I used to take heroin at every opportunity, for over 10 years, now I just take methadone which supposedly "stabilizes" me though I feel more destabilized than ever before despite having been relatively well behaved since late November/early December 2010... and VERY ANGRY about this when I let it get to me so I try not to.
I was told by a mental health nurse that my heroin addiction was "self medication" for a mood disorder that has recently become severe enough to cause psychotic episodes. As well as methadone I take antipsychotics daily. Despite my problems I consider myself a very sane person. My priority is to attain stability. I go to Narcotics Anonymous because I "want what they have" ~ Serenity.
My old blog used to say "candid confessions of a heroin and crack cocaine addict" how come that one comes up when I google "heroin blog" and not this one. THIS IS MY BLOG. I don't flatter myself that every reader knows everything about me and follows closely every single word every day which is why I repeat myself. Most of that is for your benefit not mine.
This is my own private diary, my journal. It is aimed at impressing no-one. It is kept for my own benefit to show where I have been and hopefully to put off somebody somewhere from ever getting into the awful mess I did and still cannot crawl out of. Despite no drugs. I still drink, I'm currently working on reducing my alcohol intake to zero.
If you have something to say you are welcome to comment. Frankness I can handle. Timewasters should try their own suggestions on themselves before wasting time thinking of ME.
PS After years of waxing and waning "mental" symptoms that made me think I had depression and possibly mild bipolar I now have found out I'm schizoaffective. My mood has been constantly "cycling" since December 2010. Mostly towards mania (an excited non-druggy "high"). For me, schizoaffective means bipolar with (sometimes severe) mania and flashes of depression (occasionally severe) with bits of schizophrenia chucked on top. You could see it as bipolar manic-depression with sparkly knobs on ... I'm on antipsychotic pills but currently no mood stabilizer. I quite enjoy being a bit manic it gives the feelings of confidence and excitement people say they use cocaine for. But this is natural and it's free, so I don't see my "illness" as a downer. It does, however, make life exceedingly hard to engage with...
PPS The "elevated mood" is long gone. Now I'm depressed. Forget any ideas of "happiness" I have given up heroin and want OFF methadone as quick as humanly possible. I'm fed up of being a drug addict. Sick to death of it. I wanna be CLEAN!!!
Attack of the Furry Entertainers!
Showing posts with label antipsychotic medication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label antipsychotic medication. Show all posts
IT IS ICE COLD here in London. The weather forecast said "normal weather for January". It feels a lot colder than normal. I sleep under four layers, I'm so cold. You can see passers by's breath as they go past.
I had a bad reaction to some tea I drank the other day. Four cups over the course of an afternoon was enough to put me on a high then a down. The up and the down turbulently mixed together and I felt very paranoid and weird. I think I'm hypersensitive to caffeine. Two cups of strong tea in the morning seems to be OK. I've had one today to see if I feel any better than on two. I might have to cut out tea and caffeine altogether. It never made me feel "high" until I got a manic "high" last year. But it did used to make me anxious, which made me give it up for a few years, and the anxiety flew away.
I have been feeling mentally wobbly for a while and had a really crap day yesterday. Paranoia and depression with anxiety: but paranoid, depressed and anxious about nothing at all and everything simultaneously.
If I wasn't on antipsychotics I think I'd be having a really bad time.
I was going to talk about tiny tits in the trees but I haven't seen any. Blue tits that is. When we had a birdfeeder when I was a child, our garden seemed to be full of them and great tits, which are slightly bigger.
I hope you all are feeling OK.
I finally get paid tomorrow which is a relief as I got the current non-lot of money early because of the new year. Which means it's gone quicker. I've had to borrow £15 just to survive. I must have spent it carefully as I still had £5 yesterday...
My foot is slowly healing. Maybe the vitamins from the salads help with it..? Who knows. I know that eating salad is meant to be better than not eating it. I know it's not very wintery but it's the only veg I can stomach at the moment (apart from baked beans which allegedly count towards the 5 portions a day recommended by The Government.
And last but not least my methadone has finally gone down to 55mg and is going down to 35mg over the next ten weeks. It's all planned out so no need for doctors' appointments between now and then. I can't wait to get OFF the stuff completely. Really can't wait! If all it's going to do is make me feel "normal" why not feel normal on nothing? I'm taking the last bit slowly though. Don't want to be one of those people who goes running back screaming on to it again. I know a LOT of people are said to do that. I can think of two off the top of my head. Well time's ticking must go... see ya next week.
MY ABSCESS is going down. The skin has all peeled off and it looks more like a pinkish crater than a very rounded purple hill. Also it's going itchy, always a sign of healing. So the time for the doctor has gone. And as I'm NOT injecting heroin there is no reason for any recurrence.
The knife I used, by the way, had one sharp spike on the end, not two blunt ones like the one illustrated. I just couldn't get a picture of tomatoes any other way.
I'm set to borrow money tomorrow as I'm so broke I'm down to beans on toast every day interspersed with oven chips on their own. I'm really hungry even though I've had FOUR small slices of toast and one ENTIRE can of beans this morning. That must surely add up to 700 calories and the risperidone (antipsychotic) I'm on makes you fat. It does this by altering the way your body processes sugar so you need fewer calories. SO I SHOULDN'T FEEL HUNGRY AT ALL. Bloody pills!
I'm due a small plate of American style curly oven chips soon (not yet broke enough to go for straight English ones) plus I have over two litres of 50p cloudy lemonade (more calories) that I use as a substitute for cyder when not drinking. Ie every day. Hasn't stopped me having the occasional one, but the constant hand-to-mouth cigarettes and alcohol is now reduced to just cigarettes.
Speaking of which. I probably shouldn't have tried to give up smoking while I was reducing a methadone dose. And I have an appointment with the DOCTOR at the clinic tomorrow morning, which I'm dreading so please wish me luck. I have to go else I'll get terminated by this public machine. Be lucky everyone!
Illustrated: curly fries and beans on toast ~ what my diet has been reduced to. But only for the next week....
SOLAR QUEST: ACID AIR RAID This tune doesn't properly get going till nearly 4 mins into it. It's still good though...
I TOOK MY CABLE BOX to my friend Valium Marilyn's, unplugged hers, plugged mine in and hacked and hacked away trying to get a free signal. She even produced two free viewing cards that had been lying amongst a pile of junk mail but the cable somehow knew the serial numbers of the cards were mis-synchronized with my digibox. "Aren't they crafty bastards," said Valium Marilyn. It took over ten minutes to get her TV working again, then we watched Australian customs undercover on channel 100-and-something. Both of us were glued to the screen as some Vietnamese lollypops were slit open to reveal high grade white powder. We were slavering at the screen thinking "China white heroin!" But it was boring old coke. Cocaine from Vietnam. Whatever next. Even the customs inspector looked secretly disappointed.
I'm supposedly getting Freesat TV within the next month and a half at the longest. I'm hoping to get someone else's cancellation. I can no longer bear living with four channels of snow and endless trails for things on BBC3 and E4 and other channels everyone else seems to get in Britain apart from me.
Of course I am also supposedly moving house imminently. Which is what got me so het up about signing up for satellite television. If I get that installed surely sod's law shall come into play making me have to move out before I get my hands on at least 83 channels of free entertainment plus supposedly another 200 that I can tune in manually. You even get a horror film channel. So I'm doing what's known as Tempting Fate. Plunking down £67 on something that will really brighten my life, when my life is due to be brightened immeasurably more by this forthcoming move. True, everyone at the new house will be recovering from severe nervous breakdowns but so am I. Only a few months ago I was hearing voices every day and getting funny looks in shops. I still have to take medication and when I don't my mood plummets and sometimes I get quite paranoid. People on the street seem to be talking about me. So I take my medication albeit grudgingly. And look forward to moving house. Or satellite TV.
The pest controller came round today as we still have roaches marching around our kitchens. I showed him the Mount Everest of unsorted belongings on my double bed. We pretty much agreed it's Priority Number One that as much of these unwanted books, records, DVDs, classical albums on vinyl etc which includes at least one carrier bag full of WOMEN's clothes must go down the charity shop forthwith so that's what I'm doing. Also I HAVE to get my house tidy for the Freesat man. Otherwise I will die of shame.
My methadone is down to 70mg as of tomorrow, which I'm really pleased about. 70 mils! Wow. Never thought I'd see that day. I might actually be on less methadone now than Anna Grace out in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Now that would be one up the spout for her!
My newest to-do thing, apart from not use heroin on top of my increasingly lowly methadose, and to clear clear clear the rubble off my bed, is to GET MY COMPUTER REPAIRED. I found out if I move house I can get 30 (gigabyte(?)) broadband plus a landline phone plus 75 TV channels all for about £30 a month so I might go for that one. IF and when I move.
Well Xmas is a-coming, the geese are getting fat. Please put £20 in the drug addict's hat!
That's a traditional rhyme here in Britain. I'm not into begging up change any more. I even found a dropped purse, with money inside, on Morrison's floor. And instantly returned it. See, a change in lifestyle is possible... I just wish I could change quicker. And cut out all illicit druggie-use ALTOGETHER...
Well there we are then, as they say in Wales. I'll have to ping or else I'll get terminated!
WHAT A LOAD OF BLAH BLAHS I posted yesterday. Those are the product of an unproductive brain. All I have done... ALL I HAVE DONE is skim through this one novel in French. I haven't a clue what happens because my concentration span is too fractured. Every single word I didn't know I looked up and wrote into a glossary notebook with the intention of reading back from page one, novel in one hand, notebook in the other now with a completely clear understanding of the text. O yeah and I took up Spanish, which is really easy. No more idiotic pictograms that all look the same. No more hong dong bing and bong words all nearly the same. I was looking for a project I could complete that had some usefulness. Chinese will never be useful to me at an intermediate level (ie after 2 or 3 years' daily study) unless I go hardcore backpacking. It won't be useful to in a career context unless I get past university level. That means 6 or 7 years' study at home. I can use Spanish just by flying to Spain for £50. Actually I'd like to go to Paris, Berlin and Madrid on the same trip. I love big cities. I once spent half an hour in Madrid. I looked out over this huge city, simmering on an endless plain, thinking "wow, I'm in the centre of Spain". British tourists hardly ever go anywhere but the coast and Madrid is about 200 miles from the sea.
The idiotic shitheads from the council are coming round tomorrow to criticize me for living like a pig. So I'm having a half-hearted effort at cleaning up. I'm just afraid of making a worse mess where I can't find "important" documents etc. I'm terrified of throwing something important away. Hence the hoarding. Anyway, least I can clean up to loud Spanish dialogues. I don't get why I can follow Spanish very easily, even when the words are just as unfamiliar as any other language. Eg an apple is una manzana. Yet Chinese words: hong dong shui dui lua I cannot remember. I think maybe it has to do with Spanish having grammar parallel to French. The little words are nothing like the French. A shop is una tienda; a street is una calle. When you get to posher vocabulary things are more similar to the English: libertad, igualdad, fraternidad and of course la electricidad.
I'm reluctantly agreeing (with myself) to go back on medication. Yet again.
I desperately need to see a doctor yet have no psychiatrist ie nobody willing to alter or tweak my meds.
When I went to this God-forsaken new methadone clinic I was promised continuity of care. This has not happened. The old clinic had a consultant psychiatrist who diagnosed me and prescribed the pills I'm on now. The new clinic's doctor said she could not prescribe medication so I lost my psychiatrist and appear to have no hope of getting a new one.
The bullshit on the clinic wall says you are to be involved in and allowed to make choices in your treatment. This has not happened. I am on 110mg methadone against my wishes. I want the dose lowered. And they force me to drink it in the pharmacy meaning I drag myself up there feeling crap each morning and have to wait 2 hours to feel OK. For years I drank my juice in bed meaning I got up feeling fine. I don't know whether the pharmacist is watering my dose but that is how it feels. I'm not using on top; haven't used any heroin in however many weeks I cannot remember, yet I go through spates of quasi-withdrawal symptoms in the mornings. Anyway my new worker, the third one I've had in 3 months, is getting me a clinical review so I can hopefully pick up my methadone like a normal adult and drink half of it before I sleep and the other half before I get up. The 2 times I really need it and it's not there now. He should also get my dose reduced. It was meant to stay at 110mg for 4 weeks (for no good reason). It's been on this ridiculous dose for 6 weeks. If they don't give what I want I'm making a detailed formal complaint as I feel totally let down by this clinic. The titration nurse was bullying, coercive and rude, forcing me into groups therapy I had no interest in. I went twice only so I could say I'd tried it and hated it. The second time I left within 4 minutes of it starting. Once you've been to one such group you've been to them all. They're set up as a punishment for people caught shoplifting so at least half the group announce at "check in" that they do not want to be there. I used more toned down language and said I was giving it a try.
The only week I stayed the entire session I was hypomanic enough to dominate the entire discussion. Then of course my mood crashed and I couldn't face the same group of people who I knew would have assumed only crack could make somebody that high. My experience and the life of the average junkie have diverged a lot over the last few years. I haven't been out begging or shoplifting since I can't remember when. I cut down my heroin use gradually with no help from any clinic or group. All these clinics do is put excessive pressure on you. I did a bit of crack ~ for the first time in ages I might add ~ about a week and a half ago. I used the stuff 3 or 4 days in a row. I gave up by buying a gigantic French dictionary, notebook and novel and forcing myself to look up every new word I found. It felt like Chinese torture in the beginning, then I couldn't stop it. I was up at 4am with 6 Feet Under playing and those dictionary pages whirring. I didn't "enjoy" this activity but I liked the brain-dead emptiness of it. As I say, I lost contact with the narrative flow nearly all the time so I was just looking up words words words and the same words cropped up over and over "mes larmes" means "my tears" I now know. But French isn't onomatapoeic. So a brush which is shush-ush-ushshshshshy, sweeping over the paper, is le pinceau. Which I looked up endless times yet still could not remember out of context.
So my mind is blank and my mood is low, despite all this talk.
I'm going to have to take risperidone, when I really want something else. Because I have been let down YET AGAIN by a network that seems deliberately to be constructed with man-shaped holes for people like me to fall down.
That's it for today. Don't be offended if I haven't visited your blog in an obscene length of time; I've visited nobody.
Illustrated: the book I'm reading by the Chinese immigrant Dai Sijie who, incidentally, had lived in France only 14 years when his French got good enough to write novels in the language. The title means "On A Moonless Night"
Saturday, August 27, 2011
QUETIAPINE, aka Seroquel, the antipsychotic I said I'd rather be on than risperidone, has mysteriously found its way en masse into boxes of Neurofen (ibuprofen) headache pills!
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has issued a safety warning following reports that some boxes may contain Seroquel XL 50mg.
Seroquel XL is a prescription-only anti-psychotic drug used to treat disorders including schizophrenia, mania and bipolar depression.
The mix-up is believed to have happened at a wholesaler's and so far three cases have been identified in the south London area.
See! Ordinary people recoil in horror at the prospect of taking even 2x50mg quetiapine into their bodies. I would probably be dosed at 300-350mg at night. My friend who also has schizoaffective gets 700mg at night. That's 14 of those stray pills!
*******
I slept nearly all day today, woke up with a taste for Chinese food only to find my best local takeaway SHUT at only 10 past 10. This is the one who put mangetout in the mixed vegetable fried rice. The second choice takeaway tip in Iceland's own frozen mixed vegetables: cubed carrots; peas; sweetcorn. Nah! I could do with a chicken and baby corn with curry sauce. Plus egg fried rice. Hey that's making me hungry again...
I was watching Ugly Betty on DVD. Lots of people say they don't like that show. Presumably because it pokes fun at Betty. What they don't realize is you watch it the other way round. Betty is loyal, resourceful, very intelligent and a good person. Despite great opposition she makes her way in a world that mocks and derides her. THAT is why I watch Ugly Betty.
The bit where she skulks into the canteen with everybody smirking at her, is just like entering McDonalds during a paranoid episode. Everybody seemed to be talking to, at or about ME. So I had to ignore everyone and only interact with the girl behind the till, who was gazing at me with a most peculiar look in her eye...
Anyway it's not like that today. I was just saying. Today I am fine. Today all is good.
I can't get my little computer open. I tried and tried unscrewing the back where some cable is at fault, yet cannot do it.
So it's gonna have to go into hospital.
Hey maybe I should have chicken and babycorn in curry sauce with egg fried rice in compensation...
I hope you all are having a splendiferous weekend...
IN WHICH GLEDWOOD talks on many a topic in a far happier way than yesterday... Then Barbra sings "Memory"...
I DIDN'T GO to the brainwashing meeting. I only rant, interrupt and express my wonderful opinions when I'm manic. Then I come down and can't face the meeting again. So I'm too depressed and paranoid to go. So I stayed in bed all day and got up at 4pm. I wasn't lying there skulking by the way, I was fast asleep and ignoring my phone. I've learned to ignore it's chirps over the few days I've had it. This phone has the loudest ring of any phone I've ever had. But it's a flip phone AND you have to press the button to pick it up. So I miss loads of calls just by fumbling with it. And I'm too stingy to ring anyone back. Or in too much of a bad mood (today).
I have to go down Morrisons to get a 54p 2-litre bottle of cloudy lemonade. It's what I'm drinking these days instead of alcohol. I did have yet another black cherry flavour cyder today. That makes 2 drinks in 2 weeks ~ oooh. Yeah so I had this drink. The cherry flavour was my attempt at switching from strong drink to soft drink. It was meant to be a crossover. Unfortunately I loved the taste so much I think I was addicted to that more than the alcohol. So now I'm on cloudy lemonade. The acidity of the lemons matches the acidity of cyder. So my teeth don't miss out on being rotted through the lack of drink.
I'm really pissed off with Buta my old drugs worker. Buta was the titration nurse. Titration is chemical torture where they "cautiously" give doses far too small and leave you in withdrawal for days on end at the beginning of your script. Methadone takes three days to reach a therapeutic level (meaning that your blood level is twice as high on day three despite no elevation of the dose) ~ this is yet another bad thing about methadone. It takes days to "go in". But it also takes days to come out again. Making it far, far harder to detox from. Now if heroin is notoriously hard to come off, why on earth give heroin addicts methadone which is EVEN HARDER to detox from? Somehow I get the feeling nobody cares at all for drug addicts. Soon as I can I'm going on Subutex. But yet again we have a problem, because methadone is too "sticky" to transfer over from without doing two days methadone-free ~ ie two days climbing the walls. With heroin you just need 18 hours clean. Everybody who has done it says you basically go on heroin for four days and switch off that. The only other option is dihydrocodeine (DFs), which is so weak it must be dosed four-hourly. I've found a source of dihydrocodeine, so I'll get enough pills for four days and use those. Why on earth the clinic won't switch you to dihydrocodeine I have never understood. But it's just more proof that they don't give a damn about their clients. They only care for their own jobs. I already have two copies of the "how to make a complaint" leaflet. The way things are going, that formal complaint will go out sooner rather than later.
So I'm depressed today. I think sleeping has a lot to do with it. As soon as I heard that loss of sleep is a "symptom and a cause of mania" and that excessive sleep counts the same for depression, I have been sleeping as little as I possibly can, so I can be happy. Also sleeping is the biggest waste of time out there. I was hong-donging to Chinese until the early hours. I've learned to tell the time. I do know the numbers, but I hardly know them fluently. And they're not pronounced the way their transliterated. Yī 一 one is pronounced "ee", wǔ 五 five is actually "oo", qī 七 seven is "chi"... Surprisingly I managed to follow Mrs Li telling me the time on CD. I was really shocked. I was so depressed when I listened to it this evening. I must have felt how "normal" people feel, who don't truly believe they'll ever get far, when hearing a person blabbering on a Teach Yourself Foreign CD. Utterly hopeless. I'm only abnormal because I believe in myself, at least as far as picking up blabbery foreign tongues is concerned. Like I said, intelligence doesn't come into language acquisition; perseverence does. Half a BILLION Chinese speak Mandarin as their second language and they learn it through immersion. If immersion isn't possible, persistence will pay.
Anyway they say you learn a language by it being babbled out around you, but I grew up in Welsh Wales and got nowhere with Welsh ~ mainly because the teachers at school had never learned a langauge in their lives; they merely grew up speaking Welsh from the cradle. So we were never told "this is a feminine noun; that is an irregular verb" just "it goes like this". Which is like teaching mechanics without ever naming parts of the car! Teach Yourself Living Welsh (as it was called) explained all this to me and I got an A grade at GCSE. Had I relied on our teacher I doubt I'd have got better than a C. It was always my ambition to join the mother tongue set in Welsh but I never managed it. I was too thick.
The beginnings of my decline set in when I was doing my A Levels at school. These are the exams you take age 18. GCSEs are usually age 16. I did try and concentrate but my language skills were awful. Essays riddled with mistakes. Years of "tuition" and yet I still couldn't remember which words were masculine, feminine or neuter. In English I did OK essays on the "texts" we studied, but it was only poetry I was truly any good at critiquing. Already I was getting depressed in this period. During term time I felt fairly OK; it was during the holidays that it hit me. Every exam I took I got a grade lower than predicted. Then I took a year out. Rather, wasted a year out. Was more depressed then. And when I did finally go to uni, I was very quickly depressed out of my mind. The shrink I ended up seeing asked me constantly whether I was hearing voices. That should give you some idea of the impression I made on people, because I wasn't going into that office trying to create any kind of impression good or bad. What he saw was what everyone saw. I felt so dire when on my own that I ended up sitting in other people's rooms. I had nothing at all to say. My presence was only accepted because as soon as I got into cannabis (which happened very quickly) I brought a lump of hash with me everywhere so everyone got a smoke. That didn't make anybody like me, but they at least tolerated me.
It took twenty years from first seeing a psychiatrist to getting full bipolar symptoms. In the beginning I only got depressions. Then I started over-reacting to antidepressants, so I got called "manic" by somebody with two manic-depressive relatives. Eventually my mood started swinging on its own. Only the depressive swings were vicious. The highs were really nice. But then I went on heroin, which blanketed my mood to a flat-line so I thought my depression was cured. Then I went on methadone. But the methadone days were so intolerably low I continued using heroin for years while being scripted methadone. Eventually mania did break through so voraciously that heroin would no longer stabilize me. (Though I have to say this only began when there was a drought in the heroin supply and so no chance of scoring anyhow.) Ever since I went manic last December my moods have been all over the place. Deshane says I have the so-called "negative symptoms" of schizoaffective. It means I just cannot engage myself with many aspects of life. Yes I can do Chinese obsessively. I can do things obsessively. ButI cannot do many things normally. As a plate-spinner I'd have one plate going better than anyone else. But the other six spinners wouldn't even have plates on. Let alone wobbly ones. So this is how I run, or rather don't run my life. It's still in utter chaos but I won't go on about that. How did I get back on to mental health? Oh yeah because the clinic are trying to damage it by forcing me into abusive coercive brainwashing bullshit groups. Well I'm not going. Bar one next week which comes directly after my appointment I've had it with their punishment group.
Buta did tell me there was a way I could go to rehab for stabilization, not detox. Which means I could cut down my dose down to 70mls in about two weeks. I'd be up for that. In order to do this I would need to do their rehab group. I don't mind the idea of that one. Hopefully it wouldn't be full of people on a prison-swerve. The bog-standard group I was pushed into attending was for people who had been caught shoplifting. They only went under duress, because if they failed to attend more than a couple they'd get chucked in prison. Well they're lucky. I'd rather go to prison than do those groups. But what option do I have? The ways things are going I'm going to end up in the nuthouse anyhow. Guess what that CRAP they were prescribing me was actually CAUSING my anxiety. The anxiety I took street-bought Valium for. (Very infrequently, it has to be said; but one pill dirties up the test for two weeks.) So I'm OFF the pills and paranoid and depressed as a result. ALL I NEED IS A DOCTOR TO PRESCRIBE THE QUETIAPINE I WANT. But the NHS has let me down yet again. I don't even have a psychiatrist. They have transferred me from a consultant I knew and respected to no-body. My paperwork appears to have fallen down a black hole. So I'll probably only get quetiapine in the nuthouse. I could do with a break anyhow.
Why they just won't prescribe it to me I have no idea. Oh yeah because I used to have a doctor and now I don't. Will someone explain that to me please.
Well I've got to go. EastEnders is on. And they're doing prison scenes on Coronation Street. I love women's prison dramas. Why on earth did they cancel Bad Girls. When I lived with Lona, who kind of had mental health "issues" of her own, the two programmes we watched together (apart from EastEnders) were Bad Girls and Footballer's Wives. Footballer's Wives eventually got Joan Collins then they cancelled the entire show! It was the only thing about football (apart from the World Cup final) I've ever enjoyed watching. And the world cup final was more entertaining for France getting boo'd and Italy getting cheered. Because the French and the Brits hate each other ~ in a loving sort of way. Britain and France have almost equal populations. They have about five times more land. We have a superior language. They have high taxes for the rich, spectacular natural scenery and far better food. We have London. They have Paris. The best parts of London are far superior to Paris. They have Galleries LaFayette (all perfume and women's clothes). We have Harrods which sells just about everything. Harrods' pets department sells axotlotls and fishtanks connected by swim-through tubes. Their hifi department is amazing. It's the stuff you'd buy naturally if you had a proper income.
Did South Africa win the last world cup? I thought the African teams were only in there to make up numbers. World football is usually Europe vs South America. I feel sorry for Americans having to watch American football (a very camp version of rugby) and baseball (glorified rounders). Football is more versatile than American football because it can be played on just about any bit of flat ground with a ball. No special equipment required. I was actually quite good at football. When I troubled to make an effort at playing. Which I did about three times in my life. The main reason I hated it was that I was "supposed" to like it. Also I loathed all team sports in childhood. And I hated ballgames. Rounders/baseball is the worst. You're supposed to hit the stupid thing with a glorified pea-stick! No wonder I always missed. Most exciting thing about playing football at school was deliberately running to the opposite side of the pitch and avoiding the ball at all costs. The only sport I enjoyed was crosscountry walking (though we were supposedly running). The only sports I was any good at were the hundred metres sprint, the high jump, long jump and triple jump. Everything else I was crap at.
I can't remember where this post was going. Why am I watching Coronation Street? Oh yeah because of the women's prison. Best women's prison drama of all time was Prisoner Cell Block H (known by other titles in other countries; it's the 80s Aussie drama by Grundy Television). My favourite episodes were when Meg Morris (formerly Meg Jackson, until her husband was murdered with a pair of scissors by Chrissie Latham) and the governor (both the kindly witch old one Mrs Davidson and the lesbian gym mistress type... Ann Reynolds (not that I just looked that up on Wikipedia).
Oh cripes it's late I've got to go. Dà hǔ tóu fēng 大虎頭蜂！
(Say that to a Chinese person, I dare you. They'll laugh aloud. It means "giant tiger head wasp!")
Illustrated: beautiful sleep; "green" ~ yucky noxious methadone; the Welsh language; not tits and bums but manic-depressive mood swings; Joan Collins and Zoë Lucker in Footballers' Wives; cockney Chrissie Latham from Prisoner
MEMORY
I'm not sure, but this might actually be a real Barbra Streisand pop video...
Barbra's vocal knocks Elaine Page's effort out the window!
20:14 HRS and I'm sat here with dark glasses on because of the GLARE. Bloody hell. Why do I have to go and catch photophobia now? I could turn the blinkin' light off and open the curtain actually.... There that's better. I'm not taking the shades off. I like to look cool when I'm blogging.
Barbra is crooning tunes from Broadway over my TV. I always play CDs through the television: the sound's way better than the £17.99 stereos I buy. Why a woman with a voice like that wasted years recording middle of the road pop, true with the odd gem thrown in, and only late in her career recorded the stuff everyone wanted to hear, I do not understand. That's why I don't count myself as a fan of Babs; she is too annoying. I'd better watch what I say as I'm still hoping for an invitation for dinner round at hers before I die. Knockout tunes with a knockout voice. Inspirational! Latitudinal! Roses!! There Barbra. Can I live in your house please, so you can sing me lullabyes when I can't sleep? Also can you leave me your house after you die? I need a house desperately. That's my new goal: to get several million pounds and a house. You need millions just to buy Tescos Finest basic necessities in today's world...
Well I spent most of today sleeping in my chair like a pensioner. Then I had to go out, do someone a favour. That made me all excitable again and my head was racing. Then I started getting tired again.
I have to say when I woke up this evening I wandered about wondering what the hell I have been doing the past week. I remember feeling incredibly euphoric and pacing back and forth at 4am. I remember deliberately putting Barbra Streisand and Chinese lessons on my telly at top volume at 5am. I remember becoming furiously angry over nothing several times. Luckily when I'm with other people I generally calm down because I have some focus for my energies. They just find it disconcerting that I hate sitting still and would rather wander about babbling than be all boring, like I normally am. I wasn't into rioting, strangely. You'd think a manic person would be well up for smashing up a few shops, but I never knew where the riot would be as I'm not a gang member or Blackberry owner. Also I'm way too paranoid to indulge in crime. I think fingerprints, CCTV, DNA. I'm prone to paranoia as it is; I don't need to fuel that fire, I really don't. Anyway I don't approve of mass shoplifting and certainly don't approve of arson. As for attacking the police, well I do understand that one I won't lie there. The police are 2'-faced bastards. Sometimes they're so kind it would make you cry. Other times they basically break the laws they're meant to uphold just to secure convictions. They don't care. On the morning I went up to have a good poke through the wreckage, I was quite tempted to crawl through HMV's window in Wood Green. I doubt the looters would have cleared out the Barbra Streisand section so it was all waiting for me. If I'd got caught I'd just have claimed squatters rights and declared I intended to live there. Now this rioting just makes me feel sick. I'm glad I didn't feel much at the time, it would have sent me off on one bigtime.
Well I don't recall what the hell it was I intended to say here. Oh yeah! Anna Grace and I got a comment telling us both to commit suicide! I love these:
It's more sorry ass to read that crap than write it. If I kept a journal I'd just lose it, that's why I post it online instead. Anyway I've come too far to stop now. And why do those comments always come to Anna's blog and not mine? Do they see her as a softer target? She barely ever answers back. I directed that commenter in Melody's direction. Melody loves haters. She says she enjoys people obsessing over her life.
As I told Anonymous, my life is pretty perfect at the moment. I'm off drugs, off drink and I feel spectacular. I'm certainly not depressed. I only felt ill because I caught some diarrhoearal disease. Also I think I might have expended too much energy being manic or hypomanic. Whichever it was.
Right that's it I'm off.
PS I just found out risperidone could give me woman's breasts. In which case I hope I geat great pendulous knockers so I can get a job as a tranny prostitute. I desperately need something to bring the money in. I know a heroin addict who did that and bought a pretty nice flat with the proceeds! WHILE using gear every day!!
I'm thinking of getting my meds changed to quetiapine (Seroquel) it's meant to knock you out way better. I don't know whether to take the risperidone again as I stopped it as soon as I started getting manic, in order to become as manic as humanly possible, which I thoroughly enjoy and revel in, in case you didn't notice, because mania just means being your natural self without restraint. So should I take these pills or those pills and GIMME A DOCTOR BACK I don't even have a shrink!! Thanks a lot XXX healthcare trust for shafting me yet again.
WHY DID I CHOOSE YOU?
I HAVE DREAMED/WE KISS IN A SHADOW/SOMETHING WONDERFUL
I'M IN A FAR BETTER MOOD than I was earlier. I wish I hadn't just posted what was on my brain like that without analysis. This risperidone does something pretty marvellous. Although it does make me feel anxious within a couple of hours of taking it (anxious and drowsy, if you can work that one out) I can already, within 4 days, feel it flattening my mood. Which is precisely what I used heroin as. A mood-flattener. Unfortunately I still feel slightly paranoid but that might take ages to go.
The words of my old doctor come back to me: "I want you to take my drugs now, not your drugs..."
His drugs do work. Risperidone even blocks most of the rush I got from IV heroin. I remember this. I haven't scored since I started taking it again.
Maybe there is some future on risperidone after all...
ON MONDAY NIGHT I didn't sleep for a very long time. Tonkie Ears the mouse was pinging about the kitchen like crazy. I eventually went to bed after it had got light. Then I was up before midday.
On Tuesday night I finally caved in and took my antischizophrenia pills. My head has been going increasingly crazed ~ in the literal sense of cracked into zigzaggy shards, like crazy paving. I don't "hear" many "voices" nowadays in the way you might expect: that someone is talking when nobody is there. These days I hear random syllables, and they push and pull through my brains shaking them up as they go in a pneumatic kind of way. They feel sometimes distract me quite a lot. Sometimes I hear my name over and over. Sometimes they say "doo-doo-daa-be-do"; or random things like "trotter donkey". Sometimes they sound like something muttered, and I only catch the last word or two. I also heard my own thoughts spoken by strange voices in my head. Sometimes they echo around, as if I think them and somebody else repeats the last. The "hallucinations" if I can call them that, are much lower grade than they used to be. It took a few weeks off the antipsychotic pills to get as loud and as distinct as they are now. The longer I continued not taking them the more the voices came back. Which is depressing when I think about it in my rational self as it means I'm still mad and I don't like being crazy. I don't like having to take pills just to be more sane than mad (they never worked 100%). And I don't know when I would ever get a life back; on them or off them.
The pills are so powerful I was in bed before 11pm. I slept right through and woke up feeling like it was 6 or 7am; but it was half past eleven. But I did't feel any saner than normal. Random syllables were echoing around and I sat in my blue velvet armchair and pondered where on earth my life is going.
I don't feel so terribly depressed now (or manic). I feel a kind of scattered distraction. If my dr hadn't told me I had a schizophrenic sort of thing going on I'm not sure I'd have been able to match what he told me with what I've read with what I've experienced. I don't think I'd be able to explain. I was never quite sure that what happens doesn't happen to everyone. I don't remember it ever happening to me before some point in my mid 20s, when Prozac originally set it off. A psychiatric person told me that one of the phenomena is a common symptom in certain mental states; it's called "thought echo".
No illicit drugs have ever caused anything like that, by the way. I only "heard voices" on drugs three times that I know of (you can only know that happeed by reviewing your experience and realizing that something you took to be real at the time could only have been a hallucination, which takes quite some concentration and insight to achieve).
So this is what's been happening. I've given in and taken psychiatric meds again. I know at least one person in NA would consider that "using" if I told them. NA can take a hike. In their collective experience hallucinations only occur when you're on drugs but in the past years I've hallucinated much more off drugs than on them, and the hallucinations have a different quality. LSD, for example, typically evokes intricate geometric designs, not voices. It makes you see abstract things, not actual objects, as I did in my manic swings. It's mania that made me hallucinate floridly. Mania lights up the brain like a christmas tree ~ brain scans have shown this. In that state just about anything that happens happens to you more vividly. I say "just about" because in that state I was impervious to cold. I never noticed my windows were wide open in January until my hands seized up enough to cause difficulties typing.
I got up too late to go to NA last night. I got to my methadone chemist just minutes before they closed. The post office was shut already so I couldn't have withdrawn "B money" (gear money) even if I'd wanted to.
Those antipsychotic tablets have really done me in. I feel heavy-limbed and unsteady and I very nearly got the bus 2 stops to my methadone chemists because I couldn't handle the thought of walking there.
So that's today for ya. I just want to go to bed again. I hate being on pills. It's bad enough being on methadone which keeps me physically OK, without having to take something else to be mentally OK. Most people are mentally fine on methadone ~ so why I shouldn't be too..? Does anybody know enough about this to comment? I don't get why I of all people should be more sane on heroin than off it.
I've got to go now. That awful game show where people pick boxes with random amounts of money inside is on and I've got to change channels. Cheery-bye now...
;-)
THE ROYLE FAMILY: Baby David's Christening Party This is my favourite Royle FAmily episode of all. Everyone is drunk:
PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY OF RISPERIDONE by a risperidone-prescriber
RISPERIDONE by a risperidone-taker; she describes 4mg as far too much ~ 4mg is my dose! also she does look a bit manic, despite all those meds she talks about...
YES I'M FEELING BETTER! Hopefully for good. Yes I did use heroin this afternoon and it took away about 60% of my depression. The depression was getting so bad I could barely handle the thought of scoring, let alone the procedure of walking down to the shops, which took 20 mins, to get to a certain back street where the dealer said he would come and park up. He won't come to my house as he's coming from inner London and I live too far out for him. He has a LOT of customers dotted hither and thither, so if you live outside the ten square miles or so he deals in, you have to walk or ride into that zone to meet him.
Anyway I took a 0.3g hit in my leg and felt far better. I'm very well aware of how sad it is to rely on heroin as an antidepressant, but it's the only thing that really works for me. I was in such a negative frame of mind that the staying clean aspect felt pretty meaningless. I felt like an idiot and a loser for using and had so many negative thoughts in my head it barely seemed worthwhile going down the road to get the drug. But I did. And I felt better.
Unlike the other day though my mood stayed higher right into the evening. Now it's even higher than it was when I used and its just after 3am. I don't feel manic, but I barely feel depressed at all. I feel a little bit speedy actually. There's no way the heroin can be causing this. Heroin makes you dopey, not speedy. And heroin mostly wears off within 4-6 hours, unless you take a truly whopping dose, which I didn't.
So I'm hoping my mood is improving by itself. I felt tired and gauwchy earlier on which is not surprising: heroin does that to you. But I didn't sleep. Then I realized it was after midnight so I went to bed but just didn't feel sleepy enough ~ for once! So I'm up and trying to stay up as long as I can.
The research I did into depression said that missing a night's sleep can actually reset your body clock out of depression. So I'm going to try going on just a few hours sleep and a bit of tea to see whether this works.
Wish me luck!
*******
OK the following is a mixed bag of stuff from when I was researching how not to be depressed. The links are really for my own benefit, but have a click if you're interested. You might find the "how it feels" mania and depression ones enlightening if you're wondering what bipolar feels like.
From the Risperidone leaflet. When this fell out I was so high it felt like a character portrait just for me: Risperidone tablets are also used to treat a type of mental illness called bipolar disorder, which causes dramatic mood swings from overly "high" and/or irritable to sad and hopeless, and then back again, often with periods of normal mood in between. Severe changes in energy and behaviour go along with these changes in mood. The periods of highs (characterised by overactivity, elation or irritability, overly talkativeness, aggression, less need for sleep than normal, switching quickly from one topic to another as if they cannot get their thoughts out fast enough, get easily distracted or show poor judgement or cause injury to oneself) are called episodes of mania.
Only thing I didn't do in all that was injure myself.
I got "54+ severely depressed" on this scale as well.
WEEBLES FEATURING PRINCESS JULIA: MOIST WOMANLY NEEDS This is for you, Anna Grace, you nympho tart!
DELIRIUM FEATURING SARAH MCLACHAN: SILENCE Thanks, LizzieDripping
The fur hat illustration is because I found one today that looks like the top bit of that one without the lollopy rabbits' ears sides. I'm saving it for next winter: my new look!
0307 Sanity. I'm lucky, I get a mood swing every day. Partially it's to do with my taking the antipsychotics at night so I'm dampened down by day and less dampened at night until I take the pill then whizz-bang. It doesn't put me to sleep but makes me sleep deeper and longer once I do get off.
I sleep a good ten hours minimum, sometimes past 12 hours. I don't like sleeping too long but apparently it's common amongst people on antipsychotic medication.
I feel way better than I did earlier. I was really depressed.
Somebody rang my doorbell 3 times earlier today but I thought it was someone persecuting me so I didn't answer. Nobody rings my who rings my doorbell gets answered unless they shout my name, phone or I know they're coming. Otherwise they're just a time-waster.
Deshane is coming tomorrow to check I'm doing OK. He is a mental health worker and my mental health is bad. My mood is cycling. Earlier I had suicidal ideation, now I feel vaguely excited, like I'm going into mild mania. This is just me. That's why they say I hae schizoaffective; my moods cycle quickly and I get "psychotic features". I couldn't handle depressive psychosis that is so horrible I won't even describe it to you, it is the worst most horrible type of mental illness going and really frightening just to think about. I'm lucky that my psychosis is "mood incongruent" so e.g. I heard a cockney flower girl saying "Aw darlin'! I've got some lovely roses down me stall. Come and 'ave a look at me roses babes..." really entertaining. Mood congruent hallucinations would tell me I was the dog's bollocks in mania and that I was shit in depression. I am finding out all I can about my illness as knowledge is power. But my shit attention span means I don't take too much in. I'm not sure I've even been correctly diagnosed. You can'treally tell whether you're psychotic so I can't know much about the schizo-bit in schozo-affective. I'm trying to be really grown up about it, but I feel like a small child and quite frightened by it all.
You have to understand this thing that happens to me gets ultra ultra powerful. If you imagine the noise of a road drill and the way it goes right through you, that's what acute mania does to me, it totally takes me over and goes through me with the intensity of a road drill and I'm floridly psychotic. What you read here is the toned down version because I cant post everything. If my shrinko read it I'd get sectioned.
I want to talk to my doctor about sectioning (that is involuntary commitment) because I do lose it sometimes. I want to make an agreement where I can go in voluntarily and agree to act as if sectioned (that is, I won't go outside without permission, I will stay in hospital etc etc etc but technically I will be a voluntary patient). This is a very real issue. If you think I'm going OTT remeember you haen't SEEN me going mad. I upset one friend so much he cried. It was horrible to see. There was me manic just being manic, feeling normal but a bit over-wrought and here is is CRYING over my behaviour. I was making whirring gargling noises like a car engine because my brain stopped thinking in English and turned into noise. I was going really psychotic that day.
Now I have some mania right now. We all know what anxiety feels like. Well imagine anxiety but really nice and when you move or click your fingers you get more excited and go with it. Music sounds lush in this state. It's like a drug. No specific drug I can think of but very similar to cocaine at the lower reaches and trippy E (ecstasy) at the higher levels. I literally see spirals everywhere when I'm tripping on mania.
Obviously I far prefer being manic to being depressed, but mania can get ultra ultra intense which makes Stephen Fry's flip comment about "bipolar being better than depression because you have the upside of mania" yeah MILD mania like type 2 bipolar he has. I'm type one my highs are higher than my lows ever were low and I go floridly psychotic in a way I don't go in depression and it gets so very intense I could have panicked on several occasions. Only strength of character prevented this.
You see this is what I'm trying to deal with but I don't know how to, except by taking meds as prescribed. Also heroin used to do a great deal to prevent my mood cycling. Seriously bad depression felt massively cushioned on heroin (bt never on methadone) and mania seemed to be blocked out. Looking back I can see manic symptoms I had over the years like racing thoughts, aggression and irritation and euphoria. i remember a few years ago I suddenly went from being all mousey and depressed to fantasizing about being Prime Minister (typical manic symptoms, you get ultra-ambitious) and I wanted to start my own HD 24-hour international news channel. I didn't think I was manic at the time, just normal. My normal self is highly ambitious and goal-oriented so it's impossible to tell the difference between mild mania and normality.
Now I feel this excitement coursing through me that I know is there because I had depression earlier. I feel like I'm doing something really exciting tomorrow and can't sleep for the sheer joy of this amazing stuff that's on my mind. Only I'm just seeing Deshane and the drug worker, which in my low state would stress me out big time. I get really stressed over little thigns. I neer thought of this as illness before but X and Y my friends say they've known I was ill for years. Everybody who knew me knew I was ill. Mother Hubbs said I was bipolar (how on earth did she know?) and everyone knew I was very thin skinned re stress. Not re people but re stress. Eg if I had an appointment it would really do my head in thinking about it. In the end I couldn't even score heroin it was too stressful and the dealer would keep phoning me asking where I was because I was late. I'm meant to phone him but the boot was on the other foot and I genuinely didn't care. O man I feel so excited! I'm going in the shower. My clothes are clean I feel so happy having clean clothes I want to be clean too. I love being squeaky clean.
0354 I'm outta the shower lovely and clean. I found a deodorant body spray on the street this evening named Tusk which is really nice so I'm covered in Tusk and feel really clean for a change. I used to so loathe being dirty thaat when we went to a 3-day rave d day's drive away in 1998 or 1999 the VERY first thing I did on returning, friends in tow was to sprint to my own shower and bathe and bathe and bathe luxuriating in the hot water.
I'm going to have to talk to my doctor as I think my pills are making me depressed. I haven't had one yet and I didn't have one last night as I thought I'd taken two (remember?) now I don't want one as I'm feeling excited again and I adore feelling manic. It's my mind and my life I know I "should" take the pill but I don't WANT to I love feeling that euphoria and it's NATURAL EUPHORIA nothing wrong with it. Why should I medicate it away? I have 2 cigarettes here that I want to smoke.
I disturb myself with my own behaviour. Earlier today I nearly described suicide as "lucisous". I make this point to say yeah I know I am mentally ill. How am I meant to "live with mental illness" it's like sharing a bed with a skeleton. Living with mental illness. I know there are far worse varieties (paranoid schizophrenia for one, depression-only schizoaffective for another, depressive psychosis particularly) see I know very well it could be worse but I have to look after myself like a child.
Sorry to go on this is a big issue I don't know how to deal with it. It's rubbish to believe that psychotic people don't know they're ill. Some have this luxury. I don't. I know that I am ill and I know the way I see things doesn't correspond with what you call reality. How do I deal with this? I know you can't answer that one. But I just don't know what to do.
I'm going to leave it there. Don't worry about me I'm on an upper not a downer but I feel very shiny and lucid so I can see how confused I sometimes get. It's like being trapped in a hall of mirrors; knowing you're in the hall of mirrors doesn't get you out of there, you still can't tell what way is out.
I don't even know how I'll be tomorrow. Deshane is coming round, as far as I know so I'm making a special effrt just for him. I need to borrow £20 of Paddadster or Valium Marilyn or Lynette. I'm lucky being a former heroin addict having 3 people who will lend me money. I lent Paddadadster £20 when he desperately needed it so he respects me for it. Bet I won't get that score though. That's Motherfucker's Law. Just when you need £20, it won't come. And I promise to spend it in Iceland on chicken saag and chicken dhansak with mushroom pilau rice, not on gear. Heroin I really don't need, not when I get a coke rush just from not taking meds. How much do people pay for coke? FAR too much!
I LOATHE DRUGS. Drugs stink. Let's leave it there. Me and drugs = DIVORCED. NEVER AGAIN.
A NICE, HEALTHY ATTITUDE. For once.
I thought my Incredible Journey Homeward Bound DVD seemed susipiciously NOT like the film I watched as a kid where the poor golden retriever got porkupine spikes in his boze, now I find out it's a grotty remake with human dialogue all over it. No wonder it's crap.
Anyway re mental health: comments please. I know you're not going through the same thing, I'd just appreciate any feedback.
You know what I find it weird that even my "depression" is counted as an "illness" I just didn't used to see it like that I saw it as me being miserable, not ill. I cant get my head round this "illness" thing. So I'm sick? I'm ill? I don't know. In a way I'd rather think I'm crazed and insane than "ill" and "diseased" mentally... know what I mean..??
0522 ~ O come on someone say something dont be scared. BUGGALUGZ where are you? BUGGALUGZ say something please LIZZYDRIPPING what's up? Come back!
Secret life of a manic-depressive Getting into your car and thinking of gassing yourself is not a suicide attempt. That's coming near a suicide attempt. After a suicide attempt you wake up thinking you're dead. That's how you know it's a genuine attempt. Because you wake up thinking you're dead. Stephen Fry has type 2 bipolar mild enough not to have to take meds. Lucky bastard
I GOT A REALLY COOL COMMENT JUST NOW reminding me that my depression is chemical. See my intuition was right in earlier life not to buy any depression help book that didn't mention bipolar. Not because I thought I was bipolar but because anything that would help bipolar would help me. And because bipolar is serious. So again, anything suitable for serious depression would be suitable for my milder (as I saw it0 depression. I think I was bang-on right to do this. More right, as it turns out, than I ever could have known. My index-checking has paid off because I still remember the gist of these self-help books even though I got chucked out and made homeless (and taken in by a kind lady named Lona) and I sold my books to a book stall ~ for heroin money. Every book I had was the sort of thing that bourgeois people like to buy and read. Everything from depression self help to the Beatles songbook with musical scores to John Grisham paperbacks. Bourgeois reading par excellence!
In depression there is a well known phenomenon called diurnal variation where the mood starts off at Stygian gloom from wakening and gradually rises as the day goes on. This is what has been happening to me. I oversleep ~ a good 12 hours per day ~ wake up very sluggish and "somnolent". My depression symptoms match bipolar depression to a T. I'm very pissed off with it all but because it's evening and my energy has rushed back I even feel a bit manic now. Whether Dr Shrinko would call this a mood switch or a mere "diurnal variation" I have no idea but it feels fantastic!
It seems strange thinking of my depression as chemical. I always thought it was my fault. The counsellors think I'm "too hard on myself" ... well I don' see why I should go easy.
To me "chemical depression" or biological depression means it's out of my control. Which feels like a luxury. Or it used to. I always assumed my depression was both psychological and biological and I'm probably right. Of course there's psychological fuel to this biological fire. Or vice-versa... Even anger, losing your temper, causes a biochemical imbalance...
So I'm trying to be grownup but not succeeding terribly well. That's why I asked for advice. My doctor is a consultant psychiatrist with HUGE demands on his time he really can't be at the end of a phone with my every neurotic question. I just thank God that I got 1 a consultant and 2 one who specializes in Dual diagnosis. I was VERY careful not to exaggerate and to keep all I said in perspective and I didn't even tell the very whackiest worst (eg seeing the Northern Lights in my living room) yet he somehow knew the level of "hallucinosis" was out of sync with the level of mania. Sometimes I got very very manic but a lot of the time I was hypomanic [mildly manic] and yet hallucinating. Of course this is Dr Nutternut's area of expertise and he recognized schizoaffective disorder when he saw it. I just feel very weird to be diagnosed Severely mentally Ill. What do I do: Lie in bed all day feeling sorry for myself? I don't know what to do?
Now I have to go it's late and I have to leave it here. I hope I'm making more sense. If there's some way I do not make sense or some basic error I keep making I wish you would just tell me. I need to know these things, so I can use them to my advantage.
Many thanks for listening. Take care y'all!
Illustrated: haloperidol (to which I'm allergic, but it's good for some people); mirtazapine (Remerol) and Lithium are all treatments for schizoaffective disorder. Many people are on all three. Antispychotic, mood stabilizer and antidepressant.
HEY I FOUND THAT PILL I THOUGHT I TOOK by accident. When I said I took 2 I must only have taken one. Which means I was just feeling ill yesterday. I feel ill today. I sleep for hours and hours and wake up wishing I was dead, hence the Switzerland Suicide Idea which I'm going to save for. can't let the idea of caving in cross my mind so I'm decided. I have always wanted to take a barbiturate overdose. I think the British government are bastards for not selling them over the counter in Death Packs. Who cares if people die? If they're a non-contributory member of society (ie on state benefits) they should get the pack free then Britain will be a better off country. Before y'all call me a nazi I mean I should get the fucking pack free. I don't care what anyone else does. They can do what the hell they like. They always do.
Well there is no news today and there will be no news. I won't get manic again. Those days are gone. I'm not psychotic that thing was a misdiagnosis, I'm just plain depressive. I was bipolar so technically I am bipolar that doesn't mean I will ever feel happy again.
I have a big bottle of methadone. If only they gave it out as neat powder it might have enough to knock me into next week but it's pathetic linctus I'm still knocking the whole lot back I have enough here for xxxxxx x xxxx but it's going down my neck all at once. I used to buy it on the street you see so I have surplus still.
I don't care what anyone thinks about my drug abuse I only abused drugs in the hope that I might OD and die that was the principal reason. Why do you think heroin appealed so much? Because I knew it was deadly. That's why cocaine was never much of a temptation. Anything that can induce coma and death was for me. I would never smuggle cocaine because cocaine overdose is too horrible. But heroin overdose is xxxxxxxx. I've done it. Like floating in a golden haze. I just can't handle the thought of being woken up again. When I want to die I want eternal death with no chance of redemption.
So there is no drug for me, except this methadone. I hope it manages to OD me. Miracles do happen. I deserve to die and I want to die. I never want to wake up again. ROLL ON SWITZERLAND. Best cure for melancholia: death.
If they do give me mood stabilizers you know what they do? Stop you feeling happy and leave you depressed, so they're a waste of time. I never bothered taking meds last night as I thought I'd taken too many the night before so I was evening out. Then I find this green pill, like an idiot. How come I felt so bad yesterday then on just one pill? Who knows what I did. I barely know the day now.
Well this is a bag of joy there is nothing to post. If I made up a load of shit about hearts and flowers it would just be lies to take it as it is, unvarnished.
MY ACCIDENTAL "OVER" DOSE IS WEARING OFF. I am 90% sure I took 8mg risperidone instead of the prescribed 4mg. 8mg is the maximum ordinary dose for bipolar; 10mg the maximum ordinary dose for schizophrenia. Some patients (exceptionally) take up to 16mg but not being used to 8mg it knocked the crap outta me. And it WAS accidental. Not every day I didn't take it was accidental but no way would I deliberately take too much. I put the pill on the side ready for me to take and thought I'd lost it. In actual fact I'd almost certainly taken it. I feel such an idiot. So that drivel you got earlier is just how I feel on too many pills I'm afraid. Sorry I can't come up with something more positive when I'm in a negative state of mind. I took heroin again today and again it was rubbish. This on borrowed money as the DSS have messed up my claim. They're paying 2 weekly and thoughtfully inormed me of this when I was in a manic psychosis so of course none sank in. I vaguely knew the spacing was changing from weekly to fortnightly; what I didn't grasp was that I'd have to do a week on NOTHING. Thanks so much DSS. You wanna know my change in my medical condition GET FUCKED. I'm not telling them nothing.
If I inform them I'm diagnosed schiz-affective they'll only use it to play mindgames against me. No I do not trust them.
Thank y'all for finding so many links. Michael David Crawford's Living With Schizoaffective Disorder geometricvisions link was particularly good. Like me he tells people he's bipolar. It is easier to understand than schizoaffective wheich means bipolar with sparkly knobs on. Like MDC I hallucinate too much to be bipolar eg when I'm ill (not all the time) one time I bought a cyder and my change jingled "fuck off!" at me. My psychiatrist said that is schizoaffective not bipolar. I didn't bang on about the weirder stuff, more the more ordinary stuff to do with mood swings. Yet still he recognized schizoaffective when he saw it. My coping mechanisms are low for bipolar, which is again schizoaffective. So I accept what is wrong with me.
Seaneen at the secret life of a manic depressive says to me congratulations you're the top rung of the psychiatric ladder. Which means I'm less likely to be deliberately mucked around like a person with anxiety disorder would be, so I'm glad to be taken seriously even if it is in a way I wouldn't like. Seaneen is only joking. She's a brave girl who has had severe bipolar disorder since her teens. If you didn't laugh, as they say, you'd cry. And in most circumstances laughter outdoes tears. She got a big knock back when the Kings College, London nursing course she'd set her heart on turned her down, but like I told her, she's only so upset because she WILL make a difference, WILL put her heart into whatever she does. Just by reading her I can tell she would be a credit to whatever institution, company, team she joined.
Somehow she manages to handle her illness without being childish. I know I am being childish when I mention suicidal ideation and everything being pointless and worthless. That's how I feel, but how can I express it in a grown up way? I have absolutely no idea. Most people don't blog their actual breakdowns the way I did, so maybe it's par for the course. I don't know.
Well I'm here on my own with Michael Jackson singing. I looked EVERYWHERE for some music I could tolerate on repeat play and Michael Jackson was all I could find. Bear in mind I'm talking DVDs not CDs so it must have good videos. A lot of music I like has no videos at all. So Michael Jackson it was, along with Abba (Mama Mia) and Varied Contemporary (Moulin Rouge). HMV seem to have a thing against Madonna. Not one single disc of any description. Madonna's collected videos I would have gone for but they weren't there.
Thanks again for all the links; I'm going to look through them more carefully. No link any of you came up with was one I'd already read and I have googled away. I still don't get what illness I'm meant to have. Is it bipolar plus schizophrenia (the implication is NO). Is it a cross between the two (the implication is yes). In ordinary people's terms I'd say schizoaffectives I've met were the most messed up of all psychiatric patients. They get ultra-floridly psychotic: manic with even more psychosis. In psychiatric terms disorganized or hebephrenic schizophrenia (that strikes in the mid to late teens and strikes HARD) is probably the worst psychosis you can get. Most people's idea of psychotic apperas to be paranoid schizophrenia. You have to bear in mind there's also depressive psychosis, manic psychosis and schizophrenic psychosis as well as paranoid psychosis. Each of these has a very distinctive flavour, which is why I say being in a madhouse is FAR more interesting than being in a drug detox. Heroin/crack addiction bends unique people the same way. While nutters go mad after their own fashion. I mean I went into a space where I was the centre of a tornado universe my head so frazzled I had no English thoughts just Noise. Now I didn't even know it was possible to go mad like that. But I did. That is severe mania. See I learned something from my experience. I hope one day I would be able to help another person. As it is I need help to help myself and I do need it. I'm tired and I don't know what to do. It's confusing being ill and dull being less ill (a psychiatrist would say I was still unwell, I know the way they think now) so I'm stuck between a frying pan and a fire all the time. How the hell I find my way to sanity I've absolutely no idea.
And thanks again DSS for making me have to go begging on the street, something I only did for tube fares, food and drugs when I needed heroin money. Now I need to do it just to survive. So thanks DSS for accepting how fucked up I am on paper then treating me like I'm able to negotiate beaurocracy only someone in a paid job should be expected to deal with. I'm putting this to Deshane on Thursday. This week there is a special nutter club because it's ENDING and I don't want to go. I went last week as a gesture of support more than anything and nearly had a panic attack over it so I just don't know what to do. I'm fed up of forcing myself into things in the name of "being grown up" and just suffering, gaining nothing from it.
I learned from the schizoaffective write up that of the 3 personality types: weird (eccentric); avoidant (anxious) and antisocial (don't-care) I'm the first yeah a weirdo so no wonder I have schizophrenia!
Right I have to go I'm dying for a cigarette. I hope y'all are well and thanks again for the links they were very handy.
PS Didn't someone recommend the film Bucket List to me? I looked and looked but cannot find the comment, but thanks whoever gave it. I've got that already on DVD, I bought it during my manic DVD shopping-spree!
Illustrated: see how tiny my robo-hammies actually were. These are fully grown specimens! They're very flighty and like nothing more than pinging onto the floor and vanishing for days at a time. Itchy (the only one of my 3 who was remotely hand-tame)spent more than a week of her life AWOL on 3 separate occasions, the swine!
I'VE BEEN TRYING TO SORT OUT MY BENEFITS STUFF TODAY. They paid me the grand total of £21 this week; I've no idea why. So now I know the correct number I have to ring back tomorrow when they're open. I also am meant to tell them I have schizoaffective disorder. I got a letter a while back that seemed irrelevant but it said underneath that any change in your medical condition must be notified. I don't think the name makes any difference but it might mean I get treated a bit different (if anything, better). They don't seem to quibble so much with severe mental illness whereas depression they subject you to a test to see how depressed you actually are. With this I don't see what test they can do, I just feel too confused a lot of the time to do a lot of basic things. Sad but true. I don't know how I'm going to rise above this one. Depression I fought against but mania you can't fight against it's too intense and also feels nice most of the time, so I don't know what to do. And the schizo-bit in schizo-affective just feels too weird for words so I don't know how to dea with it. Not very good I know but true. They might push me down a pit with people sword fighting like people on television now but I don't know how I'll survive. See I feel confused these thoughts come in my head and I push them out but I push out everything else too so I dont know what to keep in there. This is why I get ill, because I don't understand. I try. I do try. But I feel confused.
Does anybody out there know about schizoaffective disorder and what things I can do self-help wise? PLEASE. Anybody? If you can direct me to a good website or just a forum I'd be ever so grateful. I'm floundering about knowing I have "symptoms" of this "tripolar disorder" (because there are 3 things I get: mania, depression and schizophrenia) and knowing broadly which symptom and experience is flavoured with what, but I don't know what to DO. I want to know what to DO. And why I should do it? And what I might achieve... Please anybody who knows please answer. You don't need to be a fellow sufferer or an expert I'm just after ideas. Remember I have had depression for years and am glad I followed my inkling not to indulge in books that didn't mention Seasonal Affective (SAD) or bipolar. Because I've always thought my depression was partly psychological and partly biological. Even though I hadn't a clue I was schizoaffective until the dr told me so, I've followed the right path, where you accept your illness has a biological component. Purely herbal tea and counselling based stuff just ain't gonna cut it with my illness. I accept I need to take meds. I can feel when I haven't taken them, usually. Apart from Saturday night when I honestly forgot my pill (I'm on one pill now; 1x4mg risperidone rather than 2x2mg, which are too easy to get confused over) I wasn't messing about I really did forget to take it. And for once didn't get "a free coke binge" I just felt nothing bar a sluggish depression I've been in for days. Depression which now has a slight excited tinge in the background. I'm hoping this means a mood switch is occurring.
Yes I used HEROIN today but it did nothing. It was so weak. I wish I wouldn't do it. It doesn't take away "psychotic" things (which I don't really have today) and it doesn't dampen down my bad moods any more so I wish I'd get it THROUGH MY THICK HEAD THAT I'M WASTING MY TIME.
Im pissed off with NA because I shared even though it fucking hurt to do so I still shared something that is personal that I don't have to share and not one fucking person gave any response except the kind of response you get when they know you're using drugs still. I mean I told them I had bipolar mood swings and not one person could think of one faintly constructive thing to say about that.
I don't know what I was expecting. Certainly not "there there" type crap but something. I expected something and I don't think my expectations were unreasonable. Considering nearly ALL bipolar people use drugs which means there must be a lot of manic depression "in the rooms" as they say I expected more. So I was right when I realized NA was NOT for me. They cannot help me, they do not help me. Only seductive thing about NA is the attitude that taking medication is wrong, so I can "not use" my antipsychotics and have "a free coke binge" on them. That is a free manic episode, even a short one for a couple of days. But I'm trying to be grown up and responsible, I don't know why, but I am. Am trying.
I felt misunderstood by them when I took up going again and I still feel misunderstood and unappreciated.
Bear in mind I have been coming to NA for over 10 years, since I very first saw a problem developing, so I know NA, know their philosophy and their ways and feel let down, now that I genuinely want to be clean and serene I feel nobody has made any effort towards me, not genuine effort. All I get is "do a detox" (ie have a psychotic episode) and likeminded stuff in other words they're telling me to go crazy. I'm willing to go crazy as long as I can do it IN THEIR HOUSE. That will teach them to throw out platitude-ridden advice, when they see what happens when I "detox" and "go clean" as they believe clean is.
TIESTO/RALPH FRIDGE: PARADISE when i went mad that time my shower kept saying "paradise paradise" after this song!
I'm not getting too wound up by Narcotics Anonymous and I refuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I'm only doing one meeting per week at the moment. You have to bear in mind I have bad memories of coming to NA having heard voices all the way there on the bus, then locking myself up in a dark room with them in a psychotic state only for them all to believe I was high on crack when I was "high" yes, but on nothing! Just like you I have only a certain tolerance for such bullshit and then I start feeling genuinely upset. You see I know the name of my disorder now and it's not a good one. Now I have to tell the Social Security this crap, which I don't want to, but they need to know. They do say any change in your condition should be notified to us so fuckit I'll notify them. What on earth they'll do with that information I hesitate to think. You see I had symptoms and knew I wasn't right. Then this doctor tells me in these same words "I think you have a mental illness". I have never thought of myself as "mentally ill" before. Depression is supposedly a mental illness but it didn't make me feel mentally ill. Only the crash from mania into depression has truly made me feel injured and ill. Very very sick and ill. The crash I had in December counts as one of five all time worsts. The fact that there are FIVE not one probably says a lot but I'm not dwelling on that one. Do you understand why I disengage rather than wallow? If I wallowed I would never get out of self pity and it would destroy me. I'd rather pretend nothing is wrong than wallow in the wrongness. I don't care if I'm doing the wrong thing; life is so very difficult I don't know what else to do.
TRANCE VISIONS: PARADISE (KOMAKINO REMIX)
Well I hope I've been grown-up enough today I don't feel grown up. I feel like the parent of a 3 year old child ~ as per usual ~ saying "DO THIS! DON'T DO THAT!" and the recalcitrant child barely listens..!
LET ME REVEAL to you my most embarrassing of secrets. It happened when I was 16 and staying on a campsite in Belgium. This Lithuanian gypsy girl who looked "like Madonna" (Madonna was a huge star at the time)... anyway THAT should be enough to sucker anyone who follows me into logging in for a good read.
Now on to the real business. Heroin! Please somebody help me start this heroin production line of mine. I need (off the top of my head) lots of charcoal biscuits, ether, acetone, ethyl alcohol, hydrochloric acid, calcium carbonate and of course acetic anhydride. And I want lessons in how to turn opium paste into high grade white heroin hydrohloride (no brown junk, please) and how to do it in my own back yard using portable camping stoves for heat. I know you simmer the morphine base in acetic anhydride at approx 85C for 5 hours... what then? The H3 to H4 bit I know in principle... advice please. And can anybody arrange for me 50 tonnes of H4 white on tick? I'm good to repay and don't care about getting gunned down.
Well my mediation vacation is going swimmingly. Only people who meet me think something is wrong so I'm writing as rationally as possible to fool y'all. I'm not hearing voices today. My mood is barely hypomanic. OK: slightly hypomanic, as we speak. Hypomania is MILD mania. Full-on mania is like being in an explosion of colours, sound and impressions. Exhilarating! Hypomania is like a few lines of coke.
I had a beautiful Natural Cocaine binge all last night. I was bingeing on my own free neurotransmitters by not taking medication and it felt wonderful. I slept 5 hours this afternoon (fitfully, it has to be said). I love sleeping, even for a few hours. The night before I slept over 11 and didn't want to be moved.
My mood is "cycling" that is I get mood swings lasting very approximately 24 hours to 7 days. High and low. The highs are like free cocaine as I say so no complaints there. They only get acid-trippy on the very extreme high. Naomi from the Dual Club says "you might be right" when I bitterly told her my symptoms get "severe" (by psyh standards: normal standards mean nothing, by normal standards I'm a huge fuck up anyhow so I don't bother with normality).
I went to Nutter Club but had to leave early due to a near panic attack. I really was not up for handling other people's negativity. So I got up abruptly said I needed fresh air and pinged out. Now Naomi is really worried about me. I was in dire straits yesterday and that was ON meds. Severe manic symptoms dampened weirdly down with weird repetitive voices in my head. I nearly had a panic attack in Sainsbury's. (No wonder you might say if you know Sainsbury's. A supermarket.) Yeah Naomi rang me for half an hour. She is very good. Never puts a foot wrong. Knows how to handle people in really precarious mental states. She was wonderful when I came in on full-on mania laughing my head off hysterically. Unable to string words together. Somehow through the clipped-up slideshow of the day, she shines out as a beacon of sense. I was too out of it on mania to follow what anyone said once they veered off the obvious. I was interrupting everyone all the time with my own thoughts and opinions.
Apart from Nutter Club what have I done?... Not a lot. Planning my Heroin Empire, mainly. I'm in a really good mood so I have energy for important stuff like international drug importation and production. I want to PRODUCE my product. The brand name is going to be WHITE TIGER with 100% written underneath and loads of shit in Burmese, Chinese and Thai hong-donging down the side. And before anyone DARES imply I'm raist let's have a Chinese and Thai language competition, you and me, and see who wins. Least I studied them. Bet you didn't.
PLEASE EVERYBODY HAVE A GO ON THE PERSONALITY PERCENTAGES DISORDER TEST. The link is here http://www.similarminds.com/personality_disorder.html I gave my results in the post below. I score highest on schizotypal (eccentric), schizoid (don't need friends), borderline (over-emotional) and paranoid. The paranoia is definitely down to illness, I just do not have the unforgiving nature required for a "paranoid personality disorder" y'know?!
I'm v grateful that personality disorders shit is out of my life. I mean as if! I might have a bit of a schizzy personality but that only means I keep myself to myself and my primary motivation is not other's approval and that I do my own thing. That's all.
They thought I might have one because I basically had mental illness I had successfully semi-medicated away, creating a confusing clinical picture. My heroin worked about as well as risperidone as an antipsychotic mood stabilizer. It definitely worked. And no I do not suggest anyone try the same thing, I mean look what happened to me. I'm lucky to be nuts, means I get kid-glove treatment at that clinic now. If they mess me around I will show them 2 fingers and just score on the street. It's more a "when" than an "if". I was all for giving them the elbow when "severely manic" last month but everyone told me not to. I told a few people I had "anxiety and depression" and they believed me! "Not depressed now, are you!" said one as I burbled deliriously away. It was SUCH GOOD FUN whizzing around in the back of a car scoring heroin not using the dullardly heroin [they scored it; I didn't even know that dealer] (it reduces mania so why take something to get LESS high? Dur!) I was out of my box. Thinking we were off to some magnificent party, then remembering we weren't. Thinking all manner of things very rapidly it was fantastic.
This is what I love about being "mentally ill" the candy-colored hilarity of it all. It's much much better than any physical illness I can think of. I can't think of many physical illnesses that make you feel Better Than Well like manic bipolar does. Fair dos it can get ultra-ultra super concnetrated like whooshing into the centre of a spiral. Which is why Stephen Fry annoys me for making flip comments about a condition (bipola i) he doesn't have. He has bipolar ii which is quite different. The heritability of bipolar i is quite clear; bipolar ii is a mystery. Bipolar i comes in families with a clear history of depression, bipolar or schizophrenia. Bipolar ii doesn't. Bipolar i has funky bits (psychosis) bipolar ii doesn't. Bipolar i typically has 3 parts depression to 1 mania (time-wise); bipolar ii is 37:1. Different illnesses.
Sorry Baino to go on and on about my issues YET AGAIN but I'm confused about everything. I don't even know what schizoaffective really means apart from it being the luuuurve baby of manic depression and schizophrenia and being "more serious than bipolar disorder" and "less serious than schizophrenia". I heard the manic type has a better outlook for recovery than the depressive type. Stress makes me manic. So even if I'm depressed, when I have a psych appointment I'm ALWAYS hypomanic in there and that is not acting. I act exactly as I am in those interviews Im too sick and tired of mind games to do any different. Sometimes I wish I'd said YES to going into hospital, because Id probably be in there now if I did.
That is what I hate most about the mental health system I actually got desperate enough at one point to try "showing what they needed to see" which I thought was depression. So I never dared crack a smile, initiate any conversation or basically do anything except answer what wa put before me and get the hell out and quick. I also noticed I was getting asked a set of questions that didn't even apply to me. When I didn't hear voices I got asked all the time whether I did. Then once I did nobody ever asked about them! I felt like such a fraudster thanks to those DSM diagnostic criteria which are frankly nonsensical to anyone with depression lower than the higher end of "moderate". Moderate depression means the absolute fucking pits of suicidal hell. The top end of severe is staring into space for hours yet being able to break out of it and do things; the lower end means staring into space and only able to stop with egreat difficulty. You'll end up in the middle of the room, frozen, wondering how you got there and where you're going. Not through memory loss; through lack of motivation. Very severe depression is a complete stupor where you literally cannotmove or speak at all. It has nothing to do with playing a game or acting or resisting attention, you literally have nothing to say and so cannot move your lips to say this nothingness. Everything is utterly invalid, incomplete, inconsequential. As in mania where all is equally good, equally valid and you can go with anything, in depression I frequently end up in shops stuck. Not wanting to go home. Not wanting to buy anything. Not knowing what to buy. So I just do the bare essentials and get the hell out and go straight home and curl up in a ball again, like a little hammy in a nest. Hamter are schizzy and very spirited, jut don't cross one they get into raging fury and do bite. Pandable was my best hammy and he threatened to bite me every time I woke him up during the day. Only when he knew for sure it was my hand and me did he calm down and sniff around it (after food, the tubby swine!)
Now I can't recall where this was going. Tubby swines. Hammies. Good a place as any to stop. I'm taking my meds tonight; I feel qutie confused wtihout them and my mood cycles fast, on a 24 hour cycle a in one day up one down; one up one down etc etc
(I'm supposedly schizotypal; though on the friendship side I'm not SCARED of people, I just don't NEED them there. I do like people I just don't NEED them the way some other people seem to need companionship. So in that aspect I'm schizoid rather than schizotypal. Now come on somebody else take the test please y'all are pretty normal, I'd like to see how you come out of it!
I WANT OFF METHADONE AS QUICK AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!
METHADONE ~ A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH
Heroin Shortage: News
If you are looking for the British Heroin Drought post, click here; the latest word is in the comments.
Christiane F
"Wir, Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo" by "Christiane F", memoir of a teenage heroin addict and prostitute, was a massive bestseller in Europe and is now a set text in German schools.
Bahnhoff Zoo was, until recently, Berlin's central railway station. A kind of equivalent (in more ways than one) to London's King's Cross...
Of course my local library doesn't have it. So I'm going to have to order it through a bookshop and plough through the text in German. I asked my druggieworker Maple Syrup, who is Italiana how she learned English and she said reading books is the best way.CHRISTIANE F:
TRAILER
You can watch the entire 120-min movie in 12 parts at my Random blog. Every section EXCEPT part one is subtitled in English (sorry: but if you skip past you still get the gist) ~ to watch it all click HERE.
To See Gledwood's Entire Blog...
DID you find my blog via a Google or other search? Are you stuck on a post dated some time ago? Do you want to read Gledwood Volume 2 right from "the top" ~ ie from today? If so click here and you'll get to the most recent post immediately!
Drugs Videos
Most of these come from my Random blog, which is an electronic scrapbook of stuff I thought I might like to view at some time or other. For those who want to view stuff on drugs I've collected the very best links here. Unless otherwise stated these are full-length features, usually an hour or more.
If you have a slow connexion and are unused to viewing multiscreen films on Youtube here's what to do: click the first one and play on mute, stopping and starting as it does. Then, when it's done, click on Repeat Play and you get the full entertainment without interruption. While you watch screen one, do the same to screens 2, 3 and so on. So as each bit finishes, the next part's ready and waiting.
Khun Sa, whose name meant Prince Prosperous, had been, before his death in the mid 2000s, the world's biggest dealer in China White Heroin: "Lord of the Golden Triangle"
In-depth portrait of the Afghan heroin trade at its very height. Includes heroin-lab bust. "Afghanistan's Fateful Harvest"
Classic miniseries whose title became a catchphrase for the misery of life in East Asian prison. Nicole Kidman plays a privileged middle-class girl set up to mule heroin through Thai customs with the inevitable consequences. This is so long it had to be posted in two parts. "Bangkok Hilton 1" (first 2 hours or so); "Bangkok Hilton 2" (last couple of hours).
Short film: from tapwater-clear H4 in the USA to murky black Afghan brown in Norway: "Heroin Addicts Speak"
Before his untimely death this guy kept a video diary. Here's the hour-long highlights as broadcast on BBC TV: "Ben: Diary of a Heroin Addict". Thanks to Noah for the original link.
Some of the most entertaining scenes from Britain's top soap (as much for the poor research as anything else). Not even Phil Mitchell would go from nought to multi-hundred pound binges this fast: "Phil Mitchell on Crack" (just over 5 minutes).
Scientist lady shows us how to cook up gear: "How Much Citric?" Lucky cow: her brown is 70% purity! Oddly we never see her actually do her hit... maybe she got camera shy...
And lastly:
German documentary following a life from teenage addiction to untimely death before the age of 30. The decline in this girl's appearance is truly shocking. "Süchtig: Protokoll einer Hilflosigkeit". Sorry no subtitles; this is here for anyone learning German who's after practice material a little more gripping than Lindenstraße!
Nosey Quiz! Have you ever heard voices when you weren't high on drugs?
Here's the 4-methylmethcathinone molecule. This is the "cocaine plus ecstasy"-style "legal high" I took that time and didn't even know what it was... After a brief but intense craze for meow, it was eventually banned in the UK in April 2010
If you wanna see what manic looks like, watch this. If this is the mood she stayed in all day she'd be moderately manic (severely manic is literally all over the place verging into complete incoherence)... I have been known to yell the same stuff over and over, which is why I like this:
Ferry Corsten remix. William Orbit performance. Samuel Barber's Adagio
DJ Seduction: Starlight August 1992
I love this style of music and WHY do kidz today call it OLD SCHOOL? MAKE ME FEEL ANCIENT WHY DONCHA! I really like that ting-ting-tong tune that comes into it about 3 mins in "release the spirit" yeah....! Respect goin' out LizzyD Yeah ;-)
Angelina Joelie: Crazy Chic
Girl Interrupted: best scenes
Mozart's Requiem Tranced Up
I like danced-up tunes now that I'm "OLD". Like this one... The actual name of the tune is "lacrimosa" which means sad. Which is weird it actually sounds uplifting. but there ya go:~~~~~~~~
Click herefor the Drought Post, news is in the comments.
Because there's more than 200 comments, look closely at the bottom of the form for for "Newer/Newest" - THAT is where you click to find most recent comments.
PETITION THE GOVT FOR PROPER PRESCRIBING TO ADDICTS: CLICK HERE
Missing the eclipse
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Inspired by something I read in *The Road to Grantchester* I led Zac's on
the theme of the First Supper. After his resurrection Jesus walked and
talked w...
CATCHING UP WITH OUR FAVOURITE JEWELLERS
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Salvatore's shop, *Gemma*
Gabriele's shop,* Temporè Orologi*
We have met the enterprising Aprile brothers, Salvatore and Gabriele,
before on this blog bu...
After Writer's Block by Janice Seagraves
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After I experienced writer's block a few years ago, I decided to be nicer
to myself.
But so far this year, I have been having the worst time writing. ...
HODGEPODGE DECEMBER 18
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1. What's one thing on your to-do list that you want to get done, need to
get done, or that must get done before the year ends?
*Youpee, my "To do li...
Cancer Update
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Dear Readers,
I need to apologize to you all. I have not provided any updates from my
last post about my cancer diagnosis. So here we go.
(if you are ...
Blogging Break
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I'm taking a break from blogging, for two major reasons :a. I find it
hard to concentrate on chosen topics, while there's war and tragedy going
on in m...
Just a Thought for the HBO Execs
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I want to rename Game of Thrones, “Two Crazy-Assed Bitches.” Mail me my
check, motherfuckers! Actually three crazy-assed bitches if you count
Sansa. The me...
Souls of the Goldhawk Road
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It was one of those tawdry summer evenings and all I could think about was
the heat. It was everywhere, stuffy and humid and crucifying even at that
late...
Yeah
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No, I am not returning, just updating out of boredom. Plus writing on my
phone sucks, so it won't be a long post.
Yep my book sucks, makes close to no mon...
The (complete) rainbowrain
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Today is the last time I'll post blog-photos from my work as tomorrow, the
last day of this blog is a Saturday. So you can enjoy this view one more
time ...
Twelve Months
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I can't believe it's almost 12 months since I posted anything on my blog!
I confess I've been spending a lot of time on Facebook - I know you think
I'm a t...
Graphic Wisdom to Begin 2016
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*By three methods we may learn wisdom: *
*First, by reflection, which is noblest; *
*Second, by imitation, which is easiest; *
*and third by experience, wh...
Obat Herbal Stroke Berat dan Ringan
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*Obat Herbal Stroke* - Penyakit ini terjadi karena peredaran darah didalam
organ otak mengalami penyumbatan atau gangguan. Penyakit Stroke ini adalah
adany...
Iboga- A Magic Bullet?
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Thoughts and random musings
I get the feeling, that this blog and therefore, my own thoughts and
behaviours are, to the average reader, quite controversi...
The People You Meet
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Not saying this is a come back of any type, but after farewelling my
darling friend Jeffrey today, I felt the overwhelming need to blog. Met a
weird Japan...
Despair and Dissolution
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I haven't written partly because I was confused by the new setup. Took me
ages just to get to my blog. Frustration.
Everyone can say "I told you so". Hate...
A long time coming....
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I cannot believe I have neglected this blog for so long.
Just to let you know I will be uploading a post in the next couple of days.
Things are good.
My hea...
Gone but never forgotten
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Hello everyone....
Saturday the 24th May would of been Merle's 80th birthday...
Unfortunately she is gone, but never forgotten...
I just thought I would...
Everything in it's place
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Yum.That people are reading this in Israel and Indonesia, as well as so
many other places around the world that I never would've expected is pretty
fuckin...
How to Negotiate With Used Cars Dealers
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Car traders have excellent discussing abilities. They know how to deal with
their clients with their methods and methods to make sure that they shop.
Amazi...
starry starry night…
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Ho Ho Ho! Hope everyone had a merry fucking Christmas and will enjoy a
drunken orgy of pleasure on New Years Eve. I had a nice Christmas Day with
Melinda(a...
byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
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.....I think the time has come to acknowledge that I'm not actually
blogging any more.....
PLUS
I'm off on Sunday for a Big Adventure Down Under, with L...
Drug Law Reform - NZ Show Australia How it's Done
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It seems that our New Zealand cousins are finally taking some much needed
action on drug law reform. Australia should take note of this and consider
caref...
Daze of Summer
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Her mentor is one of the most gentle people on the planet. He catches flies
in his hands and sets them free outside his studio, and he flicks
mosquitoes a...
Musings
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A week has passed since my last post and it's been a week of contrasts.
Right smack bang in the middle of week, Wednesday, was Australia Day, a
public holi...
Who buys CRACK without Brown ?
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See these F.cking dealers up here they cant get the brown sold cause its
shite so lots of people are just buying Whisky and im thinking to myself No
For Me...
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Would you trust someone who was never sure if they loved you?
I want to be held (or posses a large amount of drugs)
I want to be skinny and pretty
I want...
The Neighbour's Gun
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I remember those lazy summer nights. In my light, light dress, I would open
the window and gaze at the moon in the night. I would look and almost feel
th...
THIS is classic slice-of-life video; filmed from a sushibar conveyor belt in Japan. You don't need sound for this one (unless you speak Japanese...)
Never Mind The Balearics...
LOST WEEKENDS... Lost weeks... Lost lives...
THE SPANISH ISLE of Ibiza is the "spiritual home" of much British dance music...
Eva Cassidy: Autumn Leaves
I wonder if Autumn is as miserable your end as it is here..? This song wonderfully reinterpreted by Eva Cassidy (I think) brought tears to my eyes when I first heard it. See what you think ...
Christiane F
Christiane F
("Wir Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo")
Berlin has long been a centre of "alternative" living, attracting the artistic and dejected. And of course heroin rushes into such a void:
You can see the film in its entirety by clicking HERE.
These are my 3 roborovski hamsters!
(And now there is one...) Itchy, Bashful and Spherical... Itchy, the scruffy, dopey (and tamest one) died a few weeks ago. I was very ****** off (no swearing on this blog (or I'd be effing and blinding all the time...)). Spherical and Bashful were the remaining "Trotters" aka Hamsta MCs, Carrot Nose and Trotter Donkey ... until Trotterdonkey died and now poor Spherical Carrot Nose remains alone ...
What name should I give to my fictional slavering English mastiff hellhound..??
Name the Uncooth Doggie...
NOW I'M PUTTING UP A NEW POLL...My forthcoming fiction shall feature a giant, ill-tempered slavering hellhound of an English Mastiff who spends her time savaging pram wheels, dolls, etc; pulling soft toys apart... growling at houseguests, baying at the light fittings etc etc. She has a total personality change, however, when she gets "raped" down the park by a local rottweiler... leading to a howling, baying, snaggle-toothed litter of puppies!Anyway, which of these three names do you think fits best?(In alphabetical order)GwendolinaPansyTinkerbelle???Vote now ...!!
London Time
GMT (aka "Universal Standard Time"):
ahead of the Americas; behind everywhere else...
Trisch & Jen on the phone
Real life spooky phone call. Trisch Li is speaking to her friend Jen, who has a stalker sneaking round the side of her house. I Love the film exposure. I love the funky background. And I love Trisch. She had bipolar. She died. She left some amazing stuff behind ...You can see Trisch manic here.
Moby: Go
Anyone who was a Twin Peaks fan will know this tune: the in-sequence floaty tune played in-episode (not the theme tune) that made that tellyprog so dreamy.
This tune is something else:~~~~~~~
Future Sound of London: Papua New Guinea
THIS tune is transcendently beautiful.
Thank you to Lizzy who reminded me:~~~~~~~
The Orb: Little Fluffy Clouds (Danny Tengalia)
Archetypal triphead/herb-tokers' tune ...
Urban Shakedown: Some Justice
One of my all time favourite "hardcore" rave tunes. The "woman" singing "we live as one family" is actually a man speeded up. The primal line "Now eeeee-yeah-oh-eeeee-yeah we live as one family," sounded to me like the sun rising at psychedelic dawn. For a long time there was forever a part of me left from this 1991-1992 era, still out there, tripping in a certain corn-on-the-cob field at dawn...
Praga Khan: Injected with a Poison
Sums up what my attitude used to be and is once again to gear. That because, "There's a rainbow inside your mind ... Injected with a poison.... we don't need that any more."
Scott McKenzie: San Francisco
I really used to believe all this crap with all my heart. Peace and love and chemical dreams. If you've ever tripped out high upon higher and sublime upon sublime there is no way of bringing the beauty of the experience back with you... I once had a friend down who brought some cocaine. I did some lines and was soon stuck to the ceiling. I had tickets for a rave in south London. He was too wasted to go. So I had to negotiate an hour and a half nightbus ride all the way down. By Trafalgar Square I was eeing out on 2 pills as well and my eyes such massive discs I couldn't read the bus time tables and had to tell passers-by I'd "forgotten my reading glasses" (how embarrassing)... then I arrived around 3pm. DUR! Not pm (wasn't THAT late 3AM): though these pills didn't wear off till well after 11am which made them superstrong... anyhow... Security let me straight in I'd obviously taken all my drugs (indeed I had: felt like I was flying by this point)... first person I encountered was a middle-aged woman in a ball gown swaying back and forth in the foyer (Brixton Academy: a venue for 5000) I told her: "you are so cool". We subsequently made friends. Watching this video and seeing how stuck in the neverending moment of bliss some "flower kids" are I remember this lady having to tell me: "there's the party. Then the party's over. You have to accept that." But I never could. I wanted happiness to last for ever...
SCOTT MACKENZIE HAS GONE (copyright reasons)
HERE'S JOE BELTRAM 1990 ENERGY FLASH
Who is the superior writer? (From... in no particular order...)
Itchy's "Windy" Face
Not because she has the "farts" but because she "runs like the wind on a windy day" this is Itchy's look when she is nervous...
Bashful and Spherical look like this
(Itchy is a bit smaller)
Bashful's Lookie-Lykie
Hello you Tiny Tubby! Roborovskis are the tiniest of all hamsters, being a mere 5cm/2" fully grown... "Bashful" is pulling a bit of a grumpy face here; but hey!
Should my daily videos stay giant on the top or go mini on my sidebar? (You can only vote once.)
Doggie or Kittie?
You Are: 50% Dog, 50% Cat
You are a nice blend of cat and dog.
You're playful but not too needy. And you're friendly but careful.
And while you have your moody moments, you're too happy to stay upset for long.
38 year-old guy, 6 blogs (the main one is gledwood vol 2 so go there for new postings: blogs are linked via my sidebars), I also have 3 video blogs. One mainly music vids, the other random "novelty" clips from Youtube/etc. The third is my Fabulous Celebrity Blog for fans of trash culture. Unfortunately addicted to drugs - yes it was my own fault but what can I do about it now? Addicted means trapped & can't stop. That's how addicted I am. But that's not ALL I blog about. Apart from drugs I love drink. Apart from drink I'm into little furry animals like Pingpong, my Chinese hamster, and my 3 roborovski hamsters: Itchy, Bashful and Spherical... and ... er, food. Lately there has been a drought of the substance that enslaved me for so long. Will I clean up? Only time will tell...
Fun, comforting, and friendly.
You are a true classic, and while you're not super cutting edge, you're high quality.
People love your company - and have even been known to get addicted to you.
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