What I'm trying not to be...

Gott
Oh Gott
Unser himmelischer Vater
Oh Gott
Und mein Vater,
der du ebenfalls in Himmel bist.
Möge das Licht
Dieser flackernden Kerze
Die Nacht erleuchten, so wie dein Geist
Meine Seele erleuchtet
Papa...
Kannst du mich hören?
Papa, kannst du mich sehen?
Papa, kannst du mich des Nachts finden?

Barbra is singing German out of my telly. I am trying not to feel depressed. I'm taking risperidone again. If you read yesterday's dollop you'll know I just found out I'm to grow women's breasts because of the side effects. I just hope they grow by Sunday so I can start out on the game. I really need some cash by the weekend. I'm down to my last £1.

I really wish Anna Grace's Anonymous would send me a gun. Then I would shoot Anonymous then shoot myself, har har. Nah: just kidding. I just made note of my goals: to speak fluent Chinese, Japanese, Cantonese, French, German and Spanish. As well as Greek and Hebrew (to read the Bible in the original). And Latin (to be educated). That makes 10 languages in all including English and I've always wanted to speak 10 languages fluently. I also want to be a bestselling novelist with sales exceeding one billion. I want over £100,000,000 in today's money. I want a house. Or ideally a collection of homes across the world. And I want to get rehoused somewhere posher. And I want £10 to tide me through till Monday. So where do I start?

I looked up Chinese characters last night. I've found a website that teaches the stroke order. Which just to confuse things is slightly different, in some cases, from Japanese. Once you get the hang you know, for example that horizontals tend to come before verticals (so you draw a cross the opposite way round to most Europeans). If you don't bother with stroke order you'll end up with dodgy looking characters.

Oh shit I've cooked sweet chili chicken pizza but forgotten the cloudy lemonade to go with it. Now I've got to blow my last 50p down Morrisons. If I really end up broke I'll have to beg on the streets. Hey they do non-cloudy for 21p. Even chips cost £1.30 a bag. The stingy govt never increased benefits when prices went up. Personally I think the sick and disabled (as well as poor people and unemployed people) should be shot dead to save money for the able bodied. There was some really good dolt on BBC Question Time saying rioters should be thrown out of council accommodation and cut off the dole. Yeah so people who've already demonstrated they're up for theiving and have very little respect for the society they live in ~ they should be made destitute so they're forcedinto thieving off the rest of us. Yeah bright idea. The former chief constable of London pointed out there's already a system where money is taken off benefits it's called a FINE. Fucking idiot people. I think rioters should be pilloried and whipped in minor cases or gassed to death in major ones. If prison is used, nobody should get less than ten years' solitary. And if they run out of cells ~ use London zoo! Prisons should take paying visitors anyhow. Wouldn't YOU have paid £100 to throw sticky buns at child killers like Myra Hindley or nutters like Charles Bronson? Most people would. They could have a torture channel on TV where you bid to be able to remotely operate callipers or red hot pokers on to paedophiles, rapists and especially burglars and muggers.

Do you think I'll get in when I run as Emperor of London? It's my ambition to throw the Queen out of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle and to live there myself.


I'm not really manic. Like I said I'm trying not to be depressed. My friend Pinky, whose hair I wanted to dye varying shades of blue and green like a rocket lolly, phoned me up just now. She can tell I'm not manic any more. I'm no longer ranting and cackling at every opportunity. I wish I could be manic without the chaos. My house was in such disarray earlier I just wanted to curl up and sleep rather than deal with it all. Whenever I sleep I have nightmares about crackhouses up tower blocks.

OK I'm off to Morrisons for that 20p lemonade.... Please someone send me some money. I'm broke till Monday! And no it didn't go on drugs. I haven't spent ANY of my DSS money on drugs. And I gave up the tiny bit I drink about a week ago (don't know what day, don't wanna know). I just want to be able to go to AA as an EX-drinker. NA-wise I'm still a user, as I'm on methadone, which is more addictive and more evil than heroin. If only I won the lottery I'd go to a private doctor for morphine pills. Failing that I'd go back on street heroin and just reduce myself. Better for the mental health. No wonder I'm falling apart ~ methadone does nobody any good. It's appalling stuff. Well I'm stopping this rant before it starts have a nice day y'all...


THE WAY HE MAKES ME FEEL



MY COLORING BOOK

Clean Clothes

I WENT TO THE LAUNDRETTE TODAY ~ at long last. The trip was over 2 months overdue. I've been handwashing and wearing out my dwindling supply of clean clothes for the longest possible time. I trudged my huge tartan bag all the way there, loaded it in the £3 machine quick enough to avoid the uptight assistant who seems to take great joy in telling me I'm overloading the machine. Piled the stuff in. Door shut money in and... It wouldn't start. The surly assistant had to shimmy over and press the door in for ten seconds. With my clothes safely whirlig round I went outside for a cyder and a fag.

Instead of taking my clothes home wet, like I used to when I spent every spare penny on heroin, I actually paid £2.50 to dry them.

I've been in a much better mood since yesterday's outing and encounter with the tiny tits and sparrows down the park.

I had a psychic interlude yesterday that made my head go a peculiar. I felt ill when I posted last night. As I said, I felt like I'd been abusing crack (though I haven't touched crack in a long time). When I did eventually get to sleep, I had vivid dreams about bursting through think ice at the top of the world and falling down from my old school through a crack in reality to the North Pole. I had incredibly vivid dreams until I woke up four hours later at 8am. I didn't want to get up that early. It's Money Monday. I used to get up first thing when I got paid, so I could take my money straight to the heroin dealer. I don't want to be on heroin anymore...

... But I screwed that one up by hitting up £20 in the morning and then another £15 this afternoon. I decided I really need Narcotics Anonymous.

My travels through the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book have taught me that I'm full of what they call "Resentment". In my recent bad mood I've felt resentment regarding just about every aspect of life. I think NA would say this is the bitterness of the addict who's unwilling to live life on life's terms. My thoughts have been full of anger that the one substance that makes me feel OK is not freely on sale from every corner pharmacy. I'm angry at having given in and opted to stick to prescribed oral methadone therapy. As I just might have mentioned before, I loathe being on methadone.

I feel I have cause to feel unhappy about this: medical officials like to say that methadone brings stability to the chaotic lives of addicts. Far from bringing stability, methadone brought me insanity. I was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder when I was on methadone. Surely you need to be pretty UNstable and far gone to warrant that label..?

Here's another point where my experience is at odds with NA's philosophy. NA call active addiction "insanity". But I found madness on methadone therapy, trying to go clean! Though I was unwilling to admit it at the time, my heroin use was a type of self-medication. To me, my drug of choice was a mood stabilizer and antipsychotic ~ and it worked. Opiates do have recognized antipsychotic effects; it's just taboo for the mainstream medical establishment to recognize this fact.

So anyway I've been drowning in this bitterness, which you could label a symptom of depression, or a feature of my drug-addiction. Or both.

Tonight I don't feel bitter at all. Tonight I feel pretty much OK... then I remember I'm stoked up on £35 worth of gear. Maybe I won't feel as good as this tomorrow... who knows? Tomorrow I've decided to go back to NA.

I could have gone to NA tonight, but I found myself trudging back from the carpark where I met my second dealer and hanging outside the venue for tonight's meeting in the rain half an hour before opening, thinking "I've got gear on me, and the meeting won't be over for two hours..." So I took the bus home and decided to leave NA until tomorrow when I'm clean. Tuesday night's meeting is the one I ran out of last time because the room was too crowded with people smelling of bodily secretions.

My life has to hit a turning point sooner or later; only I can do the manoevring to turn it around. I decided I wanted a better life, if I can have one. Problem was, I was depressed enough not to see any future at all. I've decided endless times to push through, "doing the right thing" no matter how bad I feel... But these resolutions were invariably made when I was high on gear. Once the gear had faded and I had only methadone holding me, depression had me powerless in its grip once more and I was too weak, too paralysed, to move on anywhere further than my drug dealer's.

I had a lot of Resentment against NA for having been treated as if I was high on drugs, when I was high on my manic episode. Of course anybody who turns up at an antidrugs meeting hyped up, agitated and very wiry is going to make people think they've been using. That was not the issue. I'm upset with NA because I made it abundantly clear that I was NOT using, yet I still got a slew of comments about "once you drop the drugs..." etc etc.

I hadn't been listened to, hadn't been believed.

I came to NA expecting to find understanding and acceptance. But I don't feel understood, and I feel rejected by them, because THEY could not accept the truth. I brought up NA at a dual diagnosis Nutter Club meeting I used to go to (before it got closed down). Nobody else from Nutter Club ever went to NA. There was one woman who was so depressed the first time I met her that she'd been sitting down the park at midnight thinking it was midday. She had been told she felt that way because she "wasn't working the steps". Another person had been advised to stop taking his schizophrenia medication as it was "using". I caused uproarious laughter by declaring if anyone from NA told me to stop taking my meds, I'd retort "yeah: as long as I come off it in your house". Naomi thought that was hilarious.

NA have definite shortcomings around the mental health issue and the more I pondered them, the angrier I got. In the end I told myself you just have to accept a group like NA for what they are and what they do. They do Recovery very well. Recovery and "learning to live life on life's terms". NA members describe themselves as "clean and serene" and it's their serenity I'm after. They say "if you want what we have..." and I do want it. So I decided I would be wise not to chuck out the baby with the bathwater. And besides, I don't like harbouring resentments.

I'm just annoyed that a "normal" person is allowed to come in and describe their depression or their anxiety, their mood swings or their anger at life. But my mood swings are too "psychiatric", too extreme, to be acceptable to a group like NA. If I were to talk about them in any detail I know I'll be labelled a nutter and subtly pushed away.

If I can't be accepted for who I am, I don't know that I could ever be happy there...

Well I'm still going tomorrow... so I'll let ya know how I get on...


HEROIN AND PSYCHOSIS
Severe dependence on cannabis and psychostimulants is associated with a higher risk of psychosis and is in contrast to severe dependence on heroin, which has a negative relationship with psychosis.
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/181/5/393



illustrated: a tiny tit like the ones in my local park ~~~~~~~~ this one's a blue tit; great tits are slightly bigger (like colourful tubby sparrows)

Dr Ruth is Driving Me Mad

DR RUTH ON CASUALTY IS GOING CRACKERS. I saw her last night on BBC1. I watched the entire long long thing it was longer than comfortable. It drove me mad too.

I don't know what was eating me last night, I got really upset in an odd mentalist way (not the way I used to feel upset before). Which doesn't make me feel good. I feel whatever went wrong is still going wrong but medication is blocking some of it out. That if I wasn't on those meds I'd be totally crazy.

I'm not sure that's true but that's how I felt. I was really going into one. I had drunk 2 or 3 cups of tea and the caffeine seemed to disagree with me. I think I'm going to have to switch to decaffeinated. Tea is my way of avoiding alcohol, so it doesn't feel good to be avoiding it. Also I like tea more than cigarettes and THAT is saying something!

I didn't use heroin last night. I didn't even look for a needle. I don't need heroin.

What I felt last night was a desperation I do not like to feel. I wasn't "depressed" if I was anything I was going too fast and hyper. But my body was exhausted, so I slept eventually and slept for hours. Zopiclone (sleeper) and risperidone (antipsychotic) helped.

I woke up feeling calm and clear but this is the issue. I keep telling myself I'm OK then I realize I am not.

I don't know what I'm going to do.





*******

I am definitely going to AA; I want their Big Book.

*******

PS: £200 in free bets? I was talking about this yesterday. I think I was getting wires crossed. It was £10. I played a £200 game in Fantasy Money. Dur!

The Enemy Without

I NEED to keep a drink diary and a mood diary, I have decided. This should show how wonderful life gradually becomes once the evil substances are flushed down the metaphorical loo.

The best advice I got came today from Jess the Mistress of Mischief and chimes in exactly with my doctor: CUT OUT ALL DRINK AND DRUGS FOR THREE MONTHS. Only after three months clean can they possibly tell what is you and what was and was not drink or drug-induced. Focus on the practicalities of life and the fact you're a problem drinker with a drug problem. In other words go to NA, go to AA. Frequently.

Hey it's past 3pm and I'm wide awake. No sleep last night. My sleep pattern is in tatters and I used the wonders of caffeine to get me through the morning. It did make me very fidgety in the chemists and I'm convinced they thought I was on drugs. Well I was. Black coffee!!! I don't normally drink coffee and barely drink tea. I buy milk that goes off before it ever gets finished, unless I glug it down. I need to switch to tea anyway ~ as a substitute for alcohol. Soft drinks remind me of strong drink too much as I used the fruit flavoured ones as mixers (yes on white cyder ~ makes a budget alcopop, highly addictive!)

I spoke to my Mum today and she said something I thought very perceptive as it highlights the biggest problem I have. Forget any drug or medical terminology it's THIS more than anything that has turned my life into the ruin it is today. And the drugs made it far, far worse. It impossible to explain why I do this and I know junkies get this a lot. My Mum remembers it going back to when I was about four and calls it "autistic". I'm not sure that's the word but what do I care. To be frank I'm amazed she was perceptive enough to notice it's going on, considering she doesn't live with me and it's this:~

I live my life on a constant loop. I have things I do every day and these things I do without too much trouble. The loop is like a railway line with only a few stations. The train goes round and round and only stops at those stations, so I only do the stuff that's in this loop. Anything out of the ordinary involving planning or going anywhere unfamiliar or meeting someone new brings on the worst stress, in fact for a long time I basically avoided ANYTHING out of my limited routine. This includes good stuff as well as bad. When I got sent a parcel I only just made it to the post office in time to pick it up before it got returned to sender. I wouldn't blame my family for being offended at this seeming Don't Care attitude. But it wasn't not caring, it was... something I cannot explain. You can call it laziness if you like. Bear in mind though that nobody who knows me in real life has ever called me lazy. I've been called a lot of things, lazy ain't among them.

So this nameless thing, my dear readers, "autism" or whatever it is, is what I have to work on. The whys and wherefores are immaterial: I need to make it to go away. I didn't used to be that bad. But my Mum thinks it's a lifelong characteristic. This does not however mean that there's no hope.

I spent my entire adult life consciously working on changing myself ~ until drug addiction changed me beyond the point of self-help. I don't despair that this is insurmountable.

With the right degree of motivation and patience, anything is possible. Remember, I specialize in things that require unusual amounts of these qualities. You need them to write a book. And I have written books, even though they were crap. You need them to learn a foreign language. And I've learned a few (badly). All you need do is keep on and on and on in the correct direction no matter how discouraged you may feel, no matter how irrelevant to that particular day the activity may be, you still do it and you go on doing it every single day without fail. And then, in maybe not too long, you'll look back and realized you've done something you never dreamed possible.

*******OK really these links are for other people. Once you've read around this topic, as I say it gets stultifyingly boring. I skimmed through every one and got no real answers. Yeah I got symptoms that match bipolar ones. Bipolar isn't about "mood swings" between "happy and sad"; it's about extreme swings in energy that affect the mood. I'm tired of this subject now. I'm writing for myself as an aide-memoire. My private notes are open for anyone and everyone to see, which makes me slightly circumspect in what I say. I'm fed up of thinking about something that happened that was so immensely powerful it was worse than being hit by a truck. I literally did get hit on the head by a truck some years ago and was so concussed I didn't know what I was doing all week. And yet I was able to count fingers, so I got instant discharge from hospital. What I couldn't do was tell the time, the day or sometimes even where I was. I knew I was forgetting things but obviously couldn't remember what it was I'd forgotten! So at the doctor's office I was at something of a loss to explain myself. My point being whatever happened to me whacked me even worse than that. I felt more badly jolted and jarred than I've ever been in my life from anything. Considering the length of time it lasted, it was the most intense mental state I've ever been in, on or off drugs, including acid, ketamine and crack. Everyone who met me that week thought I'd been piping because that was how I was acting. All hyper and paranoid, unable to calm down. Now I've had enough of talking about this I really am bored with the entire issue. As I say I'm only posting these links in case they help some other person, I glanced through and once you know the basics of coke, and what can go wrong, you'll know this stuff. The video is posted because it's funny.




Now those links. I don't really want to post these I'm so sick of words like "cocaine". But maybe someone somewhere will get some enlightenment from 'em:~

This explains what a mixed state is and isn't. If it can be established that a drug (or drug withdrawal) caused my cuckoo episode then it's called a "substance-induced mood disorder with mixed features"
Substance disorders.
Substance-induced mood disorders.
How much cocaine required to cause psychosis?
Cocaine hallucinosis/psychosis.
Mixed bipolar state: http://www.gulfbend.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=11195&cn=4
Hypomania: a natural state to be in. Euphoric hypomania, which just means mild mania, is NOT an illness, it's merely a medical condition, like having three nipples. On its own it means nothing except that you're blessed with energy, charisma and creativity. But it does unfortunately tend to develop into full mania which is very different. Or to snap into depression, as this link explains: http://www.gulfbend.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=11194&cn=4
Mixed episode, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_episodes

Illustrated: beer; trainset, just like my life, running in circles; Chinese character for money; cocaine as I barely ever took it ~ in "rails" (I love that Americanism)

PS HERE for comparison is the same woman, Trisch, totally sane. See the marked difference in her composure and behaviour. I love her look and the film exposure, doesn't she look amazing: