Christmas Report

IT WAS A VERY QUIET DAY I had hot chicken Madras (supermarket stylee) and a bottle of fake Baileys and watched the Queen's Speech at 3pm (British tradition). That was about it. Then I took some Valium and fell into merciful sleep. Anything that helps one escape Xmas is an excellent thing in my book...!

But having said that:

I hope y'all had a good one.



HARD MELODIC TRANCE




HARDCORE TECHNO TRANCE RANDOMNESS




SCOOTER ONE (ALWAYS HARDCORE)

Summer's day prattle

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL SUMMER'S DAY and I'm trying to stay calm. Anxiety came back. I think it has something to do with the risperidone pills I take. Or maybe not. I'm doggedly not doing gear. Can't afford it this week anyhow. But I sat myself down yesterday and decided now this is what I'm going to do and why. I'm not taking any heroin at all. And the reason why is that I hate being addicted to anything, hate cavorting with criminals, don't even feel at home in a room full of addicts any more and have had enough of the whole scene. Confounding factors include the horrible druggieclinic wanting to give some sort of psychological gold star for testing clean, which I'm not interested in. And stuff like that. I'd rather be thought dirty and BE clean than the other way about. Maybe my thinking had become confused but I had to remind myself what I'm doing and why.

Otherwise I would repeatedly give in to the urge to use, which does hit me from time to time. It never hit me before. I don't know why. The summer is the most horrible season to any junkie. Due to excess perspiration. Once it's over I have much better chances.

I'm more into Valium these days than heroin. Even that I haven't taken in 2 weeks yet somehow managed to test positive for. I only take benzos when I can't sleep or feel panicky. I have felt very panicky of late. Every morning I wake up thinking of the horror of suicide. You know, the actual visceral feeling of pressing your neck down on a vibrating rail or pressing blades very hard into bumping arteries or how sick you feel after a whole bottle of pills has been regurgitated yet you're still puking up.

I've managed to distract myself with Other Things today. And I think I'm much better off using one of those professional clinics in Switzerland where there's zero survival rate, when I do do myself in. It gives me something to work towards, even if I'm just walking towards death.

Ukh sorry for being morbid: just being frank. Drugs clinic are doing my brain in. NOT reducing my dose. No idea why. Well they're to blame now for it being so high. They can't somehow blame me, like Duta was doing before.

I've been chucking stuff out of my house. 2 chairs and a plug-in radiator yesterday. Eight records and a manual typewriter today (charity shop). I've endless books I'd really like to get cash for but also just want shot of fast fast fast.

I wish I had hamsters then I could tell you a furry hammy story instead of this boring truth. O yeah and GOOD NEWS I found out I'm hep B, hep C and HIV negative!!

I was convinced I was positive for one of them. Hep C especially. Being positive to that would just give something else not to get treatment for. Know what I mean? I'm taking the antipsychotics again as prescribed as I don't actually enjoy being mad, wondrous as the experience is. Something about sanity appeals to me. I can't say what or why. But it does.

And that's it for today!

Watch the birdie....

I NEARLY BOUGHT A TINY BIRDIE this afternoon. It was the only one left in the shop, apart from a cockatoo who kept inclining her head and whisping, "oh hello!" This poor tiny little blighter, who resembled an anorexic robin was fluttering to and fro between two tiny perches looking distressed. He looked in dire need of taming. I asked the man what it was and was told a golden finch or a redfinch. I can't recall which. But it was a boy bird, who would sing beautifully. The man only wanted £35 for him and they had a cage for £12 that would have suited him perfectly. I SO wanted this feathery little teletubby to brighten up my abode with a dawn chorus all of my own. I walked off to the clinic fantasizing about possessing this bird and telling myself how perfect my life would suddenly be if only I had this feathery entertainer in my house ~ the way compulsive shoppers have justified bizarre and/or useless purchases since time immemorial. Next to the petshop was a sweetshop with a bouncyball dispenser. 50p got me an ultra-bouncy spongey model. As I meandered down the street bouncing away I pondered my lot and suddenly realized my sudden bird obsession £35 + £12 cage + sundry seed sticks, spare perches et al... was all the doing of my MOOD SWING. That I really need to exercise more care and attention in these matters. And so I didn't buy and went to my new mental health clinic, and quizzed them on my new appointment. Then I went to my Stabilization Seminar.


Group therapy was FAR more entertaining than envisaged. The moderator had an attitude problem. So much so that somebody knocking patiently at the door for five minutes was studiedly ignored as clients' increasingly fractious demands as to why this person was not allowed in pinged about the room like a hoarde of escaped roborovskis. Eventually a sweating blushig cockney girl blustered in. One man was reprimanded three times for reading The Sun newspaper; two blokes wearing electronic tags were reprimanded for conversing about their crack dealer. An Irish tramp kept fallig asleep and was repeatedly told to wake up. Then blushing cockney girl took to crunching a packet of crisps at top volume.

I did say "don't knock it till you've tried it" and I'm so glad I didn't knock it. I've made friends with a South African alcoholic. I'm looking for the next meeting early next week.

Back down town I paid the opticians another £70 for glasses that darken in the sun. When I was into contact lenses I had the most enormous collection of sunshades that all got broken or stolen or left behind when I moved. So I thought I deserved at least ONE pair. The lazy old shop are taking THREE WEEKS to put a simple pair of specks together. I'm not happy about that. But they're paid for so all I have to do is be irritated every time the sun comes out between now and July 27th.

I'll soon be wandering the streets probably looking like an escaped paedophile. (Perverts wear brown tints don't they?)

Well I've got to go it's 4am. I bought some Valium in town and it knocked me out. I needed knocking out; I was wide awake ALL last night feeling hyper-diaper. I don't know whether it was post depression rebound or a touch of the manics. Long as I don't buy any terrified fluttering caged birds in that state, I don't mind...!

Everybody says I look unrecognizably well. Giving up heroin and eating cherries probably has a lot to do with it ....

And how was YOUR day..??!


I was talking about who doesn't have the best voice in pop (not Mariah Carey, certainly not Beyonce) THIS is the best:~

Positive Positive

I KEEP TRYING TO POST Positive Positive Positive but when it comes to it I just cannot keep the bullshit up. I'm trying NOT to think about Death, Suicide or Drug Addicts being round up and shot because doing so makes me unbelievably angry. Angry that our deadhead dimwit government won't DO something drastic about this problem for once and for all.

I woke up wishing I was dead with the phone ringing with Valium Marilyn saying she felt intolerably low. She asked whether I ever felt the same. I told her exactly how I feel. Marilyn has been depressed for years and it took me quite some time to recognize that. She clings to Valium as her last remining hope. I don't think it helps her. Marilyn no longer touches gear at all; she only ever takes pharmaceuticals. Benzodiazepines are not antidepressants. They're only good for anxiety and agitation. Some are licensed as sleeping pills. I only ever take them in small doses occasionally when I get anxiety attacks. Last thing I want is to get a benzodiazepine habit. Withdrawals from that are said to be the all-time worst, with some ill effects continuing for years after the pills were last taken.

I know I probably need some kind of mood stabilizing agent, but I don't even know who my doctor is any more. Technically I'm between clinics. But the new one hasn't written to me. And I need to see a doctor FAST.

As time marches on I feel more and more depressed. In the beginning, the tail end of mania was preventing me from going down too low; now that has gone I feel crap. The medication I'm prescribed is an antipsychotic and I'm not taking it. I don't think it helps with depression at all.

First thing I saw on wakening was a dead space alien. It was staring back at me from the cover over my bed. This is another symptom of depression: ugly twisted faces in walls, carpets and ceilings. They're nearly always set off by the wrinkles in piles of clothing or carrier bags or the play of light and shade against a wall. But knowing this isn't "real" does nothing to make it go away. Sometimes they stay for a long while. I know antipsychotics would help with that type of thing. But you have to look on the bright side. Visions and voices do add colour to life.

This glaring dead alien just made me get up quick when all I really wanted was to stay in bed. That's the worst thing about hospital: being made to get up in the morning when really you want to do nothing. I wish I had some kind of permanent housing so I could go in hospital without risking homelessness. As I said yesterday, next time I go in I don't really want ever to come out again.

If depression is a lack of energy I don't think I'm depressed. I feel energy. Just negativity as well. Every chronic malady I have had was a disorder of the energy.

Drug abuse is said to misaleign the energy system.

The first illness that really messed me up was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Here the energy is massively misaliged. It's less a case of no energy (as in some depression) more a case of it being massively misdirected and running out very quickly. Mania seems to be a huge surplus of energy: I don't understand precisely how it occurs, but again some kind of short circuit must surely be responsible. When I was truly manic I felt thousands upon thousands of volts running through my brains.

So that's what's wrong with me: something to do with the energy system. Because I am prone to low self-esteem it often manifests as depression. But I'm not totally lacking in energy. As I say, there's some fault on the circuit that is making it run out faster than it should. Strangely when I was manic my self esteem soared higher than ever. I swaggered down the street and people visibly backed off from me. When I was angry (as I was a lot of the time) no words or actions were necessary. I merely had to look at people and they recoiled. Sometimes I wish I had the high energy back but it's only another "illness".

The opiates misalign energy, or at least align it differently, but heroin also seemed to put the breaks on my mood swings. Without heroin I'm definitely far moodier. Whether or not methadone actually provokes instability or merely fails to stabilize me it's hard to say. I still think the doctors are wildly negligent for prescribing anything that leaves me in the state methadone does. There are other treatments that wouldn't do this. But they're only available privately.

If I can get off all opiates I can at least give my brain a chance to restore itself. But it wasn't well before I started! I only went ON heroin after years of depression, then chronic fatigue syndrome and finally bipolar type mood swings. Yes the bipolar manifested BEFORE I ever had a habit on heroin. It's quite normal to experience depression for a few years and for mania gradually to interweve and kick in. This is why I say I cannot hope to be "well" off drugs. If the past is anything to go by, I'll just be drug-free and still sick.

I suppose the ideal would be to be "well". But that's probably too much to ask...


Here is a perceptive and partially nonsensical article about the misaligment of energy in bipolar disorder. The author states that people get the disorder due to bad karma from previous lifetimes when they were executioners and torturers. You wonder why I keep thinking about being executed? It's all down to my past lives!

Sleep sleep yet there's too much sleep!

I SLEPT 17 HOURS STRAIGHT LAST NIGHT. I went to the nut-nut clinic. Everybody in the waiting room looked quite sane and well put together. Then I shambled in, sat by the leaflets, took 10 and spent half an hour flicking through stuff about giving up smoking, taking up a positive lifestyle etc. I'm into all that crap now.

Then an accusatory nurse ushered me into a tiny room. No padding on the walls, though I did notice what looked like a straitjacket thrown over the back of a chair by the window. Then he demanded to know how paranoid I was and why I was there and whether I was there for a mood stabilizer (which I told him I don't want). Then he said "I'll make an appointment for you to see a doctor". I told him I'm exhausted and sleeping too long and I can't stop being depressed. Slightly depressed, not very depressed. And that was that.

On the way back I walked to Valium Marilyn's house. She has just been let out of hospital having had her gallstones pulverized inside her.

I passed this amazing pond. It was a concrete pond and very big. It wasn't connected to any river and yet it was swarming with these tiny fishies. Little green ones that glint brightly in the sun. They loved the weeds in that pool. I so wished I had a giant net to catch some to take home as pets. But as it is my pet fish still live in this public pool. I spent ages staring at them. I didn't go too near the edge in case some babboon appeared from the trees and pushed me in.

Valium Marilyn has lost weight, she looks emaciated in fact. Then I weighed myself on her bathroom scales. She had to keep banging them to make them reset to zero because they're digital. I came in at 14 stone and a quarter pound, three times in a row, then 14 stone 1 twice in a row. There are 14 pounds in a stone so that's (14x14)+1 which is 193 pounds if my maths are correct. No it's not it's 197 pounds because I was 201 before and lost 4 which makes sense. Yeah so I lost weight. Somehow.

Then she wanted to score some "blues" which are 10mg Valiums she bought 40 of them and gave me 5. I pretended to take 4 at once, like she did, but really I took one.

Then we went shopping all veering all over the place. She comes over all chirpy on Valium so kept haranguing the foreigh shopkeepers for British foods like Angel Delight which they won't stock (butterscotch Angel delight is the best, with lots of milk (unlike most products which are best stronger, angel delight is best slightly weaker than the packet instructions)).

Then I fell asleep from 5pm until TEN IN THE MORNING which means I was out cold for 17 hours!

Then I got up all clucking and had to go to the chemists sick which I hate. I was only slightly sick. All sweating and cold, it was disgusting. So I got the juice and knocked a good bit back in a phone box, like a real junkie. I actually used to get a secret thrill from hitting up gear in public toilets and especially phone boxes I just loved the scumminess of it all (being solidly middle class it was a novelty for me)... then I went in the library and read this book about brain surgery. Then I went home and slept AGAIN. FIVE HOURS out cold. I sleep sleep sleep. I'm hardly in the lower depths of depression but I don't feel all right at all. I'm having a hep C test just so they can't keep blaming that. I never had hep C before, I don't think I've got it now.

Now I've got to run I'm too cold. Did you know the bit of the brain they impose a lesion upon in psychosurgery is called something like the anterior cingulate gyrus. Something like that. This poor woman was a GP yet so depressed she was under compulsory detainment for a year (that is a "section" in British language). Then she had to be transported from Southampton or somewhere like that to DUNDEE in Scotland to have her brain butchered. Reading this did nothing to improve my mood.

But I did have a quality moment with those fishes so all is not bad. I hope y'all have a good weekend. If I can think up something furry I'll post it otherwise I'll be back Monday.


Illustrated: I do believe these green fish have been genetically engineered. Mine weren't QUITE so bright. But does anyone know what they're called. They were about one inch long, able to live in British waters (ie extremely hardy) and pretty quick, compared to the dopey aquarium fish you get they moved about as fast as minnows but I don't think they were minnows...

4:18 not very happy

OK this is my FIFTH attempt at posting. Posts 1 and 2 were requests for advice on suicide methods. Probably not entirely appropriate. Posts 3 and 4 had other stuff in but still wanted to know how to go about dying. I'm feeling much better having dropped my last 4 Valium, yeah man I quadroupledropped; I'm desperate). I slept from 10 till midnight. Got up. Mamma Mia my favourite film is playing. Sad perhaps but if you like Greece and think THIS is bad my simple advice: get a life. You gotta do what you gotta do. And if watching Julie Walters and Meryl Streep doing hairbrush singing to some pretty fantastic tunes (exceptions: Dancing Queen, Waterloo ukkkh) that's what I'm doing.

Michael Jackson is playing in black and white. BOTH the discs I tried did this. Why?? Is it my DVD player? How come it plays everything else in colour. Also both MJ discs do that thing when they need rubbing clean: pixelation and start-stop sound. And they were brand new, held by the edge and inserted direct in the machine. If 2 separate discs do this how do I know the other 2 copies they have aren't from the same batch? Because surely they produced an entire duff batch for it to do that.

OK Michael Jackson's on again: the BAD video and it's still black and white with jittering sound. I'm not wiping a disc I haven't touched with my hands so they can look at it and say "you scratched it" so it's going back tomorrow. Which is a look I can do without. Yeah I know part 1 is black and white but the BAD motif is bright red innit, also the "pick a track" selection was black and white as was the intro to it all. Why does this not happen to other people? Why me?

I'm not in a terrible mood but I'm not in a particularly good one either. Got a horrible feeling this is crashing lower and lower. It usually does it the same way; like a wobbly line plunging gradually down. Worst crash ever went from me phoning my Mum around 9am raging (ie very high but irritated); me having one drink en route to the methadone chemist and feeling high on coke (if drink did that to everyone every time shops would sell out overnight, trust me!) then my worker phoning around 11 when I was crystal clear. By 2pm I was curled in a ball eyes closed with vile imagery playing out like a bright inner tv picture. I saw darkness surround me and kept thinking I was in prison in some foreign country for some terrible crime. I felt really dire. It was either this crash or the next one a day or 2 later when the aerial fell off the tv and I didn't even notice the picture was barely there any more though the sound functioned. I stared into space for hours, got up, froze in the middle of the room not knowing what I was doing. Had to go out. Did it but couldn't handle anything about the situation. Got home and curled up into a ball again. That's what happens when it's bad. And I remember those days as the worst ever and I do mean worst ever in my entire life. Worse than heroin cold turkey. Worse than anything else in the endless line of mistakes, fuck-ups, misdemeanours, stupid moves and crises I've got myself into over 38 years. So if that's happening again I'm not engaging with no-one. Not going to NA, probably not going to Nutter Club. Not going to anything bar 2 appointments, one with the dr; another with the shrink, both next week.

My only hope is my jagged shaped mood pattern will whoosh up again from the low. Rather than an undulating wavy line it seems to coast gradually down then rush UP from the lowest point peaking within 3 days or so to a maximum high, coasting gradually down (the best bit, because I'm high but not disabled. Being ultra high means I can barely tie my own shoe laces, let alone "engage in activities with a strong regret potential" or however they phrase it (casual sex, compulsive spending, highly impulsive behaviour) my problem is more letting my mouth run away with me to the point of gross offence and being unable to judge what's supposed to be appropriate or inappropriate re what other people think. And I'd tend to think "fuck 'em anyway!". This high is very compelling. Unlike crack even (but more like E) I just get swept away with it all. And going with a flow, when that flow is pretty amazing, is a heady thing to do.

And you wonder why I'm terrified coming down. Coming down means feeling vile. I have had no "normality" for 9 or 10 weeks. Just ups or downs, some mild, some extreme. No "normality". I know normality is meant to be good. But what actually is it? Is it really so amazing? If it is, how come people who are "normal" appear so stressed.

This really pretty Swedish girl at an NA meeting, who seemed calm, as most anxious people appear superficially calm, said how much she worries. I could have told her how not to worry. No drugs are required. Merely a psychological tennisbat to WHACK bad thought, experience, ideas out of the head.

What Valium is coasting full-on now. Beautiful. Frankly I don't care how much I drink or how much Valium I pop. If that saves my life it's a good thing? Or is mine not a life worth saving? If so: you advise me on 100% lethal at-home suicide methods. Obvious stuff like wrist-slashing is out. It must be quick and quiet. I'll switch off my phone and make sure it's late evening so I have a good 8 hours undisturbed by unwanted landlordly callers. I need no opportunity to panic and change my mind. I need rapid unconsciousness leading to rapid death. So if you want me dead: please advise. I've put all comments on mods now so you won't get in trouble for expressing a sensible opinion. It's sensible that me and life are separated as quickly as possible.

Even God assisted suicide in the old testament. Remember the story of that weakling Samson who let a girl named Delilah rule over him. Thanks to her he lost his amazing strength and found himself grinding corn in a Philistine prison. During his "sentence" his hair grew. So when 5000 of the Great and the Bad, in a feast for their god, insisted "bring out Samson to amuse us" he was duly dragged from prison into the temple where he found himself stood between two narrow pillars. He prayed to God, "please Lord give me strength one last time" and God, who knows everything imbued Samson with strength to break these pillars down, bringing down the roof and killing 5000 aristocrats. God knows everything and was well aware that this last move would kill Samson also. Yet God engaged in Assisted Suicide. Does god EVER break his own rules? No. Meaning suicide is OK.

If I've desperately misread this situation, someone somewhere who knows intimately the issues involved, please put me right here.

O shit; past 4am; absolutely exhausted. Hope I sleep 20 hours tomorrow. I could do iwth extended bed. My I must be off I'm so val'd I'm cross eyed; night-night all!


ALL SAINTS: BLACK COFFEE

Psychological Fly-Eyes

I KEEP GETTING MOOD SWINGS. I thought I was depressed earlier. I scored Valium, popped one blue one (10mg) and went to bed. Slept most of the afternoon. My risperidone is giving horrible side-effects you could describe as drowsiness except I can't sleep and Valium makes me feel way better. Alcohol does not. I'm telling the doc-doc.

From now on, until he tells me otherwise on my appointment on the 24th I'm taking both 2mg pills at midnight. Hopefully he'll change me to something else. Isn't quetiapine any good? Reading between the lines, and bearing in mind that the negative reports about quetiapine come from prison. American prison, which sounds crap as far as drugs go.

Not like British jail where gear is pretty widely used. In American jails of my grandparents' generation NUTMEGS were used as drugs. Nutmegs contain an MDA-like trippy E type substance. Apart from the nausea, vomting and diarrhoea it sounds like a really good trip, man. I mean if nutmegs are attractive in prison, quetiapine must be super-attractive. Reading between the lines I assume this means it doesn't give the bashed on the head with a frying pan feeling. People in jail were accused of drug-seeking behaviour when an antipsychotic was withdrawn. Quetiapine gives really good sleep. One thing you want in prison is sleep. And these people are accused of drug-seeking for wanting what we all want: a good night's sleep. America is one messed up country. (Of course Britain is not messed up at all (joke)). I know my dr. won't prescribe it. I knew when I came in I was destined whatever move I made to land rapidly in a checkmate situation. This is so obvious I probably didn't even post it. The Worst Is Bound To Happen.

The very nice lady psychiatrist in the Emergency Clinic mentioned LITHIUM which I REALLY DO NOT WANT. I'd do Valproate before lithium. Lithium requires blood-level testing. It makes you feel cold. It is toxic. It causes problems in focus, visual and mental. NOT what I want. Only good thing about lithium from what I hear is it's good with vinegar on fish and chips (tastes of salt).

My friend Mother Hubbs says she was on lithium before she switched to heroin. I noticed heroin was a fantastic mood-stabilizer. First thing I noticed (and this was before I knew Mother Hubbs) was that my previously tide-like moodswings had gone flat. I'd turned from the North Sea into an inland lake.

Now I'm like the Atlantic Ocean. if they do put me on stabilization crap I'd rather be like the Pacific. Still with tides and storms just not as bad. I'd hate to live on a flat line. That's what I hated most about heroin in the early to mid years. I never EVER woke up feeling happy, as I used to in my late 20s. My late 20s were the only time in my life when I got buzzing highs without drugs. Never happened in childhood, never happened as a young young adult. Only as I say in my late 20s.

Then later in my gear-using "career" I realized I felt hyped up without crack and crack was the only stimulant I used. I still felt hyped up after giving it up! Not all the time, episodically. I also got mildly depressed and horribly depressed on different occasions. I'm fed up of fighting my own moods they have become a real huge issue and have got bad enough that I hear voices, get paranoia, look like I've been dragged through a hedge backwards and live in a dump during the worst parts. Now I have to clean up the dump (again). I'm FAR cleaner and more put together washing-wise. I wash my hair 3 times a week now. Before that it was about once every 2 months. Yeah I know it's all sad sad sad I'm not exactly keeping a blog to show y'all how cool I am. This is the truth about drug addiction and "mental health". Mental ill-health more like.

So I'm depressed earlier, feel like I've had a line of speed on one cup of tea later. Had another cup to make the speed a bit more full-on. Caffeine has the effect on me it only has on TV characters. Caffeine doesn't really make people rush about babbling does it. Never did that to me before. Only time I ever got high on tea was when I was on Prozac in my early 20s. Even then I was being told to calm down, and told I was acting "manic". The person who said this had two relatives with bipolar disorder, which kind of did my head in. I scrupulously hid anything "manic" from my doctors for years. Then I fessed up. Was a junkie by this time. Wasn't believed. Not really. Then it got so bad I was literally falling to pieces, going incoherent, acting like I was pretending to be a racing car (I wasn't "pretending to be" anything, I was saying what I was thinking, to myself. Luckily when I did this in the nuthouse I wasn't under assessment. The assessment happened in an interview where I was told I kept changing topics. I don't know about that. What I do remember is trying to answer everything ultra-precisely. So "how long?" to me meant on what precise day and what time did you first feel the way you feel now. I got totally lost in the multiplicity of eventualities inherent in any situation. My thoughts went up like a starburst. Mentally I felt like a fly. Viewing the world through endless angles through compound eyes.

So I'm not up or down or left or right. I'm still all over the place!

Does anyone know anything about old films? Are these any good. I got 'em on impulse for a tenner. Old war films remind me of sleepy Sundays smoking cigarettes and drinking tea. (Or white cyder.)

• The Desert Rats
• A Farewell to Arms
• The Longest Day
• Sink the Bismarck
• Twelve O'Clock High

Twelve O'Clock High is playing.



Illustrated: when I'm "ill" I think in starbursts and think in psychological compound eyes, seeing everything from every conceivable angle all at once. This gives overload, exhilarating overload or irritating overload, depending on the mood of the moment. I'd quite like to be a fly. Or better still a hornet. I'd have quite some fun being a wasp...

EVA CASSIDY: FIELDS OF GOLD



ANDREA BOCELLI, SARAH BRIGHTMAN: TIME TO SAY GOODBYE
At the Dubai Fountain
I've never been to Dubai, but I've been through Bahrain airport and Bahrain through the plane window looked amazing. All water-gardens and glittering glass towers. And their duty-free shop was perfume, alcohol and cigarettes paradise. I went into the squiggly-writing men's toilets which had hosepipes in the cubicles (to blast your arse). All these Yasser-Arafat men breezing in and out in robes. If I were an Arab I'd wear robes too. I hate a lot of western dress.

Mariana-Deep

THAT'S HOW DEEPLY I SLEPT last night. 36,201 feet, 11,034 metres deep*.
And I slept from about 3am till 8pm, that's about 17 hours. I was tired. All that cleaning has exhausted me. And that was natural sleep without pills or potions other than the prescribed methadone (back to the full dose, half-dosing made me sick about a day or a day-and-a-half later). I don't obsessively check times and doses with methadone. For someone who's been labelled neurotic more than once I'm remarkably unneurotic when it comes to detoxification. I have in the past cut myself down very steeply from methadone (and felt dreadful) and heroin (and felt fine). Not that methadone is FAR WORSE and a TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE TREATMENT FOR HEROIN ADDICTION but there you go!

I cut my drinking by about two thirds yesterday down to 2.75 cans, each can holds 500mls so I had somewhere around 100mls alcohol, 10 units. My maths fails me. Today I've had 2.25 cans, which would be around 80mls alcohol, 8 units.

I could swap over to benzodiazepines (e.g. Valium) and taper down on pills. Clinics do this (they don't give drink!) and lots of people do it informally. Or I could cut down by just drinking less. I don't know. A Smirnoff cloudy lemonade 700ml bottle is 4% ABV, only 28mls/2.8 units for £3 and that's really nice. Unfortunately in the past I tended to knock it down very quickly in compensation. I'm already drinking my drink mixed with fruit juice. This makes it less dehydrating but has the disadvantage of being a bit too tasty. Nicer than any premixed drink sold in the shops and I've tried a few.

So I'm not sure what to do, whether to cut down on drink or to switch to pills. The advantage of the pills is you lose the buzz of alcohol and once you cut down tiny you cannot feel anything at all. So it's actually cleaner. Alcohol is just too nice. Akh I don't know what to do.

The other thing is, clinics usually use Valium or more frequently Librium or Ativan (lorazepam). I don't trust the supply of Valium because a lot is if not fake then unreliable. The temazepam I got was OK. Normally if I got something like that I'd go for Valium, but I got temazepam on instinct because it's not internationally as well known and I've never heard of it being faked. (Bootleg meds are made in far-away countries; the manufacturers tend to go for the best-known and hence internationally most saleable product.) The main difference between the two is that Valium is a better muscle relaxant, temazepam is more sedating. (Temazepam is traded as Restoril in the USA.) Being as I'm not in it for either effect I suppose I have my answer. If I want a benzo, any one will do.

I still don't know what road to take. I'm very tempted to ring Mr Temazepam and make the switchover. I'm only posting this so you can follow my reasoning. Would I be doing something wrong to essentially replicate what hospitals and clinics do?

My fear is of simply derailing one habit into another. Alcohol is more dangerous than benzos. Both are addictive. Akh. I don't know.

Welcome to 2011 everyone :-)

It's 2am. BBC News Channel has started already on BBC1. Sometimes it comes on early. Whenever it does come on, I feel like I should sleep...

*Vityaz-1 Deep in the Mariana Trench is said to contain the deepest water on the face of the earth

Wikipedia: Alcohol Withdrawal
Wikipedia: Alcohol Detoxification

The Feeling Vial <:-o

I USE THE ABOVE PUN ADVISEDLY as today I've been feeling vile. Only some people I used to know broke open (prescribed) pharmaceutical vials several times daily to shoot up in their groins... what is called an "injectable script". One, who a decade ago and before this drugs stuff totally got to me in my own infection injection habituated way, had me calling the (then) "National Drugs Helpline" (0800 77 66 00) (now it's called Frank; "talk to Frank"... and on the same number...) (Frank's online "A-Z of drugs"; click here...) and saying "my friend is prescribed
Dexedrine (pharmaceutical speed whence the "rock" group "Dexys Midnight Runners"...) and this doctor must KNOW she is injecting it in her groin... is it not possible to get injectable dexedrine on private prescription?" And the lady (they think they know everything about drugs after a month's training but don't. One confidently declared Valium to be an opiate. Another had not heard of injecting crack (the other aspect of my friend's behaviour that drove me to distraction. Why take such a massive risk to your health injecting that stuff when it's been specially washed to smoke on a pipe..?)... the lady said there was nothing anyone could do. Inectable speed is not available on prescription; only those pills. And though they are well aware their patients are "banging them up" and killing themselves the doctors carry on with these presciptions... I was utterly scandalized and despaired ever more... What can you do? And then I realized you cannot "save" an addict, no matter what or how bizarre or ridiculous their behaviour. There is nothing you can do except be there for them when finally they are ready to stop. She never stopped until finally the day came when Dexedrine pills, crack injections and methadone amps (plus ketamine at weekends) all injected into the crook (very top: bikini-line) of her thighs where the vein is finger-thick... but not thick enough, so it seems, to so continuously take all those chalky Dexedrines... and so she lost her leg. I was utterly gutted for her: but by that time I myself had plunged down the toilet too... there was nothing I could do for her.

So she now lives alone, using a wheelchair, no longer on methadone, (injectable or otherwise) nor dexedrine nor ketamine but still smoking the odd pipe on the crack. I know this as our oldest crack dealer accosted me with his new number a couple of years ago saying this woman had been asking after me. She used to be my best friend for a short time but in the end I just could not handle hearing her pain. And she literally was screaming in pain sometimes, at the abuse and ill-treatment she'd received in the past... it was not my job to save her and I got badly hurt.

Yes I have been feeling nasty all day. I went to the drug service drop-in, where they know me, and described my skirmishes with barbiturates that, further research has confirmed have to all intents and purposes left me with second-degree chemical burns on my back thigh. No wonder it hurts. Those drugs are, so I discovered so strongly alkaline they can destroy the flesh... which is nearly what they did to me... Never in all my years have I seen damage so extreme (a "local soft tissue 'reaction'" so I was diagnosed. "Reaction"~?? You can say that again! Not from a single botched injection (though I'm not even sure it WAS botched: it went straight in: just really hurt at the time... and of course more so afterwards...) Most abscesses I've seen are far smaller than that. It's horrible. Ukky. And has put me off a lot of things.

I'm living life in "senior review"...

Though I am glad to have my tiny tubbies trotting away on their wheel like fat old gremlins... they bring sunlight to my shadowy life... never had such enduring entertainment for the tiny sum of £23!

Have a great weekend, everyone... take care!

G
xx

ps who sent me the hamster dance on youtube? the url?? there's several hamster dances as it's the name of that squeaky song (I think) but I would really like to see the one you pointed out to me... having viewed back and back and sought it out over and over again through my comments I CANNOT FIND the url you posted me... could you please post me again in a comment under this post here? I'd be ever so grateful. Many thanks!

Link: Methadone Amps vs Diamorphine Amps comparison... (on grounds of cost)

Link II: Peter McDermott (probably Britain's top drugs counsellor)'s basic heroin/methadone/opiates/-oids factsheet...