In which Gledwood reveals a true Treasury of Secrets ha ha ha!

I CAN'T SLEEP. I was so fucked up earlier from not sleeping or eating properly (I'm in an "elevated mood" so sleep quite frankly is a waste of time. I never worry about sleeping at the best of times.
Years of insomnia have taught me if you cannot sleep DO NOT LIE IN BED. EVER. GET UP AND PLAY LOUD MUSIC; WATCH DVDs DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE. It is ATROCIOUS sleep hygeine to lie in bed awake not sleeping or shagging all the doctors say this anyway if you're properly tired you can sleep sitting up. I never go to bed until I'm nodding off in my chair first. All day I have craved sleep then I walk about and WHOOSH! up goes the mood. I had such an energy surge in the library earlier I had to restrain myself from sprinting back and forth in reference and throwing books up in the air I really went hyper. Pinky won't talk to me any more because I want to die her hair bright blue. Hey you know that really perceptive and insightful amazing post I slapped up on Thursday (wrote it bang like that ~ no editing ~ in a fit of inspiration. I was going to go shopping for food with my second last tenner then I saw Yentl the DVD for £7 in HMV so I got that and ate chips instead. That film has the best score of any musical. Barbra Streisand has the best voice in the world I watched it twice on top volume, first in English then in German. "Where Is It Written?" and "The Way He Makes Me Feel" are probably the 2 best. And I love the performance of Papa Can You Hear Me by that rough kid, Bart's bully whose dad's in prison. I searched and searched for the Youtube to entertain y'all but it is nowhere to be found. Hey I just realized Barbra Streisand and short hair ~ means I must be bent as a £9 note. I used to love pretending to be gay when I was younger. Gets you all the girls does that one. There ain't nothing more alluring than something you think you can't have. I also used to like pretending to be a virgin but everyone could tell somehow I wasn't. No idea how. Actually how CAN you tell if someone's a virgin? I'm a bit old to be a virgin now I'm nearly 40. I can't really be gay BTW.Reason: no belt with huge buckle or tucked in teeshirt also I don't buy cut flowers or rate Kylie Minogue. I did buy some artificial red blooms in my last manic episode but that was just me bieng fl0ral o yeah my cactus is doing really well since I removed his TOTALLY FLASE TOOTHPICK CACTUS-INJURING FAKE FLOWERS. Loads of new growth and I've only watered him once in 3 months. Hey I was thinking of opening a torture parlour as that makes the most money out of every kind of whorehouse does anyone want to dress up in batman masks and spank high court judges members of parliament and top lawyers for £250 a pop? I fucking do, I could really do with a £500 an hour job (you only get £250 as half goes to the house and I will own the house, or rather dank cellar with plasterless walls resounding with the screams of the freshly whipped bourgeoisie. You don't have to touch the bastard clients just lock them in a cupboard. When I found out you could get paid for locking someone in a cupboard I realized I was barking up the wrong tree with my twee career ambitions I'm doing that instead. Melody Lee from New Mexico does Home Invasion rape and torture fantasies on a hardcore sex line so I'm offering her a British visa to be my best pro. She's so pretty, why she didn't get a job as a supermodel, movie star or pop princess I've no idea. I would if I looked like that. O yeah being as I'm all disinhibited and talking about pervy shit let me drop in a teaser: if I get six INTERESTING comments I'll spill FULL DETAILS about my friend masterbating when the window cleaner came round. Ha ha! True story too! And this was a girl with male eyes upon her most intimate orifices. Wobbling atop a ladder. Imagine that! He didn't have to imagine a thing, he saw everything!!! By theway I HAVE GIVEN UP DRINKING 100% why fucking waste time on alcohol when you feel better than drunk, drink only makes you slow and woozy and i'm on a far better buzz than drudgeful old drink could ever invoke I DON'T NEED DRINK. I can't wait to tell Luta duta Puta Muta the motor Scooter (my druggieowrker) I'm off the drink they ALWAYS assume I'm drunk in that place my last breathometer reading was 0.9 which is a QUARTER of the UK drink drive limit ie practically zilch (considering I'd knocked back 6 units that morning) those clinics are so narrow minded. The dr always thinks I'm hypomanic and Buta always seems to think I'm stoned! There is such a thing as a NATURAL HIGH. I'm milking my elevated mood for all it is worth: meaning CEASING ALL DRUG CONSUMPTOIN FOR GOOD AND NEVER DRINKING AGAIN I dont' need any shitty chemicals any more. Only "drugs" I'm ever taking from now on are benzos and I need them to sleep and if anyone thinks the odd benzo is a sin just you try riding the bipolar wave and not popping pills you'l end up with your head in the oven quicker than me I can promise you. I'm asking my dr for 20 diazepam 10s and 7 zopiclone 7.5s per month PRN as I need them. Think of the injustice. Taking diazzies for anxiety is no more drug abuse than popping aspirin for a headache. Yet I'm scoring mine off a scumbag on the street while other people who PRETEND to need the Vals are fucking selling them on the side that is totally corupt. Now tomorrow I'm getting chicken with babycorn with curry sauce and mix vegetable fry rice the Chinese I go to does mangetout in their fry rice it's gorgeous somehow the dryness of the beans sets of the yumminess of the rice. Would you believe it I found an MSG-free Chinese takeaway last time I was hyper I could not believe the travesty Chinese food without monosodium glutamate is like sugar-free chocolate. Or a gay man without a tucked in teeshirt. Utter beyond the pale vulgarity. Like heroin that's not china white. Dealers who sell brown heroin should get death by 1000 cuts in my humble view whereas china white dealers should get a gold medal. Shit I'm still nurturing that inner drug snob addict aren't I. BTW someone once had a go at me for proclaiming the superiority of H4 (heroin hydrochloride salts) over water-insoluble H3 heroin smoking base that's not snobbery that's called RESPECTING YOUR BODY. H4 dissolves cold in water. In Australia where street purity of China White exceeded 70% at times it's not unknown for addicts with 5 year habits not to move beyond the crooks of their arms, the gear is that good. I lost the crooks (that's my "mainlines" to those of you not into heroin) within 3 months because BROWN HEROIN IS SHIT. It's meant for smoking not injecting and no I don't have a downer on heroin smokers it's envy not derision I wish I could have smoked my gear but once I got on the needle that was me lost to 2 vices: heroin and injecting. You honestly do not know how ASHAMED I am even to have had one conversation with my father about my heroin-injecting proclivities. Honestly the looks on my parents' faces when I told them I was acting like a cat on hot bricks in their house for 3 days straight with no end in sight was because I was detoxing off heroin... fucking hell that was an alltime low. I remember pleading with one family member "not to look so desperate" as my poor brother looked on bewilderedly it was absolutely horrible the worst of the pits. After that I took to begging, trebled my habit overnight (£30 a day minimum up from a mere £10) ~ started mainlining a gram a day because I knew I was a junkie and as far as I knew would die one. yes I had a genuine death wish. Genuine. I know I have exasperated people with suicide talk and no action but trust me if I play suicide again nobody's getting any chance to save me. I'm gone. So I keep myself safe. I will go in the nuthouse before I kill myself. I just cannot understand how being in a good mood can be "illness" how fucking shit does life have to be when you have to check yourself every time you fucking laugh because when I do laugh my head off several times a day for no real reason yes it does mean I'm going manic and I'm a manic-depressive junkie how lower can you go than that. Ha! Actually I'm kinda proud of being lowest of the low like that. Right it's 00:20 hrs I've got to piss off and TRY to get some sleep I'm due up in the morning some "lovely BASTARDLY SHITHEAD WHO BORROWED £25 I REALLY COULD NOT AFFORD TO LEND WHO NEARLY HAD ME EAETING OUT OF BINS I WAS THAT FUCKED BECAUSE OF HIM THIS CUNT IS FINALLY PAYING ME BACK AND I'M RELISHING GOING ABSOLUTELY BALISTIC ON THIS FUCKER TOMORROW MORNING HE HAS HIV WELL I HAD PSYCHOTIC MANIA AND I FUCKING HELPED HIM OUT WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN A MENTAL UNIT I WAS AT MY LOWEST POINT IN 10 YEARS AND I FUCKING DID HIM A MASSIVE FAVOUR A FEW MONTHS AGO AND HE TREATS ME LIKE THIS IN FACT IF HE DOESN'T GROVEL I'M JUST GONNA LAMP THE FUCKER HE DESERVES IT THAT IS ABSOLUTELY DISPICABLE SWINDLING MONEY FROM THE SICK LIKE THAT
well I won't tell you I'll tell him. That "person" won't know what's hit him I'm giving full vent to my fury and I tell you I am seething with rage if I was more nasty I would stab him over this he fucking deserves it taking the piss like that who the fuck does he think I am. A piece of shit that's what. Well tomorow the ROBOROVSKI ROARS HA HA HA!
night night everyone and don't worry i promise to treat my friend with dignity and respect as i blow my top which i will more i think about it more furious i am i will talk all nicey nicey lure the fucker here then give it with both barrels
see that's what people do: mistake kindness for weakness well not me mate. never again

AMY WINEHOUSE: WAKE UP ALONE

Positive Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drug abuse is said to misaleign the energy system.

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

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

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

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

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


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

My Sleep Meds

1703 I JUST GOT IT TOGETHER to look through my sleep medication which has been right in front of me for days I didn't even notice Nytol was there. I have 1x zopiclone 7.5mg and 2x strips of Nytol only 2 50mg pills taken. On 100mg Diphenhydramine (Benadryl) I'm OK to sleep usually on days 1 and 2 but after that it just stops working. Zopiclone works far better and is much nicer and not something to abuse (ALL it does it makes me sleep; nothing benzoey, just drowsiness, nothing else so no motivation to stay up through it as in temazepam (Restoril) which takes 30mg to 40mg to actually get me to sleep. 10mg temazepams are a JOKE. Zopiclone is the only sleeping pill I've taken that works reliably on ONE full-dose tablet. Zopiclone 3.75 is a piss take they're for elderly people but some doctors will mess around with you giving them when you just have to do 2 to get the effect ie half as many doses.

I also have enough methadone to zonk myself if I really needed to but hate doing that on methadone it takes a LOT. I buy it on the street for when I need extra. My dose is going DOWN now which I'm SO GLAD ABOUT I can't tell you. I absolutely LOATHE being on methadone I hate the shit, it's the all time pits of drugs. Does nothing unless you take doses I won't mention in case some kid with no tolerance thinks a hardened junkie's sleep dose will make them feel good when it WILL KILL THEM. I want off all this crap I hate taking drugs to sleep.

Last night (or rather this morning) I slept late morning to early afternoon about 10am to 1:30pm 3.5 hours. And felt gluttonous and lush for having done even that. Very indulgent. Mania thrives on sleep deprivation so the less sleep = the more manic = the better I feel unless I really start going off the scale which is just DIDDLADDLEODDLEODDDZZZ-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-ZZ-Z-ZZZZZZZBZZZZZZZZZZZZBZZZZBZZZBZBZZZZ like a noise.

I'm well rested now thanks to black coffee perking me up. Shouldn't drink that either. but with nothing, no drugs at all I'd be ragged, frazzled and extremely irritable and sleeping 3.5 hours maximum. Least with sleepers I can get a little extra sleep. If I take them at 10pm I can usually sleep midnight till 2:30am at least. This is while hyped up. When I'm down my sleep still goes all over the place but tends to go longer so I could sleep 12 or more hours. In bad states right through the morning into the afternoon from going to bed at 9pm.

Well this is me and sleep, maybe I shouldn't post this but what the heck.


Illustrated: temazepam 30 ~ this dose should actually work, but no better than zopiclone 7.5! Zopiclone (not licensed in the USA) is like a far superior version of zolpidem (Ambien) zopiclone (Imovane) is called Zimovane in the UK. Nytol one-a-night is diphenhydramine 50mg but I'm not even sure I should be taking that on bipolar mania it might make it worse... (who knows?)

1813 I might try a red light. Blue light keeps you awake; red at the other end of the spectrum definitely makes you sleepy. Hammies can't see it and go pinging about like crazy under red light, they think it's pitch darknesss...

Librium

I HAD TO GO VISITING today. My friends live in flats. Downstairs. But no light on. Seemingly she saw me as the intercom crackled with her distinctive Liverpool voice: "wait a sec!" So I did. Then I thought I'd phone anyway and she sounded off-beam, like she hadn't just spoken to me a few moments before and I thought, That was odd.

Then he comes out and I said "Did she just talk to me through the intercom" and he said "No, what are you talking about! That hasn't worked for years! What are you on?!"

And I said "Nothing," he said: "No you're on something." So I said, "No, I'm not drinking so it must be DTs." He looked at me carefully and said, "I'll go and get you a couple of Librium," so he did, he got me nine and said "Don't tell her."

I'm to take three every four hours, then they should hold me till next day. I don't know the milligrams but they're blue and white, like Prozacs. I took three as directed and barely felt anything.

So they probably make a good substitute for alcohol. Pills that don't do anything are easier to cut down on than drink, which I can feel something off.

Later on someone quite different asked me whether I'm on LITHIUM. Thanks so much, Friends.

I'm not on anything. I'm not taking gear, that's why I'm falling apart. I feel the fractures. It doesn't feel bad, it just feels bizarre. Quite fun though. I've been sleeping like a harvest mouse. Hibernating for hours on end.

O will I ever get off these drugs? Yes, because I have to.

Tomorrow I'm planning an expedition to Mr Temazepam (Mr Librium cannot go on sparing his partner's pills.) Mr Temazepam wants good dollars for his supply but as I say, if it's more "medical" than cutting down on just drink then I'm willing to go for it.

I got hooked on the feeling of drink. Now I'm without that feeling. So it's a step ahead already!

There is a significant risk of pharmacological dependence on diazepam and patients experiencing symptoms of benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome if it is taken for 6 weeks or longer.

(Wikipedia: Diazepam) Being as I shouldn't be taking it for any longer than 10 days maximum, I ought to be fine ...

Mariana-Deep

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to 2011 everyone :-)

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

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

Wikipedia: Alcohol Withdrawal
Wikipedia: Alcohol Detoxification

Confession

I'M NOW ONLY ONE DAY CLEAN. Last night I wanted to score. I turned the idea over and over in my mind. I wiped my old text messages then a new one appeared, timed fifteen minutes earlier. This was from Dealer #1, the one who used to sell giant £20 bags. So I thought: You want it that much. You get it. So I did.

In a way there's nothing to post because the gear was so crap* that drugs-wise I might as well have chucked £15 down the drain and saved a perfectly good needle. It cooked up far too dark. It smelled of heroin being smoked, rather than cooked (a different smell). I thought that's odd. When I tasted a droplet: nothing. So I banged up the entire lot at once and felt the faintest opiate tinge for all of 45 seconds.

All I've done is ruin my number of Days Clear, not get high, throw £15 away.

On the plus side I got the craving to use out of my system. The same way I gave up crack two years ago, yet wondered back six or seven times afterwards, I never wanted it again the next day. I just remembered why I hated it that much. I no more want to use again than a person who went to Disney Land on Monday would wish they were on a rollercoaster again Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Heroin is a spectre from a past life. More a ghoul than a spectre. A monster who tries to deceive: You give me everything, then I'll give you More! Somehow, in the end, it didn't work.

So don't worry about me, I won't be hurrying back any time soon. I have Caramel Baileys, mince pies and temazepam, so I'm well sorted for Xmas.

Hope y'all have a Merry One one too. If it can't be Merry then may it be Tolerable. If you're 100% substance-free then may it be Serene (and of course Clean).


Plus I hope 2011 is better for you than this Bag-o-Shite year ever was!!

The doggie is an American Akita, the sort of dog I really want.

I'll be online on Gabbly tomorrow so if anyone wants to talk I'll be there.

*To anyone who hasn't followed, there has been a severe drought in the British heroin supply for over 2 months; that's why my formerly reliable dealer was selling crap. It's hard to find a constant, reliable source of heroin anywhere now.

Dank

I CANNOT SLEEP PROPERLY. Last night I thought I'd take a sleeping pill (temazepam 20mg), to set my sleep cycle earlier. So much for good intentions: it only made me high. As good a high as heroin. (And very much an acquired taste. Nobody but a junkie could ever feel the blurry, rubbery feeling of benzodiazepines as a "high".)

Still I didn't sleep. I found myself online in a blur. Eventually I got pill number two. I felt rubbery and dizzy and hazy ("high") as I stumbled up to get it. So I decided to be all responsible and bit it in half. The extra 10mg only took over as the previous 20 peaked and faded. An hour or two later I took the other half. Still wide awake, but in bed. If I'd have slept I'd have slept with the computer in my arms, like an electronic baby. At some point I took a third pill, a whole 20mg. My thought process had gone haywire by this time as I left a garbled comment on my own blog (yesterday). At least in my jumbled-up state I had sanity enough to clarify this is what part of me thinks...

Last thing I remember was realizing it was 6am and being distinctly displeased about that. Then I slept through past 4:30. Got up at 5. Ran down the chemist with an hour to spare.

People kept calling me this morning on withheld numbers. I suspect 2 different callers as the pattern of rings before hangup was different. The dealer usually rings a long long time, leaves it then rings an hour later. This person rang and rang a few rings over and over. I wish people wouldn't withhold. When I find out who it was (if it was my friend) I have to explain NOT to do that. The dealer will ask me to jump through a hoop, expecting me to wag my tail and enthusiastically woof "how high, master?!" He wants me to test a piteously small amount of free gear, knowing this would (ordinarily) prompt a phone call within 30 mins asking for a £20 bag if not a gram. This one charges £40 on the gram (too much). A weighed gram always used to be £30. Or £35 tops as 2x0.5g £20s. (2x20=no more than 35 in addict maths!)

In the last few years I noticed the price sneaking higher. I had only one dealer who did giant bags, weighing 0.6 or 0.7g for £20. These were full of B (brown heroin) and packed with lovely benzos as well. It was a £10 hit on one of these that made me miss my friend's funeral. I woke 2 hours later realizing I'd missed it. Then I slept for 12 hours straight. This gear was beige but went midnight black in the works. I tested benzo-positive on a test-card I obtained, hadn't been at the Valium or any other pills. So I knew it was dodgy B setting this off.

Checking my text messages set off the craving that inspired all this junkie information you just read. I got 2 offering 4 bags for £25. Another one saying great new stuff. All this from "Mr 0.6". He's just round the corner. He's also the one who sold me the very last lot of gear I ever took, 3 weeks ago yesterday. £15 bought what looked like 0.4g of crushed paracetamol, cooked up without any vit C and contained a yellowy heroin solution full of mindblowingly potent downers. These downers wiped more than a week, maybe 2 weeks from my memory.

So I could have run round the corner and scored. Instead I glugged my methadone, which was due anyhow (strange how a due methadone dose and heroin-craving coincide, even though methadone's not on my mind). I also popped a temazepam. Well it is Xmas!

What is this? Yet another day without the Killer B? I can't believe it.

I don't exactly feel marvellous, but I am surviving. Just. In a blank, disengaged, not happy way. I'm still here. I only wonder how I will ever move from here somewhere better.

Now the drugs are climbing on I don't want gear so much. Drink, temazepam, methadone. I'm still an addict to my core. An addict who doesn't use Heroin is like a bird that can't fly. I think I'll turn into a furry animal instead. A tubby great hamster, curled in a ball down its burrow, sleeping, slumbering, drowsing all day long.

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed...

YESTERDAY MORNING I was drunk and maudlin. By drunk, read "alcoholically intoxicated" ~ not falling over, puking, fighting with lamp-posts. By 11am I'd had 2 or 3 of my special cocktails, which are based on cyder at 7.5% in 500ml cans, so you can do the mathematics yourself. 6 cans a day is the amount of alcohol advised by Her Majesty's chief doctor in a WEEK. Then again I'm cynnical. Very cynical in fact ~ about this "a couple of big glasses of wine a day is doing your body all manner of wrong". You may see a junkie making excuses. And yes I do believe I drink too much. But I think the Government's recommendations on dangerous levels are ridiculous in the extreme. I'm totally against altering the drink-drive limit (making it even lower) ~ if it ain't broke, why fix it?
While we're on the subject, I also believe the amount of Calories nutritionalists let us get away with is ricidulous. MOST of the world survives on 1000 to 1500 cals a day. I've been to India. Only the Indian police are overweight.
I've eaten in their equivalent of a truck driver's caff, where you get a ball of rice smaller than a tennis ball, with perhaps ~ at most ~ as much fish as would fit into a small sardine tin. This came coated in a thin batter so it looked more than it really was. This is considered a working man's lunch. Oh and I forgot, three tiny bowls of dips ~ pickles, chutney and sauce.
Incidentally, the Indian food I ate, betweeen Goa, Bangalore and Chennai (aka Madras) was nothing like the fragrant delicately spiced to raging hot array of dishes on sale in British curryhouses. What I experienced was more like ultra-hot Mexican ~ ie mostly chili-spiced. I don't recall ever eating anything resembling "curry". And no tikka masala, jalfrezi, balti or anything of that nature. All that food comes from the north. In Tamil Nadu they sold lots of Thali (pronounced Taarlee ~ without that burred R, you Americans!) , which is usually vegetarian and involves a great many bowls of things to mix and match dipping-wise. Another speciality, and this cost about 5 rupees a portion, each portion being cupcake sized, was bhel-puri. Which is sold at stalls. There's about four variations and it's really nice.
Indian takeaway food in India was what would here be considered "Chinese!" Though no attempt was made to decorate the stalls and restaurants with Chinese characters, red lanterns/etc. And it wasn't called Chinese food at all. It was just greasy stir-fried noodles and it was the best Chinese takeaway (if you wanna call it that) I've had ANYWHERE. And you know how much I like my Chinese.
If you wanna know the exact location of the shop I'm afraid my ex who I always called "Libra" here, went out, but we were staying at a cheap hotel that literally backed onto the tannoy at Chennai railway station. So it's walking distance from there. And well worth doing an Elvis-style expedition to get some (you know: I'm talking about the peanut butter sandwich story or whatever it was Elvis Presley had flown across America from his favourite diner just because he loved it so much. Though judging by the state of him towards the end of his life I find it difficult to believe it was only one ...
Now: what do you wanna hear? Me maudlin drunk. Well that had to do with my realizing the total death tally these past twelve months is at least FIVE probably SIX. I am not sure, as I do not care to ennumerate. Two heart attacks, two suicides. Another alleged heart attack... (Come on, you leave rehab, have a mysterious heart attack that very evening and it's not crack? Gimme a break. But that's the received version. It was just a somehow hitherto unnoticed heart complaint that decided to manifest just after leaving drug rehab...)
As far as Pinky & Perky go, I've not been in touch with anyone since the funeral. To be frank I don't think I was particularly missed on the day. I would have been tolerated like a particularly noxious, wafting fart that nobody would admit to. What I didn't post was that this group of friends involved a person with whom I was once in a close substitute mother-son type friendship (she used to tell people we met I was her son) and that person... well makes the situation less than simplistic. She invited me. But that doesn't mean she wanted to see me.
After the event: not a single phone call. For all she knows I could have been hit by a truck on the way. And I'm not (probably) telling this one the full facts. I don't trust her not to pass on a revved up bitching version to Pinky.
Yeah don't I have wonderful friends. Ex friends. I apologize.
Pinky and Perky were people I used to see every week but through this other person, with whom friendship has withered on the vine. So do you get it now? that my feelings were mixed from the start. That to go there would be... slightly weird. And as I said, to be frank I'd rather write personally to Pinky, not an apology for not being there. I doubt she very much noticed. But to put my own written eulogy (is that the expression?) My feelings on the life of Perky, who had so very much life it's hard to believe she's actually gone...
Apart from that, I bought two huge bags of gear on special offer. About 1.2g+ for £35 (usually bags that big they won't discount, unless you buy several). I had two or three hits and knocked myself unconscious the entire day yesterday.
Early that morning, I met somebody on the street and asked after the local dealer who drops off one minute from my house. I encounter people waiting on him all the time and I still haven't had an introduction. Every time, the situation falls through. Or I'm told by someone else that his gear's shyte. I've heard a lot of times that his gear has been shyte which is, I spose, what put me off bothering with this intro.
Anyway: long story short ~ I fessed up to this friend of mine/acquaintance/whatever you wanna call him about the Funeral Scandal (as it is labelled in my own personal mythology).
And he said to me "does it have little black bits in it?" and I said "what you mean minute black specks that cook down so the hit looks black?" (ie not "tea leaves, which are big floaters of something inert that you only find in drought or ripoff gear ~ these little bits look like a fine powder, as fine as cheap preground white pepper or black talc, if you can imagine that)... anyway he says yeah he knows someone who took the bus one stop and woke up in Trafalgar Square. Another started fighting with his best mate. Whenever it's taken, chaos ensues. I don't know what this weird black stuff is, but it's obviously pharmaceutical. And it's not heroin. In druggie language you could call this "B+" that is it's B (brown heroin) and strong enough to pong of brown, both in the bag and while cooking up, and the smell of brown heroin base is unmistakable. (Nothing like vinegar, incidentally. Vinegar is what Mexican tar and some China white heroin smells of.) The plus, whatever it is, is some pharmaceutical agent, probably either a benzodiazepine like Rohypnol or a barbiturate like Seconal or Phenobarb, or methaqualone ("quaaludes") or both.
What it cannot be is sleeping pills crushed down. Bearing in mind that a small pill weighs 200mg minimum and a large £20 bag weighs 600mg and I'm using a third of a 600mg bag at a time usually (ie "two points" or a fifth of a gram) ~ how much sleeping pill is going to fit into that? Nowhere near enough to knock me out for the day, no matter what the potion. So whoever's adulterating this stuff surely has access to illegally-manufactured knockout drops, probably from China or Central Asia. That is knockout stuff in its pure form.
One of yesterday's bags was the Midnight Black, the other just ordinary heroin. It's the second kind ~ just heroin ~ that I've had today ~ so I feel crystal clear!
The very fact that I've more than half the gear left over says how strong it was. Ordinarily I could get through a gram-and-a-bit in an afternoon, if I wanted to.
My head is not in a particularly good place. I wander about stricken by guilt over times when I was four and crushed a ladybird. And other such nonsense. (This is depression.) I tell myself this is depression to console myself. Perhaps recognizing some of the psychological tricks and mind-games of the condition gives me an edge over it. Not much of an edge, but something.
And that, my friends, is that.
Now I have to go. I have to think of something to post in German..!
Have a good day everyone :-)

No Sleeping Pills: A Non-Drug Tale

VALIUM MARILYN (think Marilyn Monroe with a 40-year drug habit) who is (normally) my friend is in my severe bad books. I don't normally ask her for pills (she takes so many that when she once fell over on the bus she rattled ~ but not having slept at night all week I was tempted enough to call her two days ago and ask. She was incommunicado all day Friday (which means she was off her head) but I got a call at 09:30 hours yesterday (when I was ~ at last ~ asleep!) saying as soon as she gives her over-protective son the slip she will serve up. It took her eight hours to hobble out of her house. Then she rang me again saying she was sat on the doorstep of a Greek crackhead witch I know of old who unfortunately lives round the corner ~ and will I get there NOW. Well I couldn't do NOW because I wasn't round the corner and when I did get to the vicinity of said doorstep, the wobbling Marilyn was nowhere to be seen.

I knew exactly what was going on. Not having bothered to wait TEN MINUTES she was indoors piping with Androulla, the Greek crackhead witch, who would have bought my pills with coke. And of course Marilyn was ignoring her phone.

So five failed calls and a text later I rang Androulla's irritable Russian boyfriend who had been stupid enough to give me the number (must've been high because he doesn't like me very much more than I like Androulla). The witch answered herself. I could hear Marilyn's shrill cockney tones in the background. I said: "Can you tell Mal to stop ignoring her phone."

"How do you know she's here? She's not here!" (Very logical.)

But I'd made my point. So it's no pills for me after I'd disturbed the sanctuary of Marilyn's sacred crack. I don't touch "white" at all nowdays so I wasn't interested in that. (The mere thought of piping fills me with nausea.) But I could have done with some pills. I didn't sleep at all last night. It's now 08:17am and the broad light of day floods in through my thin curtains, torturing the back of my eyes. How am I ever going to reset my sleep pattern? I would do it without pills if I thought I could. That's one reason I keep my place so cold. Low body temp sends you off to bubbies: how many freezing nights have you lain wide awake? See what I mean...
BENZODIAZEPINES* PLEASE.

PS: Benzodiazepines are prescribed sleeping aids like Valium/diazepam, temazepam, lorazepam, oxazepam, flurazepam, nitrazepam, flunitrazempam... and just about anything else ending in "-azepam"...

PPS: On the subject of drugs, that mysterious nameless "designer" substance I sampled a few weeks ago is called mepherdrone ... not an opiate, apparently vaguely related to the North African chewing-leaf khat ...

I Hate Sundays

SO MANY WORDS AND NOTHING TO SAY... Was just reading over what I spewed yesterday. Blah blah blah!

I hate Sundays. Nothing ever is doing. Somebody gave me some sleeping pills so I took them (at night) and couldn't even get zonked out. I don't know why being tolerant to a totally unrelated family of drugs should affect the response in this way but it's what I hate most about being an addict. The feeling that I can take so much of any poison I'm practically immortal.

Also I feel ill all the time. Maybe I have a fever. I am sweating so bad. Sneezing etc etc. Neither methadone nor heroin seems to be helping me.
Aaaaaaaaargghhhhhhh...............

Got to go I have the Limpopo river running down my back... I really need a shower....

Useless Urine Screen

TALK ABOUT saving money and chucking the baby out with the bathwater: the drug service has new state-of-the-art creditcard-style urine tests. You pee into a cup, remove the end of the card and dip five little litmus-like dippers into the cup. Within a minute a "result" is recorded for cocaine, opiates, methadone, benzodiazepines and buprenorphine (Subutex).

Today's test had me down as a major coke fiend, borderline methadone drinker (even though I'd had it all that morning), negligable heroin user, benzo-fiend (benzos are things like Valium/sleeping pills and I've not touched them for ages). As for the buprenorphine I had again borderline used that would have put me in horrible withdrawals on top of methadone.

NB it was not the same test illustrated to top left, but along those "lines"...

So I walked out of there scratching my head until I realized I'd drunk so much tea before I came in that my urine was dilute enough to score "negligable" on everything. Where on earth the high coke reading came from I don't know. I did the test twice and both readings were identical.

I've invented a genius "Chinese" stirfry. I know none of my cooking really is authentic Chinese, especially the curry. My aim is for TAKEAWAY cooking: not food as actually eaten in China (with dead dogs/crows/etc etc)....

Anyway, for this you boil up long grain rice and store in fridge.
Stirfry one medium mushroom chopped extra-thin.
Stirfry two or three baby corn per medium portion per person again chopped extra thin.
Add about a desertspoon tinned sweetcorn per person. Fry all this. Add the magic ingredients (salt and MSG) and a bit of pepper. Voila: A MASTERPIECE!!!

Abba's Agnetha: Sometimes When I'm Dreaming
Thanks Mizpeh

Part 8: Cold Turkey

SO HERE I AM WITH MY DEAR FAMILY a good four hours' journey from home (I know you Aussies and Canadians will laugh; but in Britain that's a long, long way!) In fact very few journeys in the average Brit's lifetime (so long as they are within the UK) will take much longer than four or five hours ...

Anyhow I arrive and the first withdrawals have already crept up on me on the train. So I'm shivering and hot and getting the shivers and yet sweating all the more. Which is a really horrible state to be in; trust me. It's not just that the body's going haywire but sweating when you're already cold can become an agonizing experience. As the withdrawal progresses it's like stripping layer after layer off your own skin, off your resistence to the world's minor irritations. Which is why, as I mention, the sweats became like an "agony" ~ the threshold of discomfort of any kind plummets. That fairytale "The Princess and the Pea" might well have been written about a detoxing royal junkie, because the author's point about luxury lowering tolerance to suffering and all suffering being relative is very much applicable to the heroin addict's self-inflicted lot.

Even the medical text I once consulted conceded that junkies in withdrawal tend to be majorly tormented by minor discomforts. This may well have been the same text that counselled nurses not to be overly concerned by the impossibly accelerating anxiety and agonizing withdrawal sickness of any opiate addict no matter what the length or degree of their addiction and to remind the patient that although these symptoms feel very distressing and unpleasant at times they always pass within a matter of days and have never killed anyone. In other words: be patronizing and dismissive and unaware of the fact that if heroin withdrawals could indeed kill a great many more addicts would be willing to suffer them. At least that way, a clearly positive outcome might be in sight.

Some drugs do present complications in withdrawal: benzodiazepines (Valium and most modern sleeping pills) can bring on seizures if withdrawn too rapidly. As can alcohol. Alcohol withdrawal in particular can elecit the most florid hallucinations atop mental confusion (delirium tremens; the so-called DTs). But it's because a detoxing heroin addict generally loses the will or capacity to drink ~ and frequently tends to cut out all drugs together at the same time if they are going to brave the full-on "cold turkey" ~ that all manner of phenomena tend to get blamed on withdrawal from heroin that actually have nothing (directly) to do with it.

OK AND BACK TO MY OWN STORY, it soon proved that the methadone I had brought with me would nowhere near be enough to last the week. So, having thought the matter through, and realizing that to take a pitifully small dose of methadone would put me in the worst of both worlds (as I saw it then) ~ ie still being addicted and yet not being held ~ that I poured the entire lot down the toilet. Watched as the water in the bowl went a mouthwash shade of green and promptly flushed all this away in case the urge to scoop it back in a cup should seize me (addiction is a powerful motivator). Now I had to option but to stick to my resolve to come off "cold turkey" ...

"Junk" sickness comes on agonizingly slowly and refuses to hurry. It is an expert torturer. Having said this: within 24 hours my pupils had gone enormous, I was sopping wet with sweat all over. "Cold turkey" was getting into full swing. What I hadn't counted on, however, was a restlessness of mind and body so extreme that at the peak of the experience I could barely stay still for longer than 20 seconds. My mind raced uncontrollably. Ideas of all varieties whirling about me in a tornado. My anxiety was extreme. I could focus on nothing for longer than a handful of seconds. My moods flew up down and sideways. At one point my mind was rushing so quickly I felt like I was flying.

My family, of course, hadn't a clue what was wrong. And I refused to admit the reason for my odd behaviour until three days into this admittedly farcical scene. What caught their attention, far more than those supposed "flu-like symptoms" I'd been conditioned to expect (anyway, the worst of these ~ the cramps and vomiting ~ I managed to control with hysocine (scopolamine) travel sickness pills. What grabbed their attention was my frenzied, pointless, restlessness. There seemed no earthly reason for this. When my Dad suggested it might be "drugs" I countered, "who on earth would take a drug that would make them feel like this?" and for the time being that particular subject had a lid on.

At this point in time I had been "dabbling" in heroin for over three years. Had been using daily for several months; and though it's hard to state precisely how long becuase inherent to the state of addiction, as I've already stated, is massive self-deception, I did manage to pinpoint at the time that I'd been using on a daily basis for at least six months when I made this concerted attempt to come off.

My point here is that the withdrawals I went through, though intensely nasty to me, were nothing compared to the syndrome that might well confront me ~ with literally years of heroin plus a tankerfull of methadone ~ were I to try and come off cold today ...

"Cold turkey" ~ incidentally ~ is more the media's expression than one that junkies might use. (London junkies, anyhow. I can't vouch for the rest of this cruel, wide world!) Junkies themselves might use the term "clucking" or "doing your cluck" ~ yes I know how laughable that sounds: I've laughed at it myself. But that's the language heroin addicts use.

Anyhow, now that heroin is available round the clock from a great many dealers and the days when you had your "man" and stayed loyal to him and might even have to go for days at a time without when droughts hit the city and "the man" couldn't "get" ... these days, when cold turkey was a fact of life, have long gone. In fact I seriously doubt whether many of the younger addicts today have even done a straightforward "cluck" as I did at least go through to the bitter end (I did eight or nine days clean) ... the modern-day addict in the west is coddled from the worst consequences of his addiction and so not only receives a mixed message from society that with one breath condemns his actions and threatens conviction, fines, imprisonment ... and yet with the next condones them, offering clean needle exchange, easy access to methadone (that you can go on and on using on top of) and so on. A thoroughly confusing point of view. Though I'm not saying the situation in South East Asia (or even in America) is in any way desirable.

Merely to do the proper "cold turkey" you need certain facilities in place. First of these is a place to stay well away from all your druggie connexions. If you don't have this and attempt coming off in your normal milieu unless God grants a miracle, you're pretty much doomed from the start. No way will you see the withdawals though.

Addiction erodes willpower in a way thta's near-impossible to explain to a nonaddict. For one thing one's desire to clean up actually increases once you've had a lovely great shot of the drug. This is because once high and distanced from the details of life cleaning up seems as straightforward as it is desirable. When in fact it is not straightforward at all. Because an entire life must be substituted new for old in almost every detail. The less high you are. The more straight. The more under the weather beneath straight that you get as the last of the last hit trickles from your system your brain only turns with single-minded fixation to obtaining more of the drug and using it and contriving always to have more to use when you need it. As the author of a junk memoir put it (my paraphrase) ... "I was never so minded to get clean as when I was dirty" ... that's pretty much it in a nutshell. But straight people would assume it's the other way round. How can it be. You cannot be hooked on a drug without first loving it. Any addict who pretends they hate their drug of choice is a liar! You can get tired of it the way you get tired of a longterm spouse. But you gotta love the stuff at some time. Otherwise how on earth are you gonna get hooked in the first place!?!

Over time, heroin seeps under your skin, eventually, to all intents and purposes, becoming your skin, as it sets up home in brain and body. And all wellbeing and all normality come eventually to depend on heroin's compelling presence in your body, you find yourself in due course utterly hijacked by the substance that once added life's spice. Now, it's somehow become a substance for life itself. All the emotional stability that I, at long last, seemed to have gained in my life, I suddenly realized ~ had been built on a foundation of heroin. Without heroin I was in such a bad way I felt I'd never cope with life on it's own demanding terms ever again. Indeed, life without heroin seemed like a black hole, a dreadful, intolerable void stretching forever and destroying all who entered in. When this hit me I basically flipped my lid and, panicking and full of suicidal ideas, detarmined my only option was to get back home and get myself killed by an express train. I ate a miserable last supper and kept as composed as possible all the way to the station. The physical withdrawals had by now faded (I was a good week clean if not longer) ~ but my mind was still in tatters.

Before I did the nasty deed I would use just once more, to straighten myself out.

The drug worked.

In fact it worked a seeming miracle. All deathwishes ceased.

All I'd done in attempting to quit, it transpired, was to seal with myself a new pact and resolution. I knew beyond any doubt now that I was an addict. And finally I understood the debt I owed heroin for the nominal security in life I enjoyed once I was dosed up. From now on: I cold not stop. I could only go on using. Because heroin had saved me. If it hadn't done it's favour and made me feel so good now, I would surely be dead. That was the deal I made with heroin. Or heroin made with me. Simple ~ uh?

And what the future held ~ God only knew ...