Wednesday

I WENT TO the damn group yesterday but it was no good, so I left. My shiny new worker did say if it's not for you it's not for you. I'm not up for talking to a room full of people I don't know. In NA you can say your piece or not say your piece, you can wander in and out as you please, you can arrive late and leave early if you like. And most NA meetings seem to be candle-lit these days. This group by contrast is glaringly lit, everyone is in a circle, so people can look you up and down. You have to "check in" (that is introduce yourself). Then they wanted us to speak again! I was not up for that, really not. There's no atmosphere of recovery in the clinic's own group. In NA I'm the dirtiest person in there. In this other group I was pretty much the cleanest. I don't need to be dragged down. I want pulling UP.

I'm taking that risperidone because weirdly I do feel better on it than off it. It's not like antidepressants that take a week or more for even the first stirrings of a mood change. I always responded to antidepressants quickly. That was the trouble. Within 2 weeks I was often high. Not normal but high. I loved this so much I kept it quiet from doctors for years, knowing it probably meant "bipolar". I was terrified of the word "bipolar" so I suffered depression using nothing but heroin. Heroin seemed to work at the time, though I suspect it counteracted depression in the short term and definitely stopped me cycling, it actually kept me in the depressed mood state. I'm now very cynical about what "benefits" heroin might have brought me. I am sure I would be better off if I'd never tried it. Schizoaffective by the way means bipolar that gets psychotic enough to count as schizophrenia. So I think of myself as manic-depressive. There's another type of schizoaffective that only involves depression and that's said to be more severe. The mania actually counteracts some of the schizophrenia, because schizophrenia makes you very apathetic, disorganized and withdrawn. I'm withdrawn in that I hardly socialize. Professionals I have talked to in the past have been fooled because I was more articulate than a person with my problems is expected to be.

Today I have to clear out my rubbish yet again. I was doing OK until I went hyper, then gave up on the idea. Not by thinking "I can't be bothered" more by thinking of 10,000,000 other things that were more fun. Any elevated mood stronger than just borderline actually makes me more disorganized not less. Though I have tons of enthusiasm for many things, it mostly seems to dissipate ~ like spectacular fireworks ~ before anything ever gets DONE.

Script error on this page yet again. I think this computer has it in for me. My own machine is in hiding, waiting on a miniature screwdriver that I can't afford till Friday.

O by the way I tried drinking and I tried using gear on Monday, the day I felt worst. The gear did nothing to me and only after 3 drinks did I feel better. I'm not going back down that route. To alcohol and drug addiction. No thanks. So yesterday and today I'm clean.

Terbinafine Hydrochloride

FINALLY I BOUGHT the right stuff for my rotting feet: Lamasil (terbinafine hydrochloride 1%). There was a 4g tube for £9 called Lamasil Once ~ as the name suggests just one application is required; then I realized Lamasil normal gives you 15g of 1% cream for £6.69 and even though daily application is required for a week, you're getting nearly four times as much medication for less money. So I went with that one. I had been putting Canesten (clotrimazole) on my feet. Strangely with no positive results. As Canesten is indeed an antifungal, but it's meant for ladies with yeast overgrowth "below stairs". I found my tube in a carrier bag full of sparkly body creams, pregnancy tests and essential oils... When I was buying live yogurt Valium Marilyn mentioned she used to put it on her do-dah from time to time; so I said, "don't the black cherries, raspberries and fruits of the forest come drizzling out during the course of the day? And what if you get a giant strawberry up there? You might die of toxic shock!" Marilyn, Dear Reader, was particularly Valium'd that day and didn't realize I was joking. So anyway my feet shouldn't be smelling like a dead toad this time next week.

I went to NA and shared exactly how much drugs I'm on. I didn't want to put this here because it doesn't sound pretty, but I've found myself using heroin just once per week. I'm not proud of this and do not understand why I insist on taking something I cannot even FEEL. But I do, or rather I have. I tend to use the past tense with heroin as between doses I have effectively given up, never intending to use that crap ever again ~ and am therefore psychologically clean. Next weekend (because it's always at weekends) I intend to just stay home and reason to myself that I feel exactly the same as when heroin's in my system. Ie perfectly normal, sober and straight. I feel next to nothing even as it IVs in ~ that's if I ever manage to get a vein, which is a near-miracle now. If I cannot feel that rubbish I might as well not be taking it. But you try telling a raving addict like me something like that. Once the bug to score has bitten me, nothing puts me off. Oh well, if I have it in me I might feel a LITTLE bit better, I reason. And can reason my way into hell. That's why I'm going to NA every day now. I think THAT might keep me clean.

They don't even seem to mind hearing that I had a "nervous breakdown". I don't go into immense detail but I do label myself a "manic depressive". The term "bipolar" disagrees with me. Or I disagree with it. My philosophy is as quoted in yesterday's post; my "illness" ~ unlike any physical illness like a collapsed pancreas ~ IS who I am. So if I sound like I'm defining myself through sickness you're right. Because the condition ~ which is a better and more accurate word than "sickness", which implies all is bad ~ confers energy, power and perception. As well as messing up my life.

I'm more and more inspired to write my intellectual story. I'm plotting in my head. This is FICTION we're talking about. I'm not up for writing memoirs about myself. There are enough people writing about heroin addiction and even more people writing about mental health issues. I want to write about something else. I have a gift for characterization which would be wasted if I confined myself to fact. Fiction gives me the chance to soar.

I think the most positive thing blogging has brought me has been the experience of writing for an audience. Rather than keeping journals in the dark, what I say is heard and remarked on. This has given me confidence to express myself. I know my writing is prosaic compared to some other bloggers and I do not spend all day agonizing over what word goes where (as you can probably tell). You'll notice that the really well written blogs tend to contain weekly posts and not daily ones. That's because nobody has the time to post five hundred words of highly polished prose daily. With me you get the rainbow-glinting mountain stream of my consciousness. That's on a good day. On a bad day it's the swirling polluted urban river in an over-industrialized former communist city! When I write fiction I really take care to polish what I write. I go in for a lot of onomatapoeia, assonance and alliteration when I write for children. This brings the prose alive without the need for over-arcane vocabulary. I have to write for the inner child in us all, rather than a specific kid. I don't actually know any children I can write for. I'm dead set on writing children's books because I feel I can make a contribution to that field. A lot of adult writing is over-garnished with sex, violence and generalized worldliness; and I'm weary of this world. I'd rather write for a more innocent time. I don't care if I'm called twee for doing this. My story will probably NOT feature lesbian single parents, children's homes or divorce. I had a hunt around WH Smiths ~ Britain's biggest bookseller ~ and realized my ideas are unique. And that's inspired me to go on. I don't want to be a me too, somebody writing in the style of another, more established author. I want to be the first ME. If my writing can be half as unique as I am, I'll blow the competition out of the water! The field is wide open and just asking to be shaken up by a New Voice. And I have such a lot to say. I'm plotting my book (a full-length children's novel) as we speak... Full length for children means 20,000 to 35,000 words. It's for 8-12 year olds. The type of book that would be illustrated every few pages by someone like Quentin Blake (if only!) My Mother assumed I had in mind a picture book. No! Children do read novels. I used to. Anyway this is all I have to say on my project. The great thing about novel writing is that the talking and the doing are one and the same. You tell your tale to the page. Which means revealing almost nothing about it to anyone. If they wanna know my story, they can read it!

Righty-ho it's five to eleven and I'm off. Take care y'all....

Illustrated: Lamasil (terbinafine 1%); Jogobella fruits of the forest ~ my favourite live yogurt at 79p for 500g; lithium; NOT the kind of book I'm writing...

SOMEONE THAT I USED TO LOVE



ALL I ASK OF YOU
live studio session



PS THIS is why I am so into German. Look at the GDP of $9.5 billion compared to $6.7 billion for Spanish with all those hundreds of millions of speakers...

Skip paragraph One

Ignore paragraph one in italics if you're fed up of my anti-methadone rants; the post starts in paragraph two:~~~~~~~~~

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."

Clipped Wings (Still)

I'M still feeling like a bird with clipped wings, who should be soaring on a manic high and now, bar the vaguest tinges and little flashes of it, is reduced to sheer drudging normality and laboured workaday ordinariness. This is quite beyond the pale. I know now why I threw my antipsychotics out the window (metaphorically; the only thing that literally went sailing out of my window in mania was a PORK flavoured pizza ~ ukh. Only thing it was any good for was frisbeeing...)

The reason why is I enjoy being primary coloured, bright and brilliant ~ and that's how the manic state makes me not merely feel but be. You have to bear in mind the TWENTY YEARS I spent in various grades of depression (mostly mild). I was so accustomed to feeling depressed that people who "knew" me thought my depressed self was my real self. Which it most definitely is NOT. If anything I'm far more myself as a maniac than a depressive. Which might not say much nice about me, considering how inconsiderate, irritable and overblown I am in that state ~ but it is TRUE.

Of course I don't really think sick and disabled people should be shot. I only believed I should be shot for being a drain on my country and a disgrace to my family. I'm surprised they even want to talk to me. Then I get letters off my Mum saying I appear to have no goals in life at all. This is SO untrue. I am a serious student of Mandarin Chinese and intend to speak Japanese as well as French German and Spanish. All to mother tongue fluency. French is a really good language for those into reading books. German is superior in every way. Spanish is useful. Japanese is famously whacky. And if you don't speak Chinese you're not a citizen of the 21st century world, let's face it.

I just can't believe how LAZY I have been ~ to be NEARLY 40 and not even fluent in Chinese, let alone Japanese or Spanish. I really have been a wastrel. Of course heroin had a large part to play. First thing that put me against heroin was that it made me so incredibly lazy. But what was good about it was that heroin made life, for the very first time, make sense. Then again it made me weak and cowardly. I used to be very strong. Considering how strong-willed I used to be against my weirdo self. Everybody who knew me knew I was a weirdo. And you wonder why I talk about suicide!! Heroin was the only thing that made my warped personality fit. Even my psychiatrist said this when personality disorders were mooted.

Unfortunately I it no personality disorder except Cyclothymic Personality (ie bipolar lite). I have bipolar lite whenever I don't have bipolar heavy. That is I have a mood swing of some degree almost all the time. I only speak to my family between them, which means waiting weeks to call, sometimes.

My mother, who has "major depression" says she never feels fully 100%. This is called "dysthymia" (a mildly low mood). I heard that first degree relatives of someone with unipolar depression have a 25% chance of having a major mood disorder 50:50 recurrent major depression or type 1 bipolar. I would be type 1 bipolar (if I'm not schizoaffective). Schizoaffective disorder and type 1 bipolar are almost identical and the treatments for them are the same. So there's not very much in the name. Anna Grace has bipolar I and her symptoms and mine are nearly the same. Maybe I get a bit more manic than her, but she's on more medication damping that mania down...

Schizoaffective just means I meet full diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia when I'm severely manic. It means I have Kraepelin's "delusional mania" (which is actually marked by vivid hallucinations, not delusions, but that's what it's called). I've been reading Emil Kraepelin's Manic-Depressive Insanity And Paranoia to find myself. And I don't like what I found. He diagnoses me as a moody so-and-so with manic and hypomanic attacks on top. I don't think I ever get depression, not by the standards of the early 1900s. My depression is only a mild case. And suicidality can be a rational act of someone with nothing left to live for ~ even psychiatrists acknowledge that.

Note I'm not saying I want to commit suicide. My moritorium is on. I feel about 5% manic and not depressed. I was quite manic last night but the risperidone blanked that out, when I took it. I get the daily Risperidone Mood Swing where I feel it wearing off each evening, going higher and higher until I bosh it back and am damped down like a Sucker Loach in a community fish tank. Sucking on that glass, bored out of my brainbox (don't loaches and catfish get bored? Skulking about the community tank as they do...?)

If you're reading this blog and still wondering about my personality I'd say I'm like Phoebe from Friends. Hippy Dippy on the outside, hard as nails on the inside (if you think Phoebe isn't hard, watch Friends again and more carefully...) I've been told a few times that I'm hard. Always by people who didn't know me so well, now know me better. Always with a note of disappointment. I say if I were as soft on the inside as on the outside I'd be a fucking lump of jelly. Better to be a wolf in sheep's clothing than vice versa. Anyway there's nothing wrong with being hard. We live in a hard world.

I had a yen to test my alcohol resolve yesterday. So I had a can of weak cherry flavour cyder. The one I used to knock back because it was "mandy drink". Dear reader: it took me THREE HOURS to finish the lousy stuff and I still don't enjoy drink. It reminds me too much of sad-sacks street drinkers. I met one yesterday. A woman who was too vulgar for words and thought "I used to be like that". Ukh. I LOATHE the image of alcohol and drinkers it's untennably vulgar. The big reason I preferred drugs was that I hated alcohol and needed SOME recreational substance. Ecstasy was infinitely superior in my book. E made me feel like Buddha on a transcendental cloud of peace and love. Drink never did that for me. And I was never one of those psycho people who has a complete personality change after one drink and suddenly insists on drinking the bar dry. That's my big quarm with NA; they believe any drug of any description sets off the entire disease process again and I don't. I took drugs to feel better. Not to be off my head. Only terminal junkies are so far gone they want nothing short of general anaesthesia. Heroin gave me what I believed to be an enhanced ability to cope with life. Of course I ended up not coping at all. So heroin goes out the window too... I can't believe I'm dumping heroin. You have to be truly mad or desperate or both to give up a drug as efficacious as heroin. So maybe I have finally lost it. My dr does after all believe I'm schizo...

I've swapped alcohol for Morrisons' own cloudy lemonade; 54p for 2 litres ie 27p a litre or just over 10p a can. Very good value.



Notice no Barbra Streisand!



Video version:

I love techno choirs!

Sorry if this is yet another boring post saying nothing new; my life is boring and samey, but I do like this techno track..........

I get to see Deshane tomorrow. He's getting me a pensioner's bus pass. Wahey!!
OK it's a Disabled Bus pass but I hate saying I'm disabled. It means I'm scrounging off the state. Even though I found out I've been "disabled" for years. It's that fucking mania that disables me. Makes me too lazy for words. Schizo gives me avolition. Depression makes me not bothered. Add those 3 together and you have a wreck of a person who can blog about life yet never lives it. And that's that!

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

Back from NA (ears open)

NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS was packed out. I kept my ears open and my mouth shut. I heard a lot about Resentments. I have realized from reading the AA Big Book that I'm full of Resentment. The more depressed I feel, the angrier I feel; the more resentful I feel towards nearly everything. Then I start to wonder whether I'm clinically depressed at all and not just a plain old Junkie, mired in self-deception, overflowing with Resentment in all directions. Now I realize I'm probably resentful and depressed at the same time. If I am self-deluded, I cannot by definition know that, can I?

What Resentment do drug addicts cultivate? Resentment at not being able to live life on life's terms. That phrase came up a lot tonight. Life on life's terms. Not something I'm at all good at.

One reason I'm keeping my mouth shut at meetings is that I'm afraid that anything I do say may be half listened to and used against me.

Example: self-medication.

Warning: to avoid yet another Junkie Rant, skip the italicized section... If it seems badly written, btw, it's because not even I am willing to read it back. So it stays as it was...

On a bad week people will assume I'm on drugs when I'm not. Then when I do use, they would seem pretty taken in if I claimed to be drug-free. Because when I use heroin I feel happier, calmer, less paranoid and my mood doesn't swing all over the place quite so much. To me this is the meaning of self-medication. It means using nonprescribed drugs as medication. It doesn't mean using drugs to chase a euphoria; it means using drugs to cope. Totally different thing. When I mentioned self-medication, a concept I took a long time to accept, at Intuitive Recovery, the group leader said "yeah I self-medicated with crack after my sister died". And that annoyed me. I've never ever seen anybody self-medicate with crack because crack doesn't have the effect of any medication. People who abuse uppers tend to burn themselves out pretty early. What goes up must come down; so they're chasing an impossibility, and most addicts realize this pretty quickly. Heroin always made me feel better all day, even when I just took a tiny bit on top of my methadone. It stabilized my mood for a long time. It doesn't seem to do that any more, which is why I think I'm wasting my time by taking it. There's a mood stabiizer called lamotrigine (Lamictal) which works better against depression than mania. That's the one I'd be willing to try. A mild state of mania isn't a mental illness at all. I need the energy of mania without psychosis or uncontrollable excitement it gets to at its extreme. Then I'd be OK.

The phrase "self-medication" by the way came from the same nut-nut-nurse who seemed to think I had some sort of personality disorder. I told her, eventually, how lousy I felt on methadone and she said "maybe you're self-medicating" ~ then did absolutely nothing to try and rectify the problem. The way she nurtured the idea I was somehow an anxious-avoidant or dependent personality is ridiculous. That's mistaking me for somebody who gives a shit. People with those types of personality tend to be unduly hung up on others' view of them. If I were like that, I'd hardly be keeping a blog like this now, would I?

I'm still in 2 minds whether or not to write an autobiography. I never wanted to be a memoirist. I don't really want my experience published. I suppose I'd be willing to prostitute myself in a literary way for the money. And to put into the world a cautionary tale that might hopefully put off at least one impressionable unhappy person from ever following in my footsteps. It's true the idea only came to me in a fit of despair. I wanted to leave behind a suicide note that might make my family some cash, and of course if I were to die, the manuscript would be many times more saleable. If I don't die [oh bloody hell shut up will you. I'm not intending to die! I won't die. I won't!} then I'll use any cash I get to pay for private treatment. That means an injectable script, tapering down down down to Subutex. I wouldn't go to rehab, I'd go travelling instead. I'm not at all convinced that whittering on and on about my drugs problem is any way of staying clean (which is why I'd write the memoir while still dirty (methadone-dirty, at least). If I did ever manage to come off all opiates I think once I got 100% clean, I would want to stay as far away from them as possible ~ in thought as well as deed. Anyway maybe I should write my own misery memoir: I can't think of any other constructive thing to do...

Another reason I want to write my own memoir: I'm not convinced there are that many good ones. Certainly not drug-memoirs. I couldn't sell mine on the strength of my nutter credentials because my nutter-credentials are weak. While there's no question I'm a full-blown heroin addict I barely score a 2 on the nut-nut richter scale. I think in publishers' terms (and publishers do like to put things in categories) I'm more of a drug-addicted lost soul than a proper madman.

I did have all manner of ideas of how to promote my book, which I can't give away here because nobody's ever done them. But couldn't do them now. Because if I did try and publish my story I'd most definitely want to remain anonymous. Some of the worst details are just too awful to put my name to. I mean, at one point I just gave up on life so completely I was like a walking shadow. All I wished for was that I might die in the night, and I never did. Which angers me to this day when I think about it. There's so much that I don't want to think about that I'm going to have to, simply to be able to put it down in roughly chronological order, one self-inflicted misery and misfortune flowing from the next. But I'm willing to torture myself if I can get some cash out of it. I honestly can't see what proper job I'm ever going to be fit enough to do. So I'm willing to try my hand at writing. I always wanted to be a novelist when I was younger. Maybe I should write Valerie's memoirs too... Now we come back to the issue of drugs. I don't want to make a name for myself as a drug author or drug addict. Which is why I think I'd wish to remain anonymous. For a long time I didn't want to write a drug-memoir at all... Then I realized I wanted to leave behind at least one thing after I died... So maybe I should just write the fucking thing and leave the reasoning-out till afterwards.

Well I've gotta go. It's late.

Electroboy review. Knowing the outline of the book, despite not having read it, this review encapsulates many of my own reservations about Andy Behrman's story... Is he really a manic-depressive, or just a drug addict?
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3UX8FSBM70MWR/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R3UX8FSBM70MWR


TALES OF THE RIVERBANK
To any of you of Christian bent, I do apologize for the Drought story yesterday btw, in which Hammy consults a wicked guinea pig witch in order to bring downpour to the riverbank....

LITTER BUGS
A hamster, a rat and a guinea swine go off in a hot air balloon...



GP'S MEDICINE

IT'S HALF PAST SIX. I'm about to go out to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. First one in nearly 2 weeks.

Buggalugz sent me a wondrous Tales of the Riverbank link. Tales of the Riverbank is about a hamster, a rat and a guinea swine who go on adventures by the riverbank where they live.

I particularly like Hammy's scenes in the diving bell and the toy aeroplane they ride in.

You can see two episodes if you scroll down to yesterday. Am I the only person having problems watching Youtube screens I've already embedded? When they don't play you can click the lower righthand corner and bring them up on a separate page; then they tend to play.

Last night I was in bed by 6pm; I slept right through and woke up in a bad mood, having forgotten to take methadone. So I took it and spent two hours feeling like a manic-depressive ice-block as I irritably waited for it to take its tardy effect. Then I went down the Post Office, got out some money and crowded home and watched Jeremy Kyle. By 10am I was so miserable I only wanted to go back to bed, so I took off my trainers and went to bed with coat and hat still on, where I stayed until 2. Deshane came round but I had no idea who was ringing the door-buzzer so I paranoidly declined to answer. I thought it was the council calling by to persecute me.

At 2:30 I got a call from my friend Pinky (Perky's ex) who wanted to borrow £20. So I lent her £20 and got her to score for me, which she did. The gear she was buying sounded crap and I would have cancelled the order if only she'd described in advance how lousy it was.

Anyway I took it home and banged up in my foot and now I'm in a better mood than before. I'm still going to NA. Everyone who has any association with AA or NA assumes I'm a terminal drunk when I reveal to them that I'm still drinking and that I drink every day and that I can't stop. By "can't stop" I mean I can't go a day without a single drink. I don't mean that once I start I continue knocking it back until I collapse in a cataleptic stupor. I had drink when I woke up this morning, but aside from one single swig, I couldn't face imbibing anything bar chicken and vegetable cup-a-soup (with croutons).

Because Pinky has the most miserable and upsetting life-story I've ever heard I offered to write it up as a book for her ~ and to my surprise she said yes. I'm also penning my own life story. Not because I think it's at all interesting, but because I want my family to profit from my misery when I die. I only had the idea in a fit of suicidal angst and thought the coroner's report would make a fantastic epilogue to my life. Maybe I shouldn't be saying this but I've told you everything else. I don't really like analysing what I did when and why, which is of course what you have to do to write a memoir. That's the stumbling block I encountered last time I tried. But if I don't write it and I die, my life will have been in vain. I want my family to profit from my death. And if I don't die and it does come out in print, I'd use the cash to get a private script for injectable methadone and morphine pills. Oral morphine is used as a private treatment for those who don't respond well to methadone (like me). The sustained release tablets need only be taken twice a day and would make you feel as though you'd hit up heroin at some indistinct time earlier. Rather than the spurious hold methadone has over you (complete with sweats, mood swings and hallucinations) morphine is well known to give addicts "a better quality of life" than rubbishy old methadone. I'd only ask for methadone because when prescribed privately you can ask for injectable 50mg/1ml amps which are of course far more likely to quench the urge to use on top as you've already had a hit. The NHS used to give out injectable methadone to intractable cases such as mine, but as my worker confirmed, nowhere in London does nowadays. In this day and age you're only allowed a chance if you go private, so it seems.

I don't mind methadone triggering mood swings, by the way: just as long as they're manic ones not depressive ones. Or that I don't get too manic, or too irritable. That's the only bad thing about mania: it's too unpredictable and uncontrollable. It isn't happiness (a good mood, versus a depressive bad mood) ~ it's excitement and excitement doesn't always feel great. I'd still rather be manic than depressed. Only a week or so ago I was so hyped up I was laughing uncontrollably at every opportunity. And there seemed endless opportunities for laughter. Now there are none at all and I fear over and over again that I'll have to give in and submit to mood stabilizers.

I can't read or watch or think about anything to do with ordinary life because everything makes me irritable or angry. Because it's not done right. The only things I can stand to occupy me are the Japanese language and hamsters. Everything else annoys me. So if I carry on in this bad mood I should be fluent in Japanese in no time at all.

I finally found a proper textbook (typically no accompanying CDs are available) that teaches the language from scatch in its proper script: that is, in standard Japanese orthography: kanji with hiragana and katakaa as appropriate. Not all in kana, like some Japanese textbooks. It's called Japanese for Everyone by Susumu Nagara and I found it here.

I also wanted to order Electroboy by Andy Behrman and The Quiet Room by Lori Schiller while I was at it. Both are psychiatric memoirs. Electroboy is about bipolar mania; The Quiet room is about schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (nobody appears to understand which). Probably I shouldn't be reading stuff like that, but I thought it might inspire my own drugs memoir. Electroboy has two covers: an electric yellow one, with the title in huge capitals, which I really like; and a really soppy arty one. If I wrote a book like that and had another manic episode I coudln't promise not to turn up at the publishers and shoot whoever OK'd that ridiculous cover between the eyes. It shows a really stupid face wearing a black hat, which is supposed to represent a the electric couplers on ECT machines. (ECT being a treatment for acute mania as well as depression; hence the title.) Poxy book covers are, in my opinion, an even worse crime against nature than cup-a-soup without croutons.

By the way the author of Electroboy claims to have taken huge amounts of cocaine while manic. How the hell he was able to do this and engage with life in even the most desultory way I cannot understand. One day when I was hyper I drank five cups of coffee in a row (I thougt I was tired). I then spent what felt like several days roaring like a wild animal, so deranged I had lost the ability to think in English. If I had taken coke in that state I doubt I'd ever have come back down to earth. (Some might say I still haven't.)

Well I'd better go. I have an NA group to attend and a memoir to ponder over (lots of thinking, no writing; that would be me). I've decided to write it as quickly as humanly possible just to get it over and done with. Apart from the money I'm only writing it as a cautionary tale to put the impressionable and destitute off ever experimenting with drugs the way I did. I don't think my life is fascinating and I don't think it's unusual. I just think I could tell the story well. If I set my mind to it. Pinky's story is far more interesting than mine. I'm really surprised she said she didn't mind her real name going against it. I'm not putting my real name on mine!


TALES OF THE RIVERBANK

THE DROUGHT
Hammy gets rained on and looks really cute



SAY CHEESE!
GP, the guinea swine makes a camera and a white guinea swine in a top hat takes everyone's picture...
ps has anyone noticed how Hammy looks like he's about to keel over from sheer exhaustion at any moment?
Hamsters are nocturnal and this was shot by the glaring light of day...

No, no, no!

THIS is from the Inspectors' Report of behaviour in the dining room at my old boarding school. Just before it got closed down:



Frequently the pupils [those are students to you Americans!]
simply thrust their hands into their plate, fall upon the
common dish, hurriedly stuff their mouths as full as possible
and swallow their food down almost without chewing, or
the spoon is grasped quite lightly with their finger-tips, often
at the extreme end and the handle is used for eating; their
food is invariably stirred about with their forks two or three
times before each mouthful, the vegetables are divided into a
row of equal little heaps, their hands are first wrapped up in
their coats, their nose is stuck into the soup, or there must be
a mouthful drunk between each two mouthfuls of food till
twelve are counted and so on. Others lap the soup like a
dog or pour it with profuse spilling into their mouth without
more ado, press the vegetable dish flat on to their face and
steadily lick it clean. One of the pupils took hold of the
spoon quite correctly with the right hand, but brought it
round her head by the left side to her mouth ; another crept
under the bed cover at meals.


TRAUMATIZED by these horrific schooltime memories, I've been reluctant to go back to instututional life, which is why Rehab has been out of the question.

Nah. Real reason was I couldn't hack the detox. I was out that door quicker than you could say "Giro day!" That's right. Every time I knew more money I was in the bank, there I was in tears of euphoric disappointment, fleeing to the railway station and straight to my dealer, who happened to serve up right behind my local tube station. The celebratory hit was tiny: I divided half a gram in three. I only took 2/3 of my hit and even that knocked the living crap out of me. I remember my friends shaking me awake to say they were leaving me with the TV and purring black cats as they had to do something (probably buy some crack). Y'see contrary to the rumours and lies I tried to disseminate to myself I had actually made a big effort to cut down my using to 12x 30mg DF118s (dihydrocodeine) (4 pills every 4 hours) and one £10 bag of heroin (0.2g) daily. The gear I used that week wasn't the best, but it was my firm intention to cut down, so I saw weak gear as a blessing in disguise. Paid-for willpower, if you will... The morning I left to go to rehab, a friend wanted to see my dealer and gave me either £10 or £20 worth... I can't remember, but it was my Proper Dealer, who served up behind the tube station and his gear blew me away. I was so high on that train journey down to the South Coast, I almost got my head knocked off leaning out the window as we whooshed into various tunnels. I had an entire oldfashioned compartment to myself to smoke cigarettes in. It was a breezy summer's day (very breezy with the window wide open!) I felt wonderful.

I slept like a baby the first night through. I was still high the next day. The doctor said "sometimes the angels are with you" and I thought: wow!

Then, on the evening of my first full day, withdrawal kicked in. I slept barely at all. Or the next. I watched everybody else sprawled unconscious, mouths wide open as if to catch flies (everybody else, who claimed not to sleep a wink. Everybody else who did the best impression of snoring decrepitude I've ever seen!)

The night staff were in no state to talk to me, having worked all day. So I was left alone and tormented by constant suicidal urges in a kitchen full of knives and icepicks (we got through a lot of cold drinks in our tiny smoking area-cum-back yard) and temptingly breakable glasswear and crockery. I had the recurrent urge to gash my throat, cut my wrists, hang myself. And no sleep. Despite everything no, no sleep. It was awful.

Mornings with breakfast TV and then all the crap on BBC1 that reminded me being round my friend's house (where I used to show up like clockwork Monday to Friday waiting for the man)... Midmorning television without the faintest chance of a hit! Intolerable! It was like waiting for a dealer who never came. When eventually I got it, far too late for my ragged system, the meds (dihydrocodeine) did hold me. But by then my resolve was shattered. My mind was firmly tuned to the Using Channel. Would I have to live the entire rest of my life like this? Never feeling any better? Never plunging beautiful gear through a shiny new needle into my glorious veins ever ever again? I just couldn't live like that.

Can't live with gear; can't live without it. Except I could live with it. And for another seven years, I did. I had almost no semblance of a life to speak of, but I did have my glorious, wondrous heroin every single day of every week of every year, year after year. My attempts to stick to methadone during this period were halfhearted to say the least. If they could at least have prescribed it in an injectable form (which private doctors still do in the United Kingdom) it might have soothed the itch to inject at least. As it was, drinking 50 or 60mg (which is all my script was back then) of sticky gloop just didn't cut the mustard when the streets of London were flooded with the cheapest, best quality gear they'd ever seen. At that time a "sixteenth" (of an ounce, which actually weighed a gram and a half) could be had for as little as £45 (in fact, my hazy memory tells me it might have been as low as £40 from one particular bastard I gave thousands to...). That's $60 or so. And a gram was £30 ~ just over $45...

O how vivily I recall the soft aroma of Afghan fields, the golden glow of poppies washing over and through me, making me feel purified and clean. (Heroin doesn't feel rough or jagged or dirty at all, it feels like the softest and most benign of all drugs... until you try to sever relations. Only then does it truly show its ugly side!) The first kiss of the needle ~ and life itself came rushing into my veins. O, how I adored heroin! How could I ever stop it?

Well now I'm old and faded and wearied and grey. I'm looking for a new existence. I'm beginning to think the only way there might be via rehab... Trust me, this is far from a knee-jerk reaction. I have a plethora of issues surrounding rehabs. From the uncomfortable fact that most of them appear to be run to suit the convenience of staff more than "peers" (as they're called in there). To the long night hours of torment as the drugs drain inexorably out of you. No hope of anything exciting to take the pain away. Not now, not ever. I was as galvanized, and resolved; my mind was made up as firmly as it was possible to be when I went before, not once but TWICE. Yet at the first opportunity I ran away and thoroughly enjoyed "relapsing". Drug addiction is the only illness I know of where a relapse is undiluted fun. It certainly was for me. NA's mantra that "one meeting and you'll never be able to use the same way again" (their implication being that you'll be riddled with discomfort and guilt) never washed with me. I understood Recovery and the 12-step process as well as any using addict whose never been able to clean up long enough to actually put the philosophy into practice ever could. And yet I used with gusto. Heroin didn't just feel like life itself, it WAS my life. I've never loved anything or anyone the way I loved heroin. I absolutely adored it. As long as I had it, it never let me down. The problems were invariably caused by dealers, who charged too much, watered it down, didn't come when they said they would... etc etc etc. That's the way I saw it.

Somehow, heroin and I are falling out of love. To be honest, I'm bored of it. When you consider that in actuality the drug is giving you a pleasantly and very slightly comfortably exaggerated version of normality... you might as well learn to live without it and get your normality free of charge from life. Then at least you know your wellbeing is not being held in the hands of ruthless criminals who could snatch it away any time they please (as they did do, last Autumn, when they effectively droughted the entire UK heroin market. There was no good heroin on sale anywhere at all. Only people who had imported their own supply or were personal friends of people who had done, still had gear. The rest of us went without. I didn't even bother touching it for... I can't remember how many weeks. It felt more like a year. I learned to live without heroin. Even though I had the crutch of methadone, I never felt it did very much for me. I'm fed up of methadone more than I'm sick to death of heroin. I don't want either one. I want whatever comes next...

Which might have to be rehab.

I can't stomach a "normal" rehab, it would have to be a place geared to taking on dual diagnosis clients ~ that is, people with "mental health" "issues" alongside their addictions. Every single time I've attempted to come off opiates I've felt like the rug has been pulled from under me. Every single time I had some manner of "breakdown". Every time. No way could I handle losing my marbles in front of a bunch of hatchet-faced crack-addicted housebreakers and prostitutes. Not again. This time, they have to be my kind of addicts: yes, nutter junkies!

I emailed one place yesterday morning and got a reply back saying they could reduce me to 30mg methadone and switch me over from that to Subutex, so I detox from Subutex to nothing. Which is a far brighter move than methadone to nothing. Subutex is very easy to reduce. It's an agonist-antagonist to the brain's opiate receptors, meaning the body is already ready for being clean. Methadone is particularly "sticky", hanging around for far longer than heroin, meaning the withdrawals last considerably longer. In other words, it's harder to come off. Methadone is only prescribed because it's cheap and can be dosed orally once a day. Most opiates require at least twice-daily dosing. A one-a-day hydromorphone (Dilaudid) pill is available for heroin addiction, but it's not given in Britain ~probably on grounds of cost.

Subutex is a different story. You do the nasty suffering when you go ON Subutex. I felt desperately ill. But very rapidly it swooshes into the body, working its own peculiar magic. Best thing about Subutex is, it gave me a euphoric high that I now know was almost certainly a mild bipolar mood swing. It had all the same characteristics: 4 hours sleep a night. Mood most intense in the mid-morning. Constant excited feeling. Music sounding amazing. It only lasted a few days, but it got me through the awkward transition phase, when body and brain acclimatize to a radically different medication, with ease. Tapering off Subutex to nothing, so I'm told, is far easier than methadone discontinuation, so I wouldn't be worried about that.

My email warned me that methadone might be acting as a mood stabilizer, and I can grudgingly accept that it probably does. Heroin stabilizes my mood far more effectively, but methadone probably does do something. So my medication(s) might have to be reassessed prior to and during detox.

Here (really for my information, but I put the list up in case anyone else is looking) are some of the best rehabs I looked up. Castle Craig Hospital in Scotland even do Trotterdonkey Therapy (better known as Equine Therapy)..!

I would quite like to do beekeeping and hamster-keeping. Imagine window set into the wall, viewing right into the buzzing bee colony?! Imagine a big tank of robos pinging around on their wheels atop the rehab telly..? Well here's hoping...

And BTW I go back to Narcotics Anonymous on Monday. I'm still feeling VERY reticent about what I might and might not share. I really found the reaction to my Manic Self rather offputting. But ho-hum. You live and learn...


UK rehab directory
http://www.addictionhelper.com/what-to-expect/9/What-to-Expect:-Dual-Diagnosis-Treatment

Castle Craig Hospital, Scotland
http://www.castlecraig.co.uk

Promis, Kent
http://www.promis.co.uk/enquiries

ANA
http://www.anatreatmentcentres.com/index.html

St James Priory (Walsingham House) dual unit, Bristol
http://www.stjamesprioryproject.org.uk/13.html

Loudon House dual unit, Ayrshire, Scotland
http://www.piramhids.com/case-studies/view-casestudy?resid=674

List of rehabs in Scotland
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2004/11/20231/46408

Park View, Salford, Manchester resiential home (is this ia rehab?)
http://potensial.co.uk/locations/park-view-salford



CAFE DEL MAR: ENERGY 52
classic ibiza trance tune:~

first here's the original tune "3 in 1 version"



OUT OF OFFICE
moi, j'adore cette version; c'est la vraie signification de l'euphorie....


PAUL OAKENFOLD


MICHAEL WOODS
this is the meaning of U4EA

Rhubarb and custard pie..!

I WENT TO NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS YESTERDAY... at long last! I arrived there late (as per usual). I found myself having to sit right at the front with people behind me (as per usual). People in the meeting were making me paranoid (as usual). And I missed the chair (as usual) ~ that is my favourite bit, when somebody tells their life story about getting on drugs, getting off them, what happened and why. I love the chairs. I didn't say anything but the guy next to me piped up in newcomers time to say he'd just come outof the lunatic asylum with depression and was being treated by the Nutters At Home psyche team. I was really glad to hear that.

Then a woman spoke up about taking her friend's mother into hospital. Her friend's mother was seriously ill with... schizophrenia. I'm keeping my mouth shut about being schizo. It was quite a revelation to realize it's not a crime to be mentally ill at NA. That's certainly how it felt when I had prominent "issues" of my own. They all thought I was on drugs and more than one told me so. They never listened to anything I had to say, eg if I told somebody afterwards, "I can't take any drugs now" they'd interrupt "of course you can't" probably meaning "because you're like me, and taking drugs will set you off back on the road of addiction". But that isn't why I can't take most drugs. They make such an obvious mess of my head I'm averse to touching them again. Addiction doesn't come into it. Nauseated loathing and aversion very much does.

It's day 2 of my pill-popping escapade. Even though I posted about going back on them last week, I held off, hoping for a hypomanic miracle that might lift me on my own.

I still have distracting thoughts around the exterior of my mind ~ mostly on the right hand side. They're not as loud as the voices even yesterday, so maybe the pills are working. I bought some Valium to wash them down. Why Valium? Well you try taking heavy antispychotics without it. Having to stay awake while your brains are chemically coshed really isn't pleasant and 4mg risperidone from nothing really does feel like concussion ~ minus the headache, but all the brain-whirling dizziness, confusion et cetera all the same. It's not the pleasant wooziness some smackheads seem to enjoy, it's an overpowering feeling of being bashed on the brainbox. I wish the Nutter Club was still going so I had a forum to complain about this to people who understand. I only took 3mg risperidone yesterday, thinking it might make me a little less wuzzy. Tonight I'm thinking of taking all 4 again, but I'm scared of being out of action tomorrow. On Monday I felt done in for the first half of the day. Almost too unsteady to want to risk walking up the street. With time all these side effects diminish, except for the effect risperidone has on sleep. It doesn't make you go to sleep, so it's no good for initial insomnia. But it does keep you under once you get TO sleep.

My friend Buggerlugz has EIGHTEEN tiny roborovski hamsters pinging in all directions in tiny hammy lairs. They keep breeding and having trotterdonkey babies. One is named Reggie, another is named Anchovy. I think Anchovy was meant to be a boy but she's a girl. I thought my "Baby" Itchy Roborovski was a boy at first and persuaded her to walk around on a CD case so I could check this. She was most offended at being examined in this manner and bunnyhopped on the floor and would have pinged away if I hadn't chucked a towel upon her.

And did you know baby hamsters are called Pups. They look like baked beans with paws?...?





Here's Bashful, Itchy and Spherical in one of their old nests before they died. They had about five or six nests on the go at once. Itchy is the drowsy one who looks like she's been nibbling at the risperidone... She used to hear voices saying "Have you been trotting on your wheel?" and "come here you furry swine!" but they weren't schizophrenia; they were me!

I've been scoffing Mr Kipling's rhubarb and custard pies with Cornish Dairy ice cream. They're really nice. Yes I decided to break my diet a bit. There's something really miserable about depriving yourself of food. I lost about 11 pounds but Valium Marilyn's scales aren't very good. You have to bang them twice then clamber upon them. Marilyn has lost a lot of weight, having been in hospital; she looks like a little old lady now. She's depressed because her Mum and Dad both died a few years ago and their house was her refuge from Nasty Old Life... and it's not there any more. Her son stole 3 or 4 strips of temazepam 20s off her. We had to go right through everything looking for them. He's in his late 20s and still smokes cannabis ~ hashish would you believe. Why on earth anybody would voluntarily smoke that psychosis-causing gunk is anybody's guess. Marilyn rants about how harmless it is, yet she never smokes it. There's even a "Cannabis is Food of the Gods" type movement that believes spliffs should be used in mental healthcare instead of stuff like Valium. The sort of people who believe this have never tried Valium and never had a mental health problem. If they had, they'd know cannabis is the LAST thing any psychotic person with half a brain would want to smoke... though having said that I do recall clearly how the 2 favourite drugs in the mental hospital were 1: cannabis (by a long way) and 2: CRACK COCAINE... the 2 street drugs most liable to bring on extreme paranoia are used recreationally by paranoiacs themselves! But not all these people get full-on symptoms in every conceivable way. I once asked one whether something had ever happened to him that happened to me when I went mad ~~ and he looked at me like I really had a screw loose! His symptoms were probably more extreme than mine in many ways... but just different.

Yesterday's NA really helped me focus on WHY I want off these drugs I'm so hooked on. People remind me why I want to stop them, by telling how their lives were messed up.

I pingpong between believing heroin should be legalized and on sale from vending machines and thinking that all addicts ought to be executed by lethal injection (of heroin).

I still have a huge mark at the top of my thigh like a cigar burn. Originally it had a pussing head, but now it's scabbed over. I picked the first scab off but a beautiful second scab has appeared. There's a huge volcanic lump under it that I keep squeezing in the hope some pus might ooze. But it's totally dry. It's not disappointing not to have an abscess, but when I do have one, I most certainly get value for money out of it, with all the kneeding and squeezing and pus-milking.

This song was going round my head as I walked home from the chemists in a thunderstorm:



MADONNA: WHO'S THAT GIRL

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)

Black coffee

IT'S 1:57AM. Some coffee I drank went straight to my head. I only drank 2 cups, several hours apart. I thought it was meant to be good to drink coffee, because it's not alcohol. How come it has to disagree with me so..?? I felt more energized than euphoric and my mood plunged down. I found myself posting in somebody's comments about female drug addicts who have babies and the whole issue is too depressing for words. And I wish I hadn't posted up my thoughts about death and dying here. It all seems incredibly childish, I know. I don't know what else I would have posted though.

Tomorrow there is a Narcotics Anonymous meeting I can get to easily. So I'm probably going. I can't see any future in using heroin. Why on earth I ever started it, I'm not sure. That is a stupid thing to do.

I wish I would sleep, but it probably won't happen for a while. I feel like I've got a crack comedown: depressed and wiry at the same time. I never was a big crackhead. The effects of that stuff are so negative it was never something I wanted to have a big part in my life. I only say I was "addicted" to it in that I found it hard to kick it completely. For a long time I only bought one £10 rock a week ~ that's the smallest rock you can usually buy. I have barely any good memories of heroin and none at all of crack.

I lived in a crackhouse for a few years and saw what it does to heavy users. Even when it doesn't send people clinically psychotic it leaves lives in far worse tatters than heroin does. In fact I'd say that in the short time that I speedballed and smoked it heavily, it erased the small amount of joy that was left in the life of a heroin addict. It's nasty, nasty stuff; I wish I had never gone near it.

O well: tomorrow is another day.

PS: I just realized ~ methadone dose overdue. Dur. Hey I might sleep now...

£10.20

I SPENT £10.20 on a pink and yellow bouncy ball and a bag of heroin. I got far more value out of the bouncy ball, which is fluorescent and bounces at least 20 feet high if you really slam it into the ground.

I was sat so still on the bench that the little birdies came up to me. A tiny flock of sparrows went for a sway in the bushes. Then one thrummed across the road and sat in the eves of a house.

A blackbird with a beakfull of worms ran right to my feet, then scurried off. A pair of bluetits came too.

Then my drug dealer phoned to say he was outside the local pub. I met him quickly and pinged home. The gear went cloudy in the works and I had to inject in the side of my right hand, just down from the little finger. My hand hurts a bit, but I got something of a high, so who cares.

I think the 20p bouncy ball and the birdies cheered me up more than the heroin ever could. Before them, my mind was fixated on the usual theme of these days: euthanasia, death penalty for heroin addicts, and suicide.

Anna Grace has gone straight back on the gear, right after spending four days of torment detoxing cold off the last lot. I know why she went back to it. Life seems terrifyingly bleak and empty without opiates. You wish you had never been born. The only remedy that seems viable is suicide ~ or to go back on opiates until death takes you anyhow.

I'm thinking of reaffirming my old "till death do us part~" commitment to heroin. Narcotics Anonymous say you must be willing to make any sacrifice in order to stay clean. Even if it means losing an arm, you must do it. I've been willing to commit everything to heroin in the past. If I could turn it around and commit everything to sobriety, I might succeed. And seeing as I break every resolution I've ever made (especially regarding my drug addiction) I think I should resolve most definitely to go on using until I die. Then I might break it by cleaning up. That's the only positive way I can phrase the actions of today.

Well I've got to go. I'm out of money now, so no cup a soup, no croutons, no corned beef. Just Greek pasty-shaped baps with cheese baked in the inside (2 at 50p each). And Mr Dippy 59p hummous. So I got dinner today for £1.59.

My weight has gone down to 13 stone 7 and 3/4lbs. Which works out at 190 lbs, meaning I've only lost 11 lbs in over a month! I'm going to really have to make this diet of mine more drastic still. And those antipsychotics are going to make me put on EVEN MORE weight. I keep getting Radio GaGa. Eg when I came home at midday my head was tuned into the Nonsense Channel. It was starting to irritate me.

I'm not happy with all the death talk in my recent blog; but that's what I've been thinking about.

I did get advised to go down the park, and I did go and got entertained by the tiny birdies trotting around the bushes. So that's one good thing.

I hope you all had a passable weekend XXXXXXX

Just another manic-depressive Monday

IT'S HALF PAST ELEVEN. I got up dead early this morning and drank methadone. Watched the Royle Family and met a friend who owed me money. I got paid in gear which ****ed my resolve up not to use. The gear was crap anyway. Then I went up the chemists, got methadone. This methadone is for the early hours when I'm knocking back the lot so I can face the day with no cravings at all. I'm hoping the huge dose will put me in a good mood. Fat chance of that probably but you can but try.

I've been doing a spot of cleaning every single day. The full sacks are piled on a chair. I daren't put them out until the binmen come round. Otherwise some wild animal or scavenging human will tear them open revealing my cyder-drinking and other sins to the world.

Our local charity shop sold me a hardback copy of the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book for £1. It's the fourth edition. Like the NA book, the second half is packed with personal stories how I took up and gave up drinking. Surprisingly I found the stories more informative than the Narcotics Anonymous ones. When I read the NA ones I keep wondering how white the heroin was, how much they paid for it, what type of needle they used, and which vein. Junkie questions. In the AA book I focus more on the point.

My concentration span is going downhill (again). But it means I get more value from the book. I can read the best bits over again and it's all new every time.

I went to bed at 4pm from sheer exhaustion and slept till 8. That means I've slept 12 hours today. I woke up with my head going everywhere. 12 people have voted in my hearing voices poll so far and most people say they have heard them at some point. Which doesn't surprise me. According to the Voice Hearers Movement 2/3 of those who regularly hear voices have no psychiatric diagnosis. I was crossing the road today when I heard Jim Royle say "bloody hell!". I nearly got hit by a VW Beetle. A red one. Now that I know that I'm not mad I'm much happier about it.

I've had corned beef and a bag of chips. Couldn't finish the chips. I don't know why I'm still so fat. It was only one tin. I did give up corned beef for a few days but the craving gets so intense it's too much to bear. Far worse than the craving for heroin.

Anna Grace has posted nothing since Friday. She might be sicking out her habit. I hope she does get clean. She said she was going all manic. Having an elevated mood is really helpful for coming off drugs, well I think so. Why on earth would you want drugs when you feel fantastic anyhow? Only drugs I was glad of when I went hyper were zopiclone sleeping pills. I got some sleep every single night. Even though it was only 2 and a half hours, it's better than nothing. That line drs like to spin about your body getting the sleep it needs is a lie by the way. I've gone 4 days on no sleep at all and I've heard stories of people going 7 days. All that happens is you go more mad and hallucinate floridly. And when you do sleep after all that time, it's usually only for a few hours. And then you're awake for days on end again. This is in mania by the way. So all that stuff spouted by doctors is just crap. I hope Anna isn't too manic, it really melts the brains does mania. She might be in hospital. I hope she's OK.

I need to do some voluntary work, but who would have me? Need to finish clearing my house first. What shall I do work-wise? I don't know...

Rock Bottom?

I WOKE UP AROUND 11:30 totally unable to face the day. The Deer Hunter DVD was playing that Spanish Guitar tune "Cavatina" around and around. I felt very sad and numerous miserable thoughts went through my head. About depressed mothers who kill their children. About the dead. I remembered back to yesterday and my commitment to buy more heroin. The last thing I felt was "whoopee". I couldn't face the shower, the post office, or dealing with this bastard drug dealer. Couldn't face today or any other day. I thought about NA and hitting rock bottom. They say you must first hit bottom in order to cast off your dependency on drugs and learn to live again.

(Though there's no "again" about it.)

There is no rock at the bottom. Merely shadows stretching down and down into infinity. Your personal bottom is as low as you can bear to go. Someone, somewhere will always have gone lower. Others will have given up without ever descending half as far as you. Suffering is relative. It's a purely personal thing.

I'm annoyed with Narcotics Anonymous for judging me as high on drugs when I was drug-free and mentally unwell. Even my own family seemed to think I was abusing drugs of some mysterious kind. I've got to the point of not caring what anybody thinks on this, no matter who they are.

My psychiatrist believed me. Naomi, the dual-diagnosis lady believed me. I took drugs tests that proved when I was at my most addled, that I was on METHADONE ONLY. No heroin. No speed or crack. Certainly no hashish and it really puzzled me when someone close to me brought that one up. If they knew me, they'd know me passionate aversion to the Evil Weed. (Why touch heroin if a nasty spliff will mellow you out? I gave up toking years ago because it made me anything except mellow.)

The only nonprescribed drug I took during this period was Librium. Blue and white capsules that looked indistinguishable from Prozac. I felt nothing at all off this stuff, but it's supposed to help you kick drinking. Even that had sunk almost within the British Government's recommended safe consumption limit.

It's up to me to help myself.

There are professionals who can help me, but they can't live my life for me. Narcotics Anonymous have been mooted as an option. But I don't feel understood or accepted by NA as a group. They are a group of laypeople who deal in Recovery. Recovery is when you abstain from drugs, detoxing if necessary. And far from merely not using again, you fill the void with a new passtime: learning to live life on life's terms.

My problem with NA has been their focus on addiction as the cause of all ills. My ills began before I was ever a drug addict. I got addicted to heroin aged 28. Before that I used it so infrequently ~ with weeks at a time between bouts of using. They were bouts because a £20 bag lasted me five afternoons, and I was only smoking it. I used a new introduction to a new dealer every time I scored. The old one wouldn't have remembered me.

Before I became a drug-addict, I'd done years without drugs. Miserable years. My chronic fatigue syndrome years were drug-free: what substance could I tolerate then? I felt worse than ever.

The first couple of years when I did dabble were the most miserable of all; these were my university years, and depression ruined them utterly. I dropped acid while clinically depressed and had bad trips. I tried Ecstasy and felt marvellous. Then I came down from the heavenly high, and felt worse than ever before. Speed at one time seemed an almost-answer. It raised me up to a level where I felt I saw things clearly. Only to drop me down so precipitously I could barely function at all during the aftermath. The evil cannabis was ubiquitous among students, but it brought on acid flashbacks. Yet I craved spliffs, believed I was getting a minor drug problem. Miraculously I cured myself when I took to getting my nicotine hit from ordinary cigarettes that didn't bamboozle the brains. All the joys of smoking without paranoia, fear, confusion, hallucinations.

I still had chronic fatigue syndrome when I took to regular nightclubbing. Psychedelic trance was the music of the day. I hadn't the energy to dance all night, so I spent my nights in superbly-appointed chillout rooms talking rubbish to people from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Botswana, Italy and France. Ecstasy was the only drug that really gave me confidence. I took it in moderation. Most of us did. E doesn't mix with alcohol. Pouring two pints into a one pint pot won't get it any fuller. Once you've gone as high as Ecstasy will take you, you start going sideways, an effect that can be attained more cheaply and less dangerously on fewer pills and a sparkling of magic mushrooms. I was known as somebody who could stay out all night on nothing ~ not even drink. I always had the option of something that would set the night off with a bang, but I didn't always want it.

My mental health was still shaky. I know that Ecstasy damaged it in the late 90s, just as cannabis had in the early 90s. As my psychiatrist said "you and drugs and drink do not mix".

I know I shouldn't take any drugs at all. I don't even "want to" any more. None of the substances from my past are a temptation to me. Ecstasy would be a good case in point. It takes an hour to come on. I never enjoyed taking it anywhere except at a dance party. The peak effects from one moderate dose last about four hours but you're still buzzing slightly the next day. I haven't been out raving in over a decade and thus haven't touched E. There never was a drug I took anytime, anyplace, anywhere... until heroin got its claws into me.

Trust me, my recent use of heroin has been far more out of desperation than indulgence. It started out as what I saw as daring experimentation ~ nearly all of my friends would have disapproved, if only they'd known ~ it turned into a habit so entrenched I could not survive a day without it. They say that methadone gives stability. Some people are so stable on the stuff they can even hold down a full-time job on it. But methadone gave me no such stability. Days on the Mean Green were days spent existing, not living. At some time, at some point along the way, I realized I was merely existing on heroin too. The drug that once had turned life into Christmas every day had turned me into a wreck. Existence was drab beyond words. While heroin was depressing, methadone was suicidally miserable. I no longer have "fun" on heroin. I take it grudgingly. I deplore methadone and only take it as the greater of two evils. But a legal and at least semi-respectable evil. All I can say about methadone is that to a desperate addict, it's better than nothing. And of course, I'd rather be on nothing at all.

If only I'd embraced today's first feelings on the matter, I might have moved just one solitary step forward. Trisha Goddard, the former talkshow hostess, used to talk about embracing your depression. But I don't want to "embrace" anything. I don't just feel miserable, I feel confused. Should I embrace this confusion too? Icebergs clashing in my brains. The want of risperidone pills speaks to me aloud. It doesn't frighten me, but I know my doctor won't be very impressed when he finds out I stopped taking them. Risperidone was prescribed as an antimanic, antipsychotic. It's not an antidepressant. People with bipolar issues aren't generally prescribed antidepressants, which raise the mood. The treatment of choice is generally a mood stabilizer. I've been threatened with these, but I have issues surrounding them. So I don't know what to do.

Depression makes me realize life isn't about fun or enjoyment.

I have work to do. I hate cleaning. No sense of achievement ever came from doing it, at least not in recent times. Yet I decided to clean my house; and to do it for myself. Not for the stern lady who comes round from the council who seems to think the way I live is unacceptable. I'm doing it for me. If I had somebody else to keep my house clean and tidy for, trust me, my home would be spotless. But what's the point doing anything for myself? I've not been able to motivate myself this way in a long, long while. So I'm venturing on to fresh fields with this one.

I have to do what I realized I'd have to when I woke up this morning to a litany of ideas of doom and gloom and destruction. I shall walk away from this. There is no choice. This is what I shall do.

I never intend to embrace my depression. I intend to leave it far behind. It doesn't matter whether or not the whys and wherefores of the matter ever become clear to me. At the moment they seem utterly incomprehensible, so pondering them is an exercise in particular futility. I'm doing what I was taught to do as a very small child when my Dad took me hillwalking. You put one foot in front of the other. No matter what, you keep going. I don't know where I'm going, but I know what I'm going away from. And I'll get there in the end.


STANLEY MYERS: CAVATINA
The Deer Hunter music