I wasn't back on heroin...

I WASN'T BACK ON HEROIN when I made my last post I was off it. I was enthusiastic about everything because I wasn't sleeping and was a bit hyper. Nowhere near hyper enough in my opinion, but there you go. I haven't taken heroin in more than a week and I don't miss it. The relapse started off when an ancient dealer of mine ran up to me on the street and led me to his car where he gave me a sample of B that he guaranteed would be better than anyone else's. It was. So I scored it every day for about a week. Then one day he couldn't get it together to come to my house so I thought **** it and just left it there. I was scared of getting withdrawals so I scored off someone else whose gear was reliably crap. And the day after that, and the next day, and so on I have used no drugs at all. When I couldn't sleep I tried Valium which only took the jagged irratable edge off. I kept getting told not to talk so loud and I was losing my temper with certain people on the phone who owe me money and the Valium probably did calm all that down. One night I took a zopiclone but not even that made me sleep and zopiclone is the best sleeper I've ever tried by a mile. Even in a severe manic episode if I dropped it at 10pm I'd be asleep by midnight (and then get up, raring to go at 2:30am!!) So it looks like I had a miniature half-arsed manic episode as I was only sleeping about 2 hours a day for days on end. Then one day I slept all afternoon. Then returned to not sleeping. Yesterday and last night I slept for hours and hours and hours and surprise surprise I feel sluggish with flashes of depression. I really hope I'm not going down.

Yesterday I had to go down my ****hole of a drugs clinic. They really are the most inept bunch of people. Couldn't even book me an appointment for the new year when I NEED A DOCTOR'S REVIEW to take my methadone down even further otherwise I will be stuck at 60mg and that's beyond the pale. I want to be on 40mg now. Then from 40 to 20. Once I get down to 10 I'm either telling the clinic I want a level dose (so I get take-home doses) or scoring methadone on the street. I'm not going through the horror of reducing methadone from 10mg to nothing under their patronizing and condescending system of "supervised consumption".

I bought a fan heater (£15) so that I can urge myself into the shower with the luxury of hot winds instead of freezing damp and cold (my other heater was completely blown, even when I changed the fuse). Plus various items from Asda including a bag of finely chopped salad. So I've been reading the Andy Warhol Diaries while munching like a rabbit.

It took me quite a while to get a hang of Andy Warhol's personality. There's more humour and warmth there than you'd credit at first glance. He did his last christmas day giving handouts in a soup kitchen, which was sad. No Halston. No Bianca Jagger. None of the glamorous friends. Just him and a member of Interview staff handing out free food to the homeless. In fact at the very end it seemed a lot of his old social set had dumped him ~ and then he died, after an operation as minor as a gallbladder-ectomy.

I'd love to be an artist with millionaire collectors but I can only paint cartoons. I'd also like to be a TV magnate ~ I have ideas for channels that haven't been done. And of course I want to be a bestselling novelist. Only problem with that last one is nobody buys novels any more and my inspiration has deserted me.

Well I've got to go and eat more chicken legs and salad. I'M OFF HEROIN. And down to 65mg methadone as of tomorrow. Have a nice day y'all...

Good Morning

GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING. Finally I have got on a (public) computer that works because the mad woman who's always hogging it isn't here today. That kebab I had yesterday had way more salad than in the picture by the way. I woke up at 7am-ish so I'm already craving a lie-down. But no! Dishes have to be washed. I have purchased brand new Alpine flavour washing up liquid just for the occasion. Also I am dead set on FINALLY EMPTYING OUT THE COLLECTED ASSORTED RUBBISH MY HOUSE IS FULL OF. I have found out I am a compulsive hoarder of spectacular proportions. Eg I have at least 4 if not 5 televisions. I haven't a clue whether any bar the one I use actually work. I threw out 3 dining chairs earlier in the year. Clutter clutter. Endless pears of jeans with busted pockets. Or huge holes in them. Or too small. Or too big. Or just wrong. Endless clothes with fag burns and holes and motorbike-repair-style oil stains upon them. No! Life is going out of control. And I missed Jeremy Kyle (stuck record talk show host who "resolves" loud lower class people's problems and is 100% likely to criticize anybody who dares not to have a job!) because I was glugging my methadone. I did drink a can of cyder this morning, but my alcohol is less than half the govt's recommended weekly limits, meaning NO DOCTORLY PERSON CAN CRITICIZE ME for the odd drink. I was never into AA type meetings because everybody seems to say "I'd have one drink then I couldn't stop" whereas I always could stop after one. I'd space my drinks throughout the day to achieve a mild but constant intoxication. I never liked the taste of booze. And I never liked feeling drunk and out of control. Ironically it was a feeling of being IN control that hard drugs, specifically heroin, gave me. Confidence. Energy. Antidepressant effect. My problems were over! (So it seeeeeemed, ahem.) Oh cripes I had better ping off now else I'll only get terminated mid-sentence. Take care y'all!


Illustrated: A a hearty breakfast; B Jeremy Kyle (looks just like my brother!!!)

Lamb Shish With All Salad And Garlic Sauce

THAT'S WHAT I had for tea tonight.

I'm OK, not much to tell. The methadone is back on a level dose. That's 80mg more than I want to be on. It is level because I cannot handle hauling myself to that chemist every single day, freezing cold and sweat running down my back, only to have to deal with a long wait in fierce heat when I get in plus a two hour wait for the juice to come on and make me feel OK. By that time I'm so peed off I stay annoyed all day and sleep all afternoon in depression. My friend came in with me to point out this is all down to Supervised Consumption and being forced to take methadone to times suiting someone else's convenience. When I had my methadone at home I nearly always took it in the early hours, so that I got up with the full dose going full-on. I never had any problems with sweats etc. I did my sweating when I was asleep and it wasn't bothering me.

So I've supposedly got a dr's appointment in a week's time to review this situation. Then I want to go back to reducing the dose because I'm not one of these people who seems to want the maximum methadone for the maximum possible time: if I'm not using on top I see no need for flat dosing I want it taken down down down to OFF OFF OFF THAT CRAP FOR GOOD!

The only good news is that I'm getting 2 take home days: Saturday and Sunday. So I get the weekend off the grinding routine that is a life on methadone!

There's no other news really: I'm no longer in a raging mood with the clinic. Just endless irritation now. I got the anger off my chest last appointment. Lots of words like patronizing, coercive and a hindrance. Talk about making something that's difficult already as hard as humanly possible. That's why I'm not interested in rehab. Every steep detox I've tried has had me breaking down and put on extra meds. Both times I was put on extra meds. Extra methadone at City Roads crisis detox centre and antidepressants and tranquillizers at the proper rehab. When I went to proper rehab I cut down my using so tiny that when I left (still unable to tolerate the reduction) my habit was less than half what it had been 2 weeks before I came in.

I hope y'all are OK. Still no computer. Massive troubles posting. Take care everyone.

Hello again

I HAVEN'T BEEN BY because I could not get access to a computer. I have not been feeling well. My methadone is down to 80mg and I feel sick whenever I have to move myself to get to that overheated chemist's shop. Strangely, apart from feeling cold, I feel fine at home. As I say, it's only when I start moving myself that I get a disgusting sweat on that only evaporates a good couple of hours after sipping the noxious gunk I am prescribed. I feel my life is over now I'm no longer taking drugs. OK I do indulge about once a fortnight but I never feel the gear. I've had the odd bit of crack but I don't even like that. So I'm stuck in sobriety and hating it because I'm so unmotivated and down.

I got a letter through because they are turning off the old analogue TV signal in London next April and I'm eligable for a Freesat dish and box, fully installed for just £67 ~ about $100 ~ giving me over 100 channels without any need to subscribe. So I'm thinking of going for it.

Apart from that no news. Just missed doctor's appointments (I felt to ill to go). And poor sleep. Up all night, in bed all day not wanting to get up. Then the dreaded trek to the methadone chemist and having to remove half my clothes in that ridiculously tropical shop. I stink because I have not had a shower in over a week, just half hearted attempts at washing over the sink. I don't want to be dirty but I just feel like a block of ice when I wake up. I need my methadone AT HOME so I can take it IN BED a good couple of hours before I get up. THEN I will be able to stomach showers, changing clothes, washing hair all the things normal people do. All the things addicts on methadone supposedly start doing again but cannot when the methadone is not in their hands. The longer this poisoning goes on the worse things will get. I just want off that noxious rubbish as quickly as possible. There is no earthly reason why I should experience any withdrawal whatsoever. If I reduced a dose of heroin by 5mg per week I wouldn't feel anything at all. So why should I feel the reduction in methadone? I'm fine once I've drunk it and waited the infernal amount of time that rubbish takes to come on (over two hours). But I'm not OK when I wake up in the morning. Unless the clinic give me control over drinking my own dose at home I'm launching a formal complaint and/or simply scoring my own methadone on the street so I can walk to the chemist without hot and cold flashes and flushing half the dose they give me. They probably wouldn't notice if I did that. I don't want to play around with my dosing but I'm getting more and more wound up on this point. I got advised to issue a formal complaint some weeks ago. Everyone else I know gets good treatment apart from me. It's almost as if they were deliberately eroding my mental health. Example: by insisting I go to group therapy which is only compulsory for convicted petty criminals. I went to two groups very reluctantly just so I could say I'd tried it. Then very happily turned my back on that complete waste of time. 90 minutes of patronizing rubbish I have heard a million times before. No thanks.

I'm not in the mood for NA because I don't go anywhere these days. I feel very run down and mentally exhausted. My mother did not seem to like the letter I wrote her explaining my past. She doesn't want to face my point of view. But she did tell some very interesting stories of her own which I'm sure she considers true. Viewpoint, viewpoint. It's all in the viewpoint.

Well I have to dash I'm on a public computer yet again. I will be back sooner if I can get to a computer that actually works, which many in this shop don't. Take care everyone and have a charming weekend...

Acrobatic Mice

I WAS LOOKING for the Jordans advert with two harvest mice talking in posh accents and kissing. My robos never spoke but I'm sure they would have been posh if they did. Roborovski hamsters are like the aristocracy: a rare breed. My robbies did used to kiss hello though the way French people kiss on both cheeks. One day Itchy was running the wheel with Spherical sitting next to her on the ground. Itchy kept stopping to kiss-kiss Spherical hello. Spherical was highest in pecking order and so got the most kisses... Anyway aren't these harvest mice tiny?



I have been staying off drugs which made me very miserable yesterday when I really wanted some heroin. Somebody offered me some crack today but I turned it down outright that stuff doesn't agree with me. All these drugs affect my mood. Heroin by flatttening it; crack by switching it sometimes. Some days when I was on heroin and crack, I could stay high all afternoon just off of one pipe on the crack. It just seemed to keep going. When I smoked too much I got paranoid and my life became more miserable than ever.

I'm finding it hard not to take heroin as a life without it seems like a life devoid of meaning. Some days like today it's easy. Other days like yesterday when I ordinarily would have used it, it seems far far harder. I can't remember when I did last use it. Over a week ago. I've been using it probably once every two weeks on average so it's more and more infrequent. Luckily they're testing me each time I come into the clinic so they can see the tests are negative. Heroin stays in your system for about 4 days; crack is a bit longer, I think. I was never interested in giving clean tests before so I barely know anything about the issue. Last time they tested me using a lollypop you pass around your mouth he ticked just about everything in the "please test" boxes including stuff I'd never use in a million years like cannabis.

I think the reason I find it hard without heroin is that I was relying on it as an antidepressant mood stabilizer and without it I get far more depressed. Up until about nearly a year ago, I just couldn't handle doing any more than a day off heroin and even that one day was hard. The methadone just didn't seem to work the way it was supposed to. So I'm fighting through unfamiliar territory with methadone declining by 5mg per week at the moment. I don't feel withdrawals from that reduction as the dose is still 95mg; quite high.

Well I have to dash time is running out I hope y'all are well...!

Not Feeling Well

I DON'T FEEL AT ALL WELL. I think a doctor would call it "depression" but it feels like so much more. Like something's gone badly wrong; that something is about to go wrong. That I can do nothing about it. I'm back on my meds, even though I hate them, even though I want to change tablets yet haven't a doctor who will do this for me because only a psychiatrist is willing to take responsibility and I'm between psychiatrists. I need a psychiatrist. I'm on page 315 of the book I'm reading or rather skimming through in French noting down unfamiliar words. Only another 50 pages to go then I'll be lost because "reading" this book is all I've done for the past week. It takes away the pain. I'm not sure I would have the verve to focus on a book in English. Not without whizzing through it on fastforward; the exact opposite to what I'm doing in French. Once I finish the present volume I'm meant to read it slowly from page one, homemade glossary in one hand explaining to me each and every single expression I do not know; but I don't know if I'm up to it. I can but try I suppose. I have to go now; I'm still computerless. I hope you all are OK. Don't worry about me I'm not doing or about to do crack; that was a complete abbarration. I actually enjoy being clean nowadays. More than I ever enjoyed being on drugs. In some strange sort of way. If that makes sense. More than anything I long for the end of my script; for the day when I'm finally methadone-free and everything-free and can tell myself that nightmare, 11 years and counting of constant opiate addiction is finally and at long, long last... OVER. OVER AND DONE WITH.

Cigarettes Level

MY CIGARETTE SMOKING IS LEVEL at about 15 per day. That's not bad, considering they're spindly rollies. I can get by on 10 superkings per day. Those are very long, ordinary thickness cigarettes. I break off the ends and get about 6 or 7 rollups as well as 10 ordinary length cigs. So my habit costs me about £20 per week. British cigarettes are very expensive.

I used NO GEAR yesterday or today (Sunday and Monday are the only days I've used on for weeks, mostly just Sundays). So I'm over 7 days clean now. I don't miss heroin at all. I did crave it yesterday, because I'm used to using on Sundays. But I do not want or need that muck in my veins.

I'm keeping my last memory of a needle in my vein a bad one: the blood test nurse tutting and muttering over my collapsing vessels. If I have bad memories to look back on, I reason, I won't have anything to set me off. Also you tend to glorify the past as you come off drugs and only remember the good days. In spates. Then you remember how bad it really was and are glad you never gave in during those episodes of glorification.

I'm watching a drama about multiple murderers Fred and Rosemary West called Appropriate Adult. The appropriate adult is someone they keep in with a suspect during interviews to ensure procedure is adhered to and that the suspect understands what's going on. Apparently they weren't sure whether or not Fred West was retarded!

The appropriate adult's partner got so excited by press camping round their house (the British press being especially voracious) that he went and caught Bipolar Mania, buying a new car, television and hifi equipment and ending up in a mental hospital. Now the appropriate adult has been sacked... end of part one.

I laughed at the beginning of that drama when they cracked a joke about the buried au pair not "having three legs" (ie 3 thigh bones of at least 2 people were found buried in close proximity). Then he talks about ripping a baby from a murdered woman's womb. And I wanted to be sick. The Wests apparently tortured these young women to death and what they did was vile.

Anyway back to cigarettes and now I have to give up smoking. And I wish my methadone clinic would reduce my dose I hate being on over 100mg.

Take care everyone.


Today's main illustrations are from the Aussie drama, Prisoner Cell Block H. If you want to see Fred and Rosemary West click the links I put up

Countdown to Nothing

I AM COUNTING EACH AND EVERY CIGARETTE I smoke in preparation to cut that number down down down... then out. To Zero. I am thinking of going on Nicotine Replacement Therapy when I've got down to five a day. I have no idea how many I currently smoke as I roll my own. I have had six so far today. It's 1:30. I have been up since about 9 or 9:30 which means 6 in 4 hours. Which is not that good.

I take back everything I have said about giving up fags being easy. I only said that in exasperation at cigarette smoking being compared to heroin. Interestingly only in smoking cessation clinics. Not heroin cessation clinics. Because smoking a fag is nothing like hitting up some "pukka B".

An addict cycled past me, saying he is running for a dealer I know and his gear is "old school". Ie good. I'm over heroin now. Like I said I've only used once a week, and looking back it's the change in routine on a Sunday that prompts me to do it. (I've only ever used on a Sunday for weeks now. When I have used extra it was on Monday. Because Sunday sparked me off to do it.)

With that nasty nauseating blood test fresh in my mind, I'm determined to hold on to a negative image of needles and keep myself reverse-fixated that way. I'm so over heroin. Yes the methadone is helping a LOT. Never thought I'd say that, but anything that makes heroin feel not worthwhile has to be good.

And here endeth my thoughts for today. Happy thoughts! (Wow.)

Autumnal

THERE WERE 2 UNEXPECTED EFFECTS of becoming opiate dependent (I noticed).

1. I barely ever catch cold and

2. I hardly feel the seasons of the year any more

Autumn is the only season I still feel. I feel it now, and I feel weird. In an indistinct kind of way.

I feel vaguely excited, yet vaguely depressed. At the same time.

Also I'm craving heroin in a distant way. I haven't taken any since Sunday when I didn't feel it anyhow. I only crave heroin by association. And I associate feeling autumnal with doing gear. I'm reminding myself that it's only been about 12 years, or a couple more, depending how you count, since I went ON gear. So I've done many autumns without it. I also went down the SOAS bookshop for Japanese dictionaries a year or two ago, so I could associate that with autumn too. I'm very much into associations. I need a Chinese dictionary as well. Mrs Li has finished teaching me to tell time. I'm on Unit 5 now. I still can't do the accent at all, but I'm doing OK at writing.

I nearly was sick yesterday having that blood test, it was awful. I felt so nauseated. She kept asking me if I was alright. How a junkie could be so afraid of needles. I couldn't tell you which one she used; I didn't dare look.

I spent £5 on one pen and 100 sheets of holepunched blank paper to write my book on. Yes I'm doing it the old fashioned way as my computer is down and I write better in Real Ink. It makes me focus on High Quality.

Now I've got to go before this internet cafe terminates me.


Illustrated: a Charles Dickens manuscript

PS my blood samples were tiny drizzles compared to yesterday's illustration. My vein was so collapsed she thought it wouldn't hold out...

Blood Test Day

A SURLY NURSE took my blood this morning. First thing she said, upon examining my right arm, was "this may take some time; you've used all this up". She then examined my left and was in a vein first stab. "It's so slow it may well coagulate before it's all finished," she said. The draining took so long my hand was going numb.

When I saw the tiny test tubes, each with only a trickle inside it, I wanted to heave. I dashed outside for a cigarette then had a Cadbury's Creme Egg in consolation. I'm eating Chinese takeaway tonight as my reward for undergoing that ordeal. Last Chinese had undercooked chicken, so I'm going to the one I really like that closes early. The lady writes out Chinese characters on the ordering slips especially for me.

Valium Marilyn has lent me The British National Formulary "the book of life" she calls it. Every prescription drug is in there with full details. Of course I had a good read of the diamorphine page.

Following this mornings pukesomeness I'm put off gear for good. Yes I did relapse yet AGAIN on Sunday but use is down now to ONCE PER WEEK. This is the best I've ever done except those 10 weeks or more when I used nothing at all. I was drinking still during that period. I now have just under a pint of white cyder and tropical fruit juice in the fridge. Reserved from last night when I simply could not get anything more down me. I had to do a 12 hour fast so I stacked up as much nutrition inside me as I could possibly manage.

I'm going to have to ping. I hope you all had a decent weekend. And bank holiday weekend for those of you in the UK. The Notting Hill Carnival was "quiet" this year. Surely a contradiction in terms. The Notting Hill Carnival once made me the second illest I have ever been in my life. A physical, spiritual and mental breakdown all at once. It was like a fuse had blown in my head and I was sweating bottles and bottles of white wine (that's what it looked like) onto my sheets. This was before the heavy drugs episode so heavy sweats weren't the usual me at all.

I don't eat that much Takeaway, Baino. Usually once a month these days. Twice in a week is unusual and basically my way of Bribing myself into that Blood Test Clinic.

You know I nearly ended up in Nuclear Medicine by mistake. I felt so sorry for the people crowding into oncology. I might have a supposedly serious illness but it's psychiatric. I'd rather be mentally ill than physically any day. I was offended by EastEnders last night calling bipolar (in so many words) a terrible condition passed down by bad blood. I'm the only nutcase in my family so explain that one. There is a small amount of ordinary depression, some gambling and some drinking on ONE side of my family but I'm the biggest junkie nutter by far. Explain that you geneticists!!

Well I've gotta go. Make it a good one!

Punished for Nothing

I haven't edited this wondrous stream of consciousness. It's all I thought in the past 24 hours...

IT'S 4:59AM I am too excited to sleep. I feel this constant low grade HAPPINESS in me. I am INSPIRED. My book is brewing up like a cup of tea with a charming Chelsea bun at its side. My Chinese is coming on better than Japanese ever did. I scored 10/10 on the last test. When I do make mistakes I can see where I went wrong. Instead of being bemused. I'm only on lesson 3 of 22. But it's quite remarkable I got anywhere. Mandarin Chinese sounds more bizarre than any langauge on earth. Far more foreign than other tonal languages like Cantonese (as heard in most Chinese takeaways worldwide), Vietnamese (as heard in war films) and Thai (as heard in Thailand). Thai is one of the most beautiful langauges on earth. Chinese of course has the most beautiful writing. I am learning the names of animals. So far I only know two: a 蓝山雀 lánshānquè is the "tiny tit" that flutters from birdtable to birdbath (a blue tit bird); a 鰍 qiū or 泥鳅 níqiū is a loach; 鰼 xí is another loach or mudfish; a 平鰭鰍科 píngqíqiūkē is a Borneo sucker or hillstream loach (I used to keep one as a pet). I love loaches; they are my favourite aquarium dweller. They skulk around the background of the tank and claim the bogwood as their personal lair. I always identified with our sucker loach Doover. We also had a stripey khooli loach, but that one died.

Talking of stripey nasties: Japanese hornets, at 2" long, the world's largest wasps, have been invading Norfolk! Hornets are called 虎頭蜂 hǔtóufēng "tigerhead bees" in China.

Polyglots of the past; polyglots of the present...

UKH I SLEPT IN IN IN so long I got up at 4pm today. This is the first major sleep I've had all week. I got up angrily stamped down the post office then crowded up the methadonery for my dose. I retired to the library and felt cold wet and paranoid for an hour as I waited for the nonexistent effects of methadone to come on. Anna Grace alwys says 140mg methadone made her feel lovely. Lovely enough to do coke on top. Well I've been on that dose and I can tell you to me methadone does absolutely NOTHING. You literally cannot feel it. Take it away and you'll feel the lack of it. But like marriage to a limp and sappy person with a good job, its presence is not noted though its absence is.

I'm not in a very good mood today because the drugs service are persecuting me yet again. Insisting that I go to their crappy drugs group which is nowhere near as good as NA. Nearly everyone is in there to be punished for committing a crime. And I who have done nothing wrong are made to suffer too. I'm really looking forward to saying this tomorrow. My big problem in groups is learning to SHUT UP. Last time I went I did 95% of the talking on the "client" half. I consciously tried to say a little as possible and yet still dominated every aspect of every topic under discussion [because I was too manic not to talk]. This pisses me off because I know the rest of them ~ who are in there to be made to suffer for raiding Sainsbury's, trading in stolen smoked salmon and other drug-related crimes ~ are tolerating my outbursts only because they have no option but to be there or sent to prison for non-attending. And they all probably think I'm a wanker, a twat, a dork. Stuff like that. Because I dare answer back with statements like "they only give us methadone because they know it doesn't work". This bloke who thinks I'm so perceptive an refreshingly frank will soon realize I'm actually like a stuck record. I WILL not accept a life on methadone as any kind of normality. It is compromise of the worst kind. I would rather be on a proper script, or failing that street heroin. Methadone is worse than either of these because it's MORE ADDICTIVE my habit is now WORSE than ever, more entrenched than ever. I'm only motivated to use heroin because they insist I drink the methadone under supervision, like a big baby. So the day that I'm not Supervised (Sunday) I take it late and do heroin early instead. It's more a fuck you to the clinic than anything else. And I will not "behave" myself just to make some lazy arsed worker look good on paper. All the progress I have made has been despite, not because of, the half-witted efforts of the druggie servies I have been plagued with.

21:42 hrs. WHAT WAS I ranting about there? Something very involving, no doubt. I'm so glad not to be DEPRESSED these days. My mood is just very slightly hyper, pretty much all the time, and I really like it like this. Of course I enjoy going higher and higher, but the consequences are surprisingly inconvenient. I get memory loss. Cognitive deficits. When I'm really high my thoughts run away from one another, like quicksilver exploding on a workbench. So I'll take a mild high any day over a severe one. If I ever get severely high again I'm going in the nuthouse. I'm not looking after myself like a frantic three year-old doing a trolley-dash in a toyshop ever again. I "know" I'm ill when I'm ill. I might not like to accept it, and I might view the situation very differently, but I'm aware that something is radically changed about me and that to a psychiatrist this is clinically significant. Of course when I'm manic I believe psychiatry is like a bullshit mystery religion where the doctors are high priests, medication is the sacrament. Nurses would be like deacons in a church. And the volatile masses, seeking relief from their emotional wounds come piling to the temple day after day, seeking absolution, resolution, evolution and a revolution. I think one reason some sections of the public have become disillusioned with psychiatrists is because they have gone to them for the wrong reasons, not to mention wildly unrealistic expectations.

Just seeing a psychiatrist is not any kind of medical treatment in itself. The psychiatrist prescribes treatment, which may be one of any number of talking therapies. Psychiatrists treat psychiatric conditions. Some such conditions cause mental pain, suffering or discomfort. But this is not to say that anybody in psychological pain, suffering or discomfort is in need of a psychiatrist or can be helped by them! In my experience, psychiatrists are pretty useless when it comes to "emotional problems". They're only truly in their element when dealing with psychotic illness that can respond to medication.

I'm so sick to death of talking therapies. What right has any professional to my personal feelings? Last time I had counselling I deliberately turned up late every time, in order to cut down our time together. Some days I just didn't go, as I resented having to declare how I felt when what I felt was SHIT and there was no explaining it. I don't believe the cognitive theory of depression explains all depression by any means. I vividly remember coming out of a depressive episode and being able to think "I'll go down town" without a sinking feeling coming over me. That is, when I was depressed, anything, any emotionally neutral thing that might excite, inspire or enthuse a happy person, gave me a sinking feeling, a feeling of dread, or desperation, or gloom. Or just despair. Going back into the depression these feelings returned. So it wasn't self-fulfilling prophecies, or predicting the future, or anything else cognitive therapists claim to cause depression. I felt depressed over the pettiest and most basic things. The feelings I had were independent of my thoughts, and I felt depressed over things that ordinarily bore no emotional charge. I'd love a cognitive therapist to explain to me how my thought process was making me depressed when I clearly remember the depressed feelings coming on their own. I didn't think "Oh I'll go to town" and then "but it will be a horrible experience; it's not worth going". That might be how I felt, but I never ever put my depressive feelings into such words. How can a therapist specializing in cognition battle something that wasn't cognitive? Depression is a feeling, not a thought. It's true that depressive thought patterns can become engrained. I once went nuts in a Nutter Club Meeting where this girl I liked complained that her counsellor had demanded she explain why she was having suicidal ideation when not depressed. I exploded that such ground-in thoughts are extremely common in recurrent depression and that any mental health professional should know this. This was another of those meetings where I dominated every discussion. I'm not looking forward to being punished FOR NOTHING tomorrow, forced to sit in a room full of surly shoplifters who are sorry only for being caught, who are victims of a repressive government that once prescribed heroin to addicts as a matter of course and now insists onn methadone treatment, a therapy that is unsuccessful in the vast majority of cases. When you're addicted to heroin, heroin is the only thing that makes you feel OK. Addicts aren't being unusually selfish in funding their habits; they're merely engaging in the fundamental human instinct to self-preservation ~ and yet they're being punished for this and forced to sit through sessions of brainwashing. Well I'm calling a spade a spade. The guy who does the sessions is very nice, so I will tell him what he is: a very nice brainwasher. There's no atmosphere of recovery in such "lessons" because nobody really wants to be there. Just as nobody really wants to be in rehab. They're only doing rehab because they got caught yet again and it's cushier than a prison sentence. Either that or they're just trying to get their kids back. You know ~ when the kids have been abducted by interfering social services. Probably because they didn't arse-lick or kow-tow to the social worker enough. So I'm off to be severely punished tomorrow. I'd much rather go to prison for 3 days than do weeks of these awful meetings. I think I'll tell that to the doctor. It's only fun when someone gets over-emotional, resents being told to switch their phone off, falls asleep, falls over, swears, gets into an argument with the invigilator or otherwise misbehaves. The actual content of the "course" is utterly predictable. That your brain is telling you that taking drugs is good because your brain feels good. That you can alter your habits and thinking patterns. That drug addiction is a cycle. Blah blah blah. All this is only of use when you have a genuine willingness to abstain. And then you're taking second best by going to these classes and not NA which is a hundred times better. So I'm jeapordizing my recovery just because I'm capitulating to an ignorant bullying system that doesn't care for my mental wellbeing one jot. Just wants to keep its own job and tick boxes on forms. THEY get promoted because of MY good behaviour. Eg not drinking. I'm angry enough with the clinic to drink on principal, to inject miniscule quantities of heroin and cocaine just to dirty up my tests and to give a breathyliser reading so I look dirty. I'm never ever going to act like a good boy for those patronizing bastards. See how they destroy everything that's good. By bullying me they only make me want to rebel. I don't trust them. I don't like them. I'm in safer hands with a heroin dealer on the street. Heroin dealers respect their clients more than methadone clinics ever do. Heroin dealers need their clients alive, to keep making money out of them. The methadone clinic just wants me out of their hair. Well they can spit on my grave. I'm totally sick to death of them. Ridiculing me. Patronizing me. Telling me lies. I can't wait to move out of this God-forsaken shithole I'm stuck in. To be away from this particularly noxious service. Even as drug services go they are particularly coercive and intrusive. Valium Marilyn warned me never to open up to them as they'd only use my own words against me and she was dead right. I have to get the hell out of this situation. I'd rather be in the nuthouse than attending brain-rotting meetings like this one I'm forced into going to. Any more of this crap and I'm making a formal complaint. My psychiatrist said that counselling wasn't a treatment he was recommending. Probably because he knows how much I hate it. Yet this place insist on it. I can't wait to get there and let rip with some home truths...


Illustrated: kuhli loach, one of my favourite tropical fish, though they always die; mass bullshitting session; furry entertainers; one-to-one bullshitting session ~ note the look on the therapist's face; the Hazelden Dual Disorders Recovery Book ~ I really wanna get hold of this... Something that might actually work FOR me not AGAINST.

SEND IN THE CLOWNS
... a really appropriate song...

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."

Lots of things, including an anti-drug rant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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



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





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




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

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

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

Heroin? TAKE MY ADVICE AND GIVE IT A MISS.

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

STAY AWAY FROM DRUGS! STAY FREE!

✰✰✰✰✰✰✰


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

When opiates were legal

!

Sanity

I DIDN'T POST EARLIER because nothing was new and I don't feel well. I've scrapped two long posts because there was too much telling going on. I woke up at 4am going nuts and have since calmed down. The 1959 film starring Audrey Hepburn, Nun's Story, helped calm me. I was getting very manic, and yet still depressed. And paranoid to boot. I only went outside to clear my head out. I am getting free broadband from the library. My trainers have worn through at the soles, letting rain in. Now they smell like camping material that has been stored in a damp barn all winter. They need burning.

I don't know where I am going or what is happening. I am not well. Hey but I'm well enough not to do crack. Somebody offered me crack yesterday and I got more of a buzz knowing I could watch it and smell it being smoked right in front of me and not still not want the shit.

My biggest disappointment is that it has taken me so long to truly realize that heroin, far from helping me in any way, has only ever been one gigantic con. I cannot think of one single example of anybody whose life has been improved by the use of street heroin. I think the gear has just made me sicker than I would have been, because it's become a crutch. So I'm weaker, more vulnerable and more impressionable on a psychic level and that's what psychosis is: psychic overdrive.

I can never know what I would or would not be doing now without the "helping hand" of heroin but I don't think my existence would be the mess it has become on gear, I just don't.

So there's some sanity for you. I've put the rest of what I wrote this morning in cold storage because it's just more mad ranting and I'm fed up of being that way. I cannot tell what is and is not relevant in that state so I just say everything and edit nothing. Hence the literary mess that is me in a full-flown "flight of ideas" (as the doctors call it).

I hope y'all are well!


To those of you on far-flung shores, trainers are sneakers ~ and mine look a bit like this...


HUMATE: LOVE SIMULATION (PAUL VAN DYK LOVE MIX)



DJ TIËSTO: SUBURBAN TRAIN



ASTRAL PROJECTION: AURORA BOREALIS

Weekend Ramblings

IT’S FIVE MINUTES to midnight. (Saturday night.) Awful music is playing on TV. I have chicken jalfrezi and “tricoloured rice” (800 cals the lot) but I can’t eat it till tomorrow. Else I’ll be out of money and out of food to boot.

I’m not looking forward to tomorrow. I hate Sundays. And what use is a Sunday without drugs to kill the misery. I don’t think I will ever be OK ever again after that psychiatrist gave me bipolar disorder. My family pointed out that a psychiatric titles are mere descriptions. Life is not a Chinese restaurant menu. As my old counsellor said, you don’t get to pick what cross you bear. But I do feel the psychiatrists have made me mad. I was fine before I went to any shrink. Interesting I supposedly had depression for years and yet my depression doesn’t match the extremes described in Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia, the alltime classic text on the subject. My overexcitement is exactly as described in the book, but the depression isn’t. So by Victorian standards I’m a maniac with a moody temperament. Which means I don’t need medication. I’m not taking medication anyway. Medication is a way of keeping people subjugated and compliant.

I think most people who feel depressed have reason to be depressed. I feel evil and full of death. I think I’m going to have to dig out a baseball cap. They don’t suit me at all. But together with dark glasses, they hide the eyes. I cannot handle people looking me in the eye. And I really cannot stomach this nauseating drug clinic I have to go to. The absolute falseness between me and my worker. All she wants is a show of positivity so that’s what I show. On Tuesday I was feeling a bit amped up so the energy I gave out was real. By Friday I wasn’t happy at all and the effort required to bullshit through my encounters is just too much. I am not looking forward to going there on Tuesday. Fucking group therapy. What I find intrusive and offensive is that you have to say your name. Not like NA where you can skulk in and out saying nothing.

My only goal left in life is to become rich. I want money because I know it will never bring happiness, but like heroin, money is tangible. I want money so I can isolate myself. I want to be unconscious and unremembered. I am too tired to go on.

On a positive note I am planning to go to NA this Monday. I would like to say life on drugs was miserable but that wasn’t the core problem. Drug addiction is disempowering and drug addicts are slaves. That’s what’s bad about addiction. All this crap about how much better I’ll feel. I know of many many cases who left behind drugs ~ and I mean opiate drugs that kill pain and stabilize mood ~ and these people all have bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or depressive psychosis. We all knew that the drugs were holding these people together. Without exception they broke down AFTER the addiction ended.

My problem is that if I am not weak then I am powerless. Money gives power of a fashion. I can’t think of a single person I admire who was poor. Only exceptions are the New Testament Bible characters, but they somehow had means to pay passage all across the road. One of the apostles went as far as Japan. As for the old testament: Abraham had audiences with kings. Joseph and Daniel both reached the status of Prime Minister.

Ugh. And talking about money there’s a nauseating miniseries about the Kennedys playing on BBC2. What people find fascinating about Jackie Kennedy I do not understand. I have a paperback about her and only read the bits about Aristotle Onassis ~ a far more interesting personality.

I have drunk cokehead neighbours. Yelling and bawling across the street. Least it’s not quiet I suppose. I despise cocaine. It’s powdered excitement for people too dull and drab to make entertainment of their own. O shit it’s 0041 hours. I’ve gotta sleep.

IT’S 10PM (Sunday night) NOW. I stayed awake most of the night, thinking I was doing a good thing depriving myself of sleep, as sleep is supposedly the fuel of depression. By about five a.m. I couldn’t decide whether or not to stay up the whole day through, but eventually went to bed. I was woken up just before 2pm by the most terrible nightmares. So I woke up in a bad mood and stayed in a bad mood all day until I eventually gave in and scored heroin.

The drug had some effect because suddenly I was depressed no more, or depressed a lot less. This effect lasted a mere three hours and as I write the bad mood is creeping back on me, making £10 seem a very dear price for a couple of hours’ normality. Now if only methadone had this remarkable effect I might find sticking to my script a lot easier. As it is, I had been about ten days without using. I knew I was going to be tested by the doctor next Tuesday and I refuse to remain clean merely to impress another person. I never have and never will avoid drugs due to external pressures. I am only detoxing (or at least reducing my metha-dose) because I have lived the junkie life. Nothing came of it bar a handful of experiences an ordinary person wouldn’t want to experience anyhow. As an addict, there was never any tomorrow. Just one constant mono-day. Same, same, same every day. Nothing new ever happened, except when some crisis came to a head. There was nothing to look forward to, except more of the same drug. And for a long, long time the main pleasure of heroin was that a day on it was a hundred times more tolerable than a day without. No amount of methadone did very much to inhibit my desire for heroin. And unless I took a dose many times larger than the one I was accustomed to I never felt any euphoriant effect at all from methadone. Any progress I have made was despite, not because of methadone. Some ill-informed people appear to believe that this substance possesses some special property that makes it especially suitable for addicts who wish to give up heroin. It does not.
The only reason methadone was selected as a treatment for addicts was that it could be dosed orally once daily under supervision whereas nearly every other opiate required two or more doses a day. This is no longer the case. There is a sustained-release preparation of hydromorphone (Jurnista) that can be dosed once daily. As far as I know there’s a similar preparation of morphine.

Methadone is preferred because methadone is cheap and in the words of the medical manuals “produces less euphoria than heroin and other opiates”. To a miserable junkie, the so-called “euphoria” of heroin, which is no more intense than the intoxicant effect of a double Scotch, becomes the only tolerable reality they know. On methadone, addicts tend to feel flat and listless. In my darkest days I did so badly on methadone because I simply could not bear the intensity of depression that resulted after taking it. It’s no coincidence in my mind that I also became psychotically manic while taking no other drug but methadone. If I were a doctor I could in no good conscience prescribe a drug which I knew to have effects this extreme on my patient. I believe I am in fact the victim of medical negligence. I’m only willing to endure the intensely malign effects of this substance in an effort to get off all opiates as quickly as humanly possible. The more depressed I feel the more my craving for heroin increases. But strangely the desire to get off opiates does not diminish at all. Bear in mind that a methadone addict is in every way as much of an addict as a heroin addict. Methadone is known to affect more receptor sites in the brain than heroin, including ones that are known to promote dysphoria. Milligram for milligram the methadone withdrawal syndrome is far harsher than that of heroin and it goes on for weeks, not days. I consider methadone a poison and I want it out of my body as swiftly as humanly possible.

There’s nothing good to write because I see no future until I am free of this rubbishy drug the government insist I take. If I won the lottery I would gladly leave this awful new drug clinic I have been saddled with and take my custom to a private doctor who would prescribe morphine continus tablets. I’ve experimented with Oromorph solution. It feels the same as heroin without the so-called rush of injecting. In other words it does everything methadone is supposed to do but doesn’t. Gets an addict away from illicit heroin and needles, allows them to stabilize. And keeps them feeling OK. I don’t think I have ever known anyone stick to methadone without either using heroin on top at every opportunity, or else swapping heroin for alcohol or benzodiazepines. True, methadone is better than nothing. But this is the year 2011. Surely it is time for the Powers That Be to start looking at something a little more effectual than oral methadone with its 4% success rate?
Until that day comes, expect the opiate problem to continue to grow. Expect more crime. More lives wasted. More overdoses. More suicides. An ever more crowded criminal justice system and fuller prisons. If methadone worked as well as its advocates claim it to, nobody would ever use on top of it, just as street heroin addicts don’t use on top of their doses. Now that stands to reason. Methadone does work for some people. 4% of addicts are treated successfully on methadone. But the other 96% deserve something else. Something better. And they need it NOW.

Oh roll on tomorrow. Money. Phone top-up. Can ring Deshane, find out about my supposed house move etc. Roll on fucking Specsavers with my Reactions lenses so I can get my other pair tinted blue. I know blue lenses are meant to be bad for the eyes but surely the UV filter will cancel that out. Blue light triggers wakefulness in the brain, which red light cancels out. So amber lenses are very good for insomniacs to wear while trying to sleep when it’s light outside. Blue lenses would if anything make one more wide awake and chirpy. I used to wear dark blue sunglasses all the time until a freak wave in Goa swept them away…
… then there’s that poor goldfinch hopping forlornly from perch to bleak perch in a gloomy cage in a shop he hates. They say caged birds don’t sing. This one doesn’t. Part of me believes he wants me to rescue him. The other part tells me this is sheer folly, that I’m in no position to be taking on new pets and what would happen if I became ill? A hamster can be left for a week or longer. Nocturnal hamsters can happily live hidden away in closets in the dark; daylight loving birds can be bundled into cupboards when landlords pay unexpected calls and the dark will shut up their chirpings but that is a far from ideal solution. I kept my robbies hidden from view at all times when I was out of the house and nobody ever discovered them. I’ve now found a female golden hamster sleeping in a ball… there are also lback and white ones going at £5 each in the goldfinch shop but the man has a very dismissive attitude. This is the same man who said “oh they’re not Syrian hamsters; I think they’re normal ones” DUR!

Oh I’ve got to go the more I think the worse I feel. I’ve been trying to access the local wireless networks free of charge. I wouldn’t make a good professional hacker. For example “Mary”’s network I tried passwords contrary, Magdalene, London, the part of London we’re in, the name of my road, what I assume to be Mary’s road and so on. The anti-hack security is wise to this and pauses pregnantly when I enter anything raringly obvious like password or secret… I think I’m going to have to stick with Starbucks in future…





THIS IS THE BEST EUPHORIC TRANCE TUNE EVER

binary finary 1998/1999
the version i knew came out 1998

The back of my head...

YOU WANTED TO SEE THE BACK OF MY HEAD here y'are....

I didn't get any canaries yesterday as some BASTARD went and bought all the yellow ones while I was talking shit at the drug clinic. Only bird I want in there now is the "goldfinch mule". This is a European goldfinch crossed with a canary. He has very attractive pink colouring but seems to live in permanent terror fluttering to and fro. I was half tempted to buy him out of pity, to try and calm him down.

I'm trying to feel positive, the depression is seeping back, just like high tide follows low tide. Only good thing is I've not bothered with the heroin. I got a phone call at 2am (I got up at midnight) from my old dealer, but didn't bother answering. This is the one who handed his business to a schoolkid who tried to sell me one "ten" for £20. So I say hang on a minute. He gives me another. Then I say "no, it's three for £20" (which it is, from this dealer). So I opened them up and there was about £10 worth of gear in all three, at 2002 prices. I hate drugs, I hate drug dealers. Every morning I feel SICK before I collect my juice. I wish those bastards would let me drink it at my own pace. Then I'd never feel ill. So I am sweating like a bastard knowing the dealer is at far closer hand than my chemist.

Anyway I have to go. I'm using the library's ethernet or whatever the hell they call it. Gotta jump on the bus before the urge to score eats me up.

PS my hair isn't as yellow as that. It's "absolute platinum" ~ that's the name....

Glasses Alert

HEY! I'VE FOUND A PICTURE OF MY NEW GLASSES. These are exactly the pair that really suits me. Won't they look amazing in light brown tint??! And can't you see now why I'm so irritated at having to wait TWO AND A HALF WEEKS for this sheer trendiness to be perched on the bridge of my nose in a with snazzy amber lenses? I want to know what y'all think of my excellent taste. Frank opinions only, please!

Nah! Just kidding. Those are the horror glasses I had when I was at school. Note I say "had" not "wore". I hated them so much I'd glance at something important then, in the blink of a myopic eye they'd been snatched away to spare my dignity. Everyone wore glasses like this in the 80s. Everyone who excelled in science subjects. Or had poor social skills. Or a face full of boils. And they made most of us look like multiple child killers who spoke English as a second language. Actually what am I saying. No nation bar Britain would ever countenance such execrable eyewear.

My current specs are the only pair I've ever had that I actually like wearing. Which either says a lot about glasses or it says a lot about Specsavers' range. I've only ever shopped at Specsavers. They do live up to their name. But their staff are offhand and they take AGES to process a simple order for photochromic lenses.

They look like this:I used to have such a thing about eyewear when I was younger (contact lenses not glasses) that my parents got me a job interview at the opticians (gotta work with something you love). Never got the job. That was the old me: so tremulous, I was bleating like a lamb.

I remember when my housemates went on holiday to Mororcco. All I could think on viewing their photos was how their fly-eye shades were so two years ago. This was 1999 so you'll all know what I'm saying.

Now I've got to go. I've a haircut to think about. My friend Pinky says I should go for shaved sides and a bit longer at the top. What do y'all think? I'm neutral. I hate haircuts, just as I hate choosing spectacle frames. Any enforced gawping at my ugly mug in the mirror does my brains in.

If I do get a decent haircut I'm dying my hair too. I used to dye my hair all the time using that Sun-in bleach. I only stopped doing it when my friend Lona took me to a student-run trainee salon where a scarlet-faced, trembling 16 year old scurried back to inform me quavery-voiced, that my strand test not only MELTED under their dye, but started curling out whisps of SMOKE. The schoolmarmish supervisor strode up and demanded to know what on earth I had been putting on my hair. When I said Sun-in with a hairdryer she rolled her eyes and ordered me never to use that product again.

My hair is naturally the colour of dust from a burst vacuum cleaner bag. So what colour should I turn it? Reason I always used peroxide was that it rapidly goes the colour of spun gold with no need for any additional chemicals or colouring. And I've never used those packets of dye meant for middle aged women covering their greys. What do I do? Could my hair turn to jelly and melt? Would I be able to light cigarettes off it? I'd need a ciggie if it melted.

Well that's about all appearance-wise. I'm trying to get some self-esteeem back you see. Y'all have to bear in mind that basically the day I went on heroin was the day I gave up ever shopping for anything bar absolute essentials. Since then I literally have not bought ANY clothes, bar socks and undies. The day things really went tits up and I could no longer afford heroin was the day I turned into a street beggar, with the look to match. Teeshirts, tops, jeans etc were all donated, found on the street or fished out of bins. My footwear came from the boxes people leave behind when they buy new trainers. I used to wear army surplus. Now I just look like a street drinker on my worst days, a down-at-heel student on my better ones.

Another thing: I urgently need a dental scale and polish. My teeth are so badly stained from chain-smoking that there's pretty much no point poshing myself up until a hygenist has given me a white smile again. That service used to be free. Now it's £40 ~ NHS or not. My teeth are so rotten I fully suspect most of them to be HOLLOW. The last dentist ~ who did the emergency extraction on that molar that had rotted all the way up the root ~ was compelled to take an x-ray and read out the state of my gnashers to his surly nurse and I'm sure I heard the word "extraction" at least three times. I only had one hit of heroin and one drink before I came into that shithole of a surgery and yet he treated me like scum of the earth. I lied on the "medications taken" question. No way was I telling that bastard I was on 140mg of methadone!

OK so what should I do with this hair of mine? Ideas please. At the moment it looks like a grey mop and I hate it. I hate long hair. It's long because it hasn't been cut. Fashion doesn't come in to it. (When does fashion ever come into long hair for men?) Last time I cut it I did what I'd long fantasized about: grabbed scissors and literlaly hacked away until only a centimetre length remained. I thought it was OK. Partly because I'd recently had a psycho flare-up; mostly because I'd done 2 £20 bags of heroin before the haircut. Over the following weeks I kept finding long bits, ridiculously short bits. I looked like a fledgling bird with schizophrenia.

Branzie, my stepdad did buy me hairclippers but I'm scared of getting that ex convict look. I won't look hard with that kind of cut. I'll look like Sinead O'Connor crossed with a Red Army Faction terrorist.

So come on. Advice. Needed. DESPERATELY.

Should I shave my head grade 5, or what? Should I hand in my glasses and demand an exchange for the stylish pair up top? Should I take a mood stabilizer to stop me very nearly walking out of petshops with exotic singing finches? My life is a mess and I'm on methadone. Please help me!!




★★★★★★★★★★★★


PS don't forget today's other posts:
Furry Friday on Saturday: Shetland Ponies
Betty Ford Dead at 93
Watch the Birdie (about me nearly purchasing a singing finch for £35 + £12 for the cage)