will always get to you before the system. They are better organised and certainly more caring. At least they gain something from you, and so stand to lose if they don't kiss your pains better.

And he's absolutely right. I'm past caring about heroin. I know from experience this is no protection against future wobbles. But I'm protected today. My hatred of the junkie life is keeping me safe. Unless I can do something vehemently there's little point in me doing it at all. I can be quite a vehement person. At times. If only I could put the enthusiasm I once put into heroin into something constructive I could have the world in the palm of my hand...

And that's the real reason I want opiate-free. Addiction is slavery. For a while it was fun. But after the first two years I'd done all I wanted to do. Had the experience. Now all I was doing was repeating it over and over, day after day. Each day felt exactly the same. Hazy. Whenever the haze lifted I was unable to handle Reality. Life hurt too much. Methadone was nowhere near anasethetizing enough for me. And that's why I continued to use heroin. A big reason why methadone works for me today when it didn't before is that the street gear is so much weaker than it used to be. I haven't taken heroin for about five days now and I don't miss it at all. I don't even think about it. When I crave more drugs, I crave methadone, not heroin. Conventionally speaking, this is supposedly a step forward. Only time will tell whether that really is so.

I want a new life now. I've tried a life on opiates and it brought me next to nothing. Now I want to try something else. I have been dreaming about university. Literally having recurrent dreams about day one in the Halls of Residence. I couldn't go back to uni in the UK. I couldn't afford it. But I could go in Germany. I'd like to get qualified for something and the one job I'd really like to do ~ bar sitting at home writing ~ would be translating. The best course of action in the short term would seem to be getting my shoddy German to near mother tongue standard. So that's my goal.

My weight has gone down to 13 stone 1 by the way. That's 183 pounds or 83 kg.

I hope this post hasn't been too boring. I know I probably sound like a stuck record lately. Sorry that's just me. I have to reiterate reiterate reiterate VEHEMENTLY to convince myself I'm doing the right thing. Otherwise, where opiates are concerned, I'd just go on taking heroin till I die ...