I WENT TO NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS last night. There was a very manic atmosphere in there. People flying on being clean! I went and told someone my methadone dose and he repeated it out loud several times.
I'm not proud of being on over 100mg. In fact I'm ashamed of it. Methadone is the devil's drug. If I won the lottery I'd get a proper morphine sulphate (pills) script. You can't inject the pills by the way; they're deliberately formulated to be sustained release. I've never injected pain pills (oxycodone, hydromorphone (Dilaudid) or morphine in my life. Why bother when street heroin was cheaper and stronger ~ which it was until late last year. Now it's not worth bothering with. I've dabbled twice since officially giving up and the result was so disappointing I didn't even feel like I'd used. Just dirtied myself up test wise and yet stayed effectively clean. Worst of both worlds, in a sense. If I couldn't get morphine pills on prescription I'd go back on street heroin in preference to methadone. That says a LOT about methadone. I'd rather reduce down myself to £1 a day then come off using Subutex. You CAN'T switch from 110mg methadone to Subutex because methadone is such an evil drug. The withdrawals are worse. It's more addictive. Methadone has nothing to recommend it. I can't believe my living mediocrity as a methadone addict. It's too depressing for words.
I washed my clothes today and was hypomanic in the launderette. At first I thought I'd had a drink because I felt drunk. Then I realized
I'd drunk nothing and was just in a "mood". My moods have been lunging and plunging all day. I got a new Where To Find and go to my second favourite NA meeting tomorrow night. I have to get there early; I'm fed up of missing the chair ~ that is a recovering addict's life story, the best part of the meeting. I couldn't stay long when I went last time; I was really too manic to sit still. Not to mention too paranoid. This was the meeting where the overwhelming smell of bodily fluids assaulted me so forcefully I fled to the street last time I was there. That was in January, when I was psychotic.
I'm not psychotic any more, so I'm looking forward to staying the entire length of the meeting. Over an hour. Wow!
I told everyone I'd given up drinking and that I felt ill enough to suspect my chemist had been watering my methadoses. I was either in withdrawal or simply sideswiped by an opportunistic infection that synchronized with my giving up drinking. It wasn't hypochondriac; I never realized any connection between no drink and farting like a whizzing balloon until the nurse at the methadone clinic pointed this out, saying I "shouldn't have stopped so abruptly". Well thanks for telling me AFTER the event. All they do is hack away telling you you drink far too much, even though I'd cut down from a peak of 30 units a day to 4 units a day (30 units a day was me bingeing when there was no heroin to buy in the Great Drought of last autumn...) Well I'm really glad not to be poisoned with alcohol any more. I loathed alcohol in my youth. How on earth I ended up drinking the crap I'll never know. Glance along the booze shelves in a supermarket and it all looks really attractive, but that's champagne, Advocaat, Dooleys, Baileys, liquers of all complexions (especially bright blue ones)... and what do people drink?
Beer, beer and boring beer. I was always a red wine drinker. Yes I am middle class to my core. I only went on to cheap white cyder when I was already a heroin addict and so permanently short of cash. I only ever started drinking as Dutch courage for begging up change. I only continued drinking because it potentiated heroin. Heroin was my drug of choice. It all revolved round heroin. I only used coke as a "sparkle in my spoon" ~ again to jazz up the heroin. Coke in heroin was like sugar in tea. And like sugar ~ on its own it was pretty gruesome. Valium was taken as a cheap alternative to heroin, when I did take it. Only later did I take it more regularly and that was as an antianxiety/antimanic agent. Sleepers I took strictly to SLEEP. Not to hang off a lamppost on the high road, gurgling inarticulately not noticing the astonished looks of shoppers ~ at 4pm. No, benzos aside ~ and my benzo-popping was no more drug abuse than taking aspirin for a headache is drug "abuse" ~ my drugs all revolved around Heroin, the central point of it all. Some addicts say they were somehow addicts before they ever took drugs. Well I wasn't! I was an addict because I was idiot enough to try heroin. Anyone who persists with heroin becomes a heroin addict. So my addiction says nothing about me but that I was fool enough to kick it off by trying the shit.
In other words just from wondering whether the wedding is on or off ~ a person can develop a COUGH!!
Another highly intellectual song from Babs:
ADELAIDE'S LAMENT
I took your advice earlier and am steeling myself for applying to work in this charity shop by my house. I have NO REFERENCES except the possibility that Deshane could referee for me. I couldn't ask the druggieservice. That would be obscene, having a methadone clinic vouch for me. For one thing if it were a proper service it would be a Heroin Treatment Service, for another thing telling your employer you're a raving methadone-head isn't a good idea. Even if that employer is a volunteer position with old ladies and half missing cruet sets, dinner services with a plate missing, pink stillettos and Ray Charles albums on vinyl peppered with Barbara Taylor Bradford paperbacks...
Right I'm off. Hope you all had a constructive day.
I'm DETERMINED TO SPEAK FLUENT CHINESE IF IT KILLS ME AND IT FEELS LIKE IT IS KILLING ME NOW. I can't say much more than 请坐！"do sit down" and 谢谢你！"thank you". When I finish that one I've only seven languages to go to fulfill my decalinguistic goal... (and my Mum thinks I have no ambitions in life!!)
I love this, where she bellows
why am I FALLING APART??!?
I KNOW HIM SO WELL
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/the-two-types-of-bipolar-disorder/all/1/
"True, a chemical storm is raging in the brain, but the analogy to the one taking place in the diabetic’s pancreas is totally misleading. Unlike diabetes and other physical diseases, bipolar defines who we are, from the way we perceive colors and listen to music to how we taste our food. We don’t have bipolar. We are bipolar, for both better and worse."
Chinese is difficult. A great endeavor to keep you busy!
ReplyDeleteAnd working (or volunteering) is an excellent idea. Gets you out of yourself. I hope they accept your application.
I hope so too. I wish I had been born Chinese English bilingual now. It would have saved me a hell of a lot of trouble. And let me communicate with approximately HALF the world's population!
ReplyDeleteGleds, I am really glad that you would like to do the volunteer work. It helps to work with others--not so much focus on me but on others. And great about the NA meetings. I have friends in my meetings. It is nice to have someone to talk to and to share with. You will find those people when you keep going back.
ReplyDeleteEveryone seemed really impressed by my change of image. I first turned up at NA looking like a shipwreck. I couldn't even see anyone as I had glasses so bashed up they sat on the skew so I just couldn't wear them. I had hair like a scarecrow and overgrown facial hair that just doesn't suit me. I looked terrible. Now I look human. People say I don't look 39 (because I look 49 ~ nah just kidding. I don't know how old I look but in a good light ten years younger (but doesn't everyone in a good light??)
ReplyDeleteYeah this bloody shop had better give me a job after all this talk. Imagine if they turn me down!!
gleds luv, u do realize, addiction and bi-polar notwithstanding....if u do acheive your goal of seven languages fluently....you WILL be able to get a bang-up job anywhere and buy that house you've always wanted? Every gov't agency wants empyee's who are polylinguists. What a hoot that would be the, wouldn't it? Gleds, working for the bloody government? I flippin LOVE IT!
ReplyDeleteI would love to get a job speaking Chinese and Japanese. If I learn Spanish and Japanese after perfecting German French and Chinese I will have attained goal level one and speak six languages including English. I wanted Cantonese as that's closer to Classical Chinese and Chinese borrowings into Japanese are often more similar to modern Cantonese than to Mandarin which has lost a lot of its final consonants. Eg a country is a "gwok" in Cantonese, a "goku" in Japnese but only a "guo" in Mandarin ~ the final K being missing.
ReplyDeleteI hope I do get a decent job. I really wanted to be a translator. A job you can do in pajamas. No amount of computing will ever obviate the need for a human being overseeing language issues so I'm not worried. I wanted Chinese and German as my two top languages. There should be no lack of work there!
I'm glad you are trying for a job! I hope you get hired. The old ladies may have some good stories to tell you, who knows maybe one of them used to own those pink stillettos.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, good luck with chinese, maybe you can get tutored, here (Texas) we have people at churches who tutor others in languages for free.
I refuse to go into a church, but maybe you're more tolerant than I am.
I wish I could get tutored for free. I could try advertising in the paper. To teach a Chinese exchange student English in exchange for Chinese conversation...
ReplyDeleteMost resident Chinese here speak Cantonese which is about as similar to Mandarin as French is to Spanish. The consonants lost from the end of Mandarin words are still pronounced.
Yeah maybe I'll try and get free Chinese lessons. I really want to finish the book first so I'm at a level where I'm truly helped by these lessons and not just learning something the book could teach me.
There's also a place called the City Lit which does lessons in about 20 languages in up to 7 levels. So once I get beyond the scope of Teach Yourself books I might have to go there...