Lots of things, including an anti-drug rant

I JUST HAD A GANDER at my new passport photo. The one showing me tanned with nicotine stained hair and an attitude. I look like a Costa del Sol criminal wanted for the importation of 7 metric tonnes of China White heroin (I look way too classy to be involved in the smuggling of dirty old "brown").

By the way I heard a friend of mine has a criminal record for Heroin Importation. You Gossipy Ladies out there: you'd all have been proud of me the way I pumped this individual for information. What type of heroin was it (brown! ukh!!) And how much? (2.9kg) Who paid you and how much (a dealer paid £4000 plus the price of the holiday to Nigeria). How long were you punished in prison for? (2 years 6 months of a 5 year sentence ~ in the UK thank God). How did you feel when customs pulled you with kilos of heroin and freedom glowing joyfully round the corner? (More gutted than words can ever describe. And more terrified.) The ex-smuggler told me I should be a journalist. Never had she been grilled so thoroughly, except by customs when she was being punished for bringing the dodgy contraband over. Oh yeah and how long did you THINK you were going to do in prison? (20 years ~ ie 17.5 years more than she actually did do.)

Every single person I have ever met who claims to have smuggled drugs has been foreign. It is drummed into the British very deeply, being an island race, that drug importation is very heavy shit and only fools ever get involved in the sharp end of that business. And only bastards get involved in the cushty "my kitchen is so high tech it was fitted by NASA" end... "And I've never physically touched heroin in my life. Let alone actually taken the stuff. Even though heroin made me my houses, my cars, my boats, my wife's jewellery and my planes."

I just spent the afternoon round Valium Marilyn's. I weighed myself on her scales and still weigh 194 lbs. That's a weight gain of circa 4lbs. She noticed I was restlessly perky and said don't worry about it. Except when I got a vehement attack of the farts and had to keep going out the room to quack the foul wind to freedom in the confines of Valium Marilyn's hallway.

I asked Deshane about Moving to Posh Park and it's still "on the cards" ~ so I'm told. I can even go and have a poke round the Posh Park house very soon indeed! A meeting between me, my support worker and my housing manager has been arranged. I cannot wait. Means some progress is mighty soon to be achieved.

Why has NONE of you commented on my WONDROUS, AMAZING, FANTABULOUS MUSIC posted yesterday? Ave Maria sung by The Voice of the 20th Century ~ Barbra Streisand. And Barber's Adagio sung by a "celestial" choir as wonders of the universe ~ courtesy of Nasa ~ flash by.... This stuff is amazing. I shall STERNLY REPRIMAND YOU if you FAIL TO COMMENT AGAIN. come ON!

Valium Marilyn kept politely telling me to calm down because I was getting hypomanic in her house. She has bipolar disorder in her family and so knows the signs. I had a healthy 3 hours' sleep last night and was getting cocaine style rushes all the way home. In fact all day I've felt like I was coasting up on Ecstasy or coke. Lovely jubbly. FREEE DRUGS FROM THE MIND ~ WHAT CAN BE BETTER. I wish I could have unipolar not too severe mania. That would be the best mental illness of all. But as it is I have to plunge the depths of reality as well as the stratospheric heights. I'm only glad that I've gone higher on bipolar than I ever went low. That is some consolation to me. I once went so high I was atop the universe, gazing down upon everything. I felt infused with the power of God Almighty. I don't think bipolar disorder is any type of genuine madness; I believe it's a true way of perceiving reality. If you view any type of bipolar mood chart you'll see peaks and valleys and a pitifully narrow band in the middle marked "normality". Now if that's as far as Ordinary Joe's emotions ever go, then give me bipolar any day. I have seen everything, felt everything, experienced the highest exaltation and the most dismal meaninglessness; I have been a worthless, worn-out hunk of human junk and known it and felt it with every fibre of my being. My perceptions, being wider, are truer than Average Joe's. Where's the madness in that? Joe is blinkered into retardation. Not craziness but emotional constipation. I with my bipolar enhancements am effortlessly superior to most other people alive and that is a Simple Truth. Don't worry about it. But feel privileged to read my proclamations. (My tongue is only a bit in my cheek...)

Here's something amazing. Forget the singer, hear the song:
AVE MARIA sung celestially:~



Valium Marilyn got ripped off on a 14 temazepam 20mgs deal when I was there. Not a lot we could do once the *****r had gone, leaving just THREE temazepam 20s and 11 dihydrocodeine 30s. Dihydrocodeines, which we call "DFs" after the old brand name "DF118" are equivalent at 30mg to 3mg methadone and hence worth only about 30p a tablet. Not the £1.70-ish Valium Mal was paying. She kept asking my advice and I said "look he will not refund your money so take whatever reparations he offers, whether you want them or not: take take take". I also left an ansafone message for her. Very polite but very firm too. I had drunk 2 cups of tea on top of my hyper mood and so was well and truly soaring by this point. Caffeine has a cocaine-like effect on my manic self.

Well I have to go and find something else to get really excited about. It's raining. It's pouring. My love life is boring me to tears... after all these years...



Eh, talking of Donna Summer, what post would be complete without thee greatest disco track of all time: I FEEL LOVE!?!





A meeting has to go ahead with my housing manager, Deshane and me and I MOVE MOVE MOVE. Moving on! I so want to LEAVE THE AREA, live somewhere more salubrious. Kiss the drugs goodbye. I don't crave heroin AT ALL now. The last time I used heroin was about 2 or 3 days ago and I did get it straight in a vein on my torso and I did feel it. And it wasn't worth it. And I never want it again. And I will not miss something that nearly destroyed me, nearly killed me, left me without a life worth living, kept me depressed and yet told me it cured my depression, removed what scraps of self-esteem I had left and dropped me to depths where the only rational course of action appeared to be suicide ~ and yet I was too disorganized, depressed and generally mentally destabilized to get it together even to kill myself (and I did genuinely want to die: what I didn't want so much was to actively commit suicide. If I'd have found out I had a terminal illness during this stage no way would I have elected for any treatment bar opiate painkillers.) Heroin nearly destroyed me. I can see that now. For a while I was confused by the fact that heroin is prescribed to some addicts in this country as an experimental or last-resort treatment for severe, entrenched dependency. Knowing this, and WANTING such treatment and knowing that heroin was and is used extensively in British hospitals as the painkiller of choice for terminal illness, trauma and emergency medicine, prevented me ever being able to believe that heroin was "evil".




HERE'S A LITTLE RANT TO ANYBODY CONSIDERING EXPERIMENTING WITH HEROIN OR ANY SIMILAR DRUG:~

Let me tell you something: heroin is evil. It does no good to anyone to abuses it. Take heroin and you lose. Every time. Not everybody loses the same way or to the same degree. But I have never known a case where a person is truly better off for being on heroin. If you do know a person you believe has made heroin addiction somehow "work" I would urge you to look closer and to bear in mind that you don't know somebody's life until you've walked a good mile in their shoes. A mile is a good deal longer than any junkie would ever walk without a pressing reason. Example: a lack of heroin. Because no amount of heroin is ever enough for long enough.

Heroin addicts just want to keep the world at bay. To float in that primordial amniotic wonderland that is called the Opiate High. Junkies aren't afraid of dying: they're afraid of living. The longer you indulge in heroin, the more worthless life seems, and the more frightening, until ~ if you're like me ~ you just can't cope. I know I am an extreme case. Not everybody has the psychopathology I have. But everybody who plays with heroin suffers for it. Heroin is a painkiller. If you make it your life's ambition to escape pain, the laws of nature decree you'll suffer for your folly. My one word of advice to anybody considering experimentation with any kind of strong opiates is just don't. You have survived an entire lifetime up to this point without heroin or oxy or Dilaudid or whatever else is gnawing at your soul before you even took it. Because I know you have mixed feelings and I know you feel confused. The reason is very simple: you know that taking opiates is playing with fire. Somehow you reason you'll get high like every other junkie, yet you won't get burned like every other junkie. It doesn't matter whether or not you use a needle. Opiates get under the skin like you wouldn't believe. Eventually they become your skin, like a luxury coccoon. And life without them becomes not merely unbearable, but unthinkable. You may reason that you'll only use once a week, once a month, once a year, once in a lifetime. Every addict I've met, with the exception of those lost souls who deliberately got addicted, only ever intended to try heroin once. But heroin doesn't work like that. You do not get the full effects until your body is already well on the way to becoming habituated. Then it's already too late. If you want to be happy, want to be free, you must piece together your opiate-free time into one continuous stream of drug-free existence. That's the only way to do it. Take it from someone who didn't do it, who nearly died doing it all wrong, who lost all semblance of a life. So much so that at my lowest points, even the other junkies didn't want to know me. Heroin only kills the lucky few. Chances are you won't die. Chances are you'll live in pain. There is nothing more painful than learning to live without the strongest painkiller in the world.

Heroin? TAKE MY ADVICE AND GIVE IT A MISS.

And if you do have a problem, my advice is contact Narcotics Anonymous. They're not the only way out of addiction, but their programme most definitely does work "if you work it". I advise it because it's run by addicts for addicts, and it's free. Be very very cautious about shelling out money you can't afford to cure an addiction that might only be in it's earliest stages. It took me ten years to go from intending to stop heroin tomorrow to being able to survive on methadone day in day out without constantly using heroin on top. I'm still addicted to methadone. I don't know when I will ever get off the stuff. I'm "dual diagnosis" because I have mood swings of psychotic proportions on top of my drug problem. I can't advise anyone anything except to stay away from hard drugs, from mind-bending drugs... from all drugs. No drug has ever benefited me. I hope someone somewhere reads this someday and hears me. As the old saying goes: if one person stays clean due to what I say, it's all worthwhile... Maybe that would make my mess seem somehow worthwhile. Because I can tell you, it certainly doesn't feel worthwhile from where I'm stuck. Still addicted. Stuck on methadone and hating it.

STAY AWAY FROM DRUGS! STAY FREE!

✰✰✰✰✰✰✰


Nelson Center for Emotional Healing: Did Amy Winehouse die of self-loathing?