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Gledwood Volume 4

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Back from Beyond the English Language

I DIDN'T POST because my computer is still broken and I have spent all my time watching (rather listening to) the box set (all 5 seasons) of 6 Feet Under while marking up a notebook with every single word I do not understand from the French novel I'm reading. I've decided to better myself by reading novels and memoirs in French and German exclusively. I don't mark the books; as I said, I keep a notebook with every word I don't fully comprehend in the order it appears complete with page numbers. If a word crops up 45 times and I still don't get it, I look it up and write the definition all those times. The ONLY method of language acquisition that works is repitition.

Today I bought 3 new French novels (French literature outdoes German by a long way). They cost £2 each from a particularly eclectic charity shop with shelves and shelves of foreign crap.

I'm learning Spanish from a Linguaphone Plus course my Dad got me on ebay. It cost £35 secondhand; that's about $50. These cost about £300 new and bring you to a vocabulary of 2400 words. I know because I counted definitions per page in the glossary and multiplied up. 2400 words is about 4 times what a Teach Yourself book + 2 CDs course gives you. Plus you learn by listening. The handbook explains why it is as it is, line by line. But somehow it all goes in without much effort. Linguaphone is way better than Pimsleur. I tried Pimsleur Hebrew from the library and it's ridiculously repititious. Breaking down a simple sentence into constituent parts over and over on CD because it's designed for people who fear a simple textbook will make them feel like they're at school. I heard Pimsleur gives you a vocab of only 400 words; that wouldn't surprise me. Also Rosetta Stone level 3 gives only 1500 words ~ their customer services had to phone me back with that figure. I got the impression that neither the school-leaver who took my original call nor the supervisor who answered my enquiry had ever learned a foreign languge, let alone actually used Rosetta Stone.

Last week I was in a good mood but now I'm depressed. I decided that it's unnatural to live on psyche meds. Not to mention the fact that I want my meds CHANGED to quetiapine which has a more acceptable side-effects profile. Ever since I took risperidone I had episodic severe anxiety which I will NOT put up with. Surprise surprise anxiety is a side-effect afflicting more than one person in ten on that drug. I want quetiapine instant release. It might stop me needing to take zopiclone, which I mostly buy on the street as my doctor is too prissy to give a regular supply. I only take zopiclone as required. Every so often I go through a period, usually when I'm going manic, where I sleep 3 hours a day or less. Or just cannot sleep at night and sleep randomly during the day.

Now I feel down and out and pretty pointless. But I'm determined to be able to read these pretentious French novels in the original. Why not? They're not really pretentious. French literature is parallel to English literature. There's a huge international contingent in France, the language is used widely accross Africa. So French books are very cosmopolitan. My current one is about the last emperor of China and an ancient manuscript; the next one is called Le nègre du Palais by Thierry Pfister. Something to do with a rich man dying in a big house (wouldn't he be liable to dreaded French wealth tax?) and politics. Well it looks a lot better than it sounds. I haven't taken a dictionary to it yet so it's all a blur.

Isn't 6 Feet Under just about the best thing that's ever been on telly? I was wondering why Ruth, the mother, annoys me so much. That's because she's just like me: a mixture of prissy and adventurous. Meek yet not meek-willed. Just like me. I'm also like Phoebe from Friends. Hippy dippy on the outside; hard as nails on the inside. It's other people who call me hard. I don't think I'm hard. But when they say that I answer: well if I were as soft on the inside as I appear on the outside I'd be a fucking lump of jelly wouldn't I??

I hope y'all are OK. I didn't mean to worry anyone by not posting. If I ever do get to die I'll be a very lucky man. I know that will never happen to me. I am a born survivor. Don't want to be. But I am. Least I won't be a fucking monoglot when I do die. That would be WELL beyond the pale!

Terbinafine Hydrochloride

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOMEONE THAT I USED TO LOVE



ALL I ASK OF YOU
live studio session



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

Two Love Songs

THERE'S not a lot to say today. Poor Mouth put on his blog a proverb about me "tis better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt" ~ let's face it, I've most certainly removed all doubt about me!

Anna Grace has gone in hibernation. She's back on the heroin and hiding from Anonymous, who keeps saying what a loser she is. I filled up her newest post with comments, as did Valerie and Boomer (2 drug dealers). Valerie signed in as me and started typing about her personal warts, the dodgy old cow.

My Chinese is coming along swimmingly. I keep getting discouraged, thinking "I will never learn this" I will never learn a language where all the words are weird and sound the same and there are two sets of characters (traditional and simplified). Yet I do learn it. The words are more difficult than Spanish or Italian but they're just as foreign if you think about it. The Chinese accent sounds more like an American accent than any other foreign language, as it contains retroflex R (like an American R). But it also contains sounds like a cross between S as in Sand and SH as in Shake or a sound halfway between S in Sand and CH in Church. Most extraordinary.

Usually I have zero discouragement and one hundred per cent inspiration when learning languages. It's the mysteriousness factor that appeals most, which is why Asian languages are to be preferred over European ones. Also as Valium Marilyn even knows, Chinese is "the easiest language in the world" ~ which is not strictly true as it's harder than Japanese or Thai but there you go. It's not as difficult as German, French or Spanish.

Seeing as it's my goal to speak 10 languages fluently, once Chinese is done there'll only be 7 left to go. (English is done; French and German are half done).

There's an awful programme on TV called "Ibiza Rocks" awful formulaic oldfashioned guitar music on an isle famed for brilliant formulaic and stereotypical dance music!

Here are 2 love songs. The 2nd one has a proper video:~~

I'VE NEVER BEEN IN LOVE BEFORE
the montage on this is more interesting than most of the others


IF I LOVED YOU
live recording session


ps that awful Professor Green is on telly ~ a one hit wonder if ever there was one. his only decent "song" is this one and that's because it has the best part of an inxs tune chucked in!



PPS how come Barbra Streisand stars in Yentl with a Man Named Mandy (Mandy Patankin) ~ did he have a brother called Wendy? Is his middlename Suzanne, so he could be a boy named Mandy and Sue?~?? And if Mandy isn't short for Amanda what is it short for?

Freshly squeezed

EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING TODAY. Or possably not.

The Council are supposed to be coming round. Right while I'm supposed to be at this antidrugs group. So I'm avoiding both by blogging at a secret location and trying not to feel too nauseated by my compulsorily glugged-all-at-once methadone. I don't know what's wrong with it, but the new brand, although it tastes far nicer, makes me wanna puke for an hour after taking it. Puking and methadone do not mix for obvious reasons. So the whole thing's nasty business.

This afternoon I've an appointment with the methadone doctor as I'm on "such a high dose". All I wanna do is come off it. I don't care it it makes me ill in the process. Addicts are supposed to feel ill aren't they? And it'll give me more to complain about, won't it? I mean, where ja think the phrase "whining junkie" comes from anyway..?

Aside from this I am in a very bad mood. I wish I hadn't said what I said yesterday. I wish I had lied and said all was sunny. It is sunny. Everywhere but inside my head. I took off my dark glasses thinking maybe they're making me depressed, cutting out the light and all. But I doubt they're the cause, bearing in mind I was feeling fantastic in February ~ not exactly a month known for its long hours of daylight.

The best thing about today is, I get to walk past that petshop that sells wild birds (how do you crossbreed a goldfinch and a canary without illegal trapping playing a part?)

It's a ridiculously hot day. I'm sweating like a swine on Ecstasy pills. I'm glad this methadone is inside me. Means I'm on the coutdown to feeling better, not worse. I cannot believe that a mere 10mg reduction is so noticable. It's not that I wake up feeling horrible (those days are surely to come) but as soon as I get moving around I'm sweating amphibiously and feeling too hot, too cold or both can barely tolerate walking up the road and certainly cannot tolerate buying yogurt from Morrisons except that I force myself to, then I hang out in their carpark feeling pale and wan and soggy, then I skulk into the library where I scan books on irrelevant topics idly for about an hour. My particular favourite is a misery memoir by a doctor who got such bad depression she had to have psychosurgery on the bit of her brain that makes her happy. Cah't recall the title but there's a daisy on the cover. Sometimes I read about pets but those books just make me feel my life is empty without an American Akita so I'm avoiding all reference to feathered and furry friends. No clockwatching is required during this reading, because the methadone takes almost exactly one hour and ten minutes to kick in. On a bad day an hour and a half. If you have a serious habit and have been screwing around with heroin and/or your dose the methadone could take two hours to sort you out. Yet another reason why addicts hate it. Compared to heroin which is instant, methadone feels like a cruel joke.

Anyone who can feel better half an hour after drinking methadone either has a seriously screwy metabolism or is the type of person who can get high on orange Smarties. (Or by incinerating heroin on the end of a crackpipe, I might add.)

Well I've got to go now. My new hobby by the way is bathing. I only shower twice a day but I've got through about half a tube of that dermabrasion scrub. Boy, does it work! I even use it on the soles of my feet. Oh and my roots are showing ALREADY. Being as hair grows at approximately 3mm per week it's not surprising 2mm are already visible. But it is highly annoying.

Well I've got to go. Does anyone know a cure for depression when you've done everything logical not to be depressed and yet you feel like you're drowning?

This afternoon I've got to face Duta who thought I was so happy the other day. I can't tell any of these people how I really feel. They like to flatter themselves that depressives might want to use methadone as a tool for finishing themselves off.

As if!

To any junkie with half a habit, the glass bottle is far more dangerous than the pathetically weak gloop it contains. Do you know I calculated your bladder would probably EXPLODE before you managed to overdose on British strength 1mg/1ml methadone? I seriously doubt 3000mg would kill anyone who could do 1000mg diamorphine in a day, which is what a £100 a day habit translates to. I never used £100 a day for very long but I was able to take that much without batting an eyelid. And they go on and on and on at me that my 110mg methadone dose is "very very high", oh fuck off.

Well I'm going. I hope y'all are doing something nice like gardening. If I had a garden I would grow herbs in pots. I'm not into non-dual-purpose things, me. So herbs fit the bill perfectly gardening wise: they look impressively bushy plus you can chuck them into bubbling hotpots. I would also like to keep bees. It's not just the pun of "B" meaning Afghanistan's best Brown that appeals; I've had a thing about bees going back to childhood and would love to have a box of the buzzy entertainers on my roof terrace. When you go on holiday you could put the hive in your kitchen (with the window open a crack to let the little darlings fly in and out) ~ I mean wouldn't THAT give burglars a shock!!

I've really got to go now and by the way my feet really stink. I do have new trainers (new as in fished out of a bin new but they don't have holes in the soles like my present pair)... but don't want to sully these up with my rotting extremities ~ know what I mean? Not until at least four tubes of Tinaderm have been between my toes.

Well I'm off. Happy gardening.


★★★★★★★★★★★★



KEVIN AND PERRY GO LARGE
I watched this when I woke up at midnight a few days ago...
A piss-take on the British party isle of Ibiza, this film has a better soundtrack than any other....



★

THIS IS FROM BUGGERLUGZ; THANXX BUGGERLUGZ

More Music

ROBERT MILES: FABLE



... Robert Miles reminded me of my favourite ambient artist of all time...

ROBERT LEINER: VISIONS OF THE PAST



ROBERT LEINER: TO PLACES YOU'VE NEVER BEEN



EastLondonGirl was trying to find me a track called The Sensation 1993 Part 2.
Nearest I came to it was this donked up thing:
JURGEN VRIES: THE THEME (DJ QUICKSILVER DONKED UP)
do you get donk clubs~~??~~~where you go in and it's donk donk donk allnight?
my kinda club!

Ratsnest

VERY RATTY TODAY. Ratty as a rats' nest. I started sorting through my books. The main reason had to do with hoping at least £10 might be lurking somewhere between those 1000s of unread pages on my shelves.

I separated out all the Japanese books and my Finnish dictionary. I don't speak a word of Finnish but like the idea of all those glacial lakes and pine trees and the fact that it's hurdy-gurdy yet totally non-European. Finnish is said to be closer to Siberian languages than European ones.

Also I'd quite like to go reindeer herding so Finnish should come in useful. I found this dictionary in a carpark one morning, so of course it came home with me.

Well I slept all day. I couldn't sleep properly last night. Not at all. Then I felt irritable, ragged... the kind of feeling I used to get when I'd been out raving and taken stimulants that hadn't worn off, yet I wasn't really in a good mood any more. That feeling. Except I can't remember the last time I took any uppers stronger than 2 cups of black coffee and some cigarettes. Maybe I've got nicotine poisoning, who knows.

I'm rapidly going off bouncy balls. And I went out to get some bread and bumped into one of my bastard drug dealers spening MY money down the kebab shop. I say MY money: if he invested it, he might happen to have drawn one of my £20s out of the bank. I haven't rung this bastard in weeks.

Well there's not much else to say. I wish I was asleep again. Maybe I should be taking some kind of meds because I feel crap.

Liza Minelli is on Graham Norton. Have I lost my sense of humour or is the current state of television yet another sign that the endof the world is nigh? Earthquakes in diverse places... wars and rumours of wars... Graham Norton. Matthew 24. See it all fits.

I've got nothing to watch. Yesterday I found a Dutch edition of the Gosford Park DVD though it plays in English (I checked). But I didn't really have the £2 spare.

Well I've gotta go. One last complaint: all you people with weird blogs, the sort that have an integral comments page that won't accept anonymous or name/url comments ~ I CANNOT TALK ON YOUR BLOGS. Sweden, Dad & Mom. Unless I've been blockaded for being too boring, Google thinks I'm not signed in and asks me to select a profile. Then won't accept the profile I've picked (my own). Yet all normal blogs let me speak as much crap as I like... so what's that all about?

CYGNUS X: ORANGE THEME (FERRY CORSTEN)
I love this tune; it sounds mystical and reminds me of being happy on MDMA



2010 PhaniaX
this one's even better; in a clonky abstract way............

.

THE ORANGE TRIBUTE: VITAMIN C VERSION
this is better. more uplifting. the background vocal reminds me of a techno good the bad and the ugly

Roobarb and Rhubarb

THIS IS FOR 2 PEOPLE: SPINDRIFT, who was born the year before me, and lives in Melbourne, Australia (very near Valerie, the multi-hudred-kilo housewife heroin importer complete with Margaret Thatcher helmet hairdo)...

and LIZZY-D, who is a psychiatric social worker from the wilds of London who has fond memories of Roobarb and Custard and Spiral Tribe...




Rhubarb is a sweet vegetable that looks something like pink celery. It grows at the bottom of English* gardens. To make rhubarb crumble you boil up the rhubarb until it goes soft and not at all sour or bitter. Then it's perfectly lovely. And Mr Kipling makes pretty wondrous Rhubarb and Custard pies...

"ROOBARB" was the name of the original TV series which ran 30 5-minute episodes i 1974. It was never, according to Wikipedia, known as "Roobarb and Custard"








ROOBARB
original opening sequence and theme tune ~ very catchy!



In 1991 the catchy theme tune came back as a source of triphead entertainment for the "Rave Generation". Roobarb and Custard was also the name of a type of pill, reportedly containing MDMA and phenobarbitone....

ROOBARB AND CUSTARD
A mishmash of old tunes remixed with a donk thing. Which I quite like....



ROOBARB & CUSTARD 10 min mix
one of the commenters on Youtube said it sounded like a 3 y/o mixed this...
but still, i like the tunes



URBAN HYPE: TRIP TO TRUMPTON



*Do they have rhubarb in America, or not? I thought it was a very English thing. Now, having clicked my rhubarb link, I'm not so sure....

Cup a soup day

I COULD have waited till this evening to post. But you'd just get a longer rant on a miserable day; so you might as well get it now.

I got up at nine. Took methadone. Drank a chicken vegetable Cup A Soup with croutons and watched the Royle Family Xmas Special while I waited for it to come on. By ten o'clock I didn't feel like a block of ice any more.

Went up the methadone chemist. I'm too paranoid these days to bother doing anything much outside my house. I got the hell out as quick as possible. Nothing at all to eat in Morrisons. I'm strictening up my diet again. I'd gone in there for coleslaw but had gone off the idea by the time I got near the shelf.

My drugs worker seems to have totally the wrong idea. He thinks I'm on a level because I'm not cycling up and down any more. Yeah a level. A level of misery. I could ring Naomi but her Nutter Club, the one good thing in life, has been cancelled. And if I phone her I'll be asking for help. I don't want to ask for help. I have this horrible feeling that anything I do say could be used against me in some way. I know it's probably "paranoia", but I can't help feeling this way.

I don't even know whether to take my pills again. They're not antidepressants and my problem is that I'm a miserable bastard. I'm not psychotic anymore. In fact I'm not even sure that "schizoaffective" isn't a misdiagnosis. Risperidone is a psychic blocker. I don't even know wether my psyche should be blocked out. I could have got a job as a medium some years ago, but didn't want to get possessed. It's this psychic function that antipsychotic meds block out. So I don't even know that they're a good thing. What risperidone did was put breaks on my mania and stop me hearing voices. I hardly ever hear voices now, despite no risperidone. The voices I do get are in my head. True, my head is more and more confused. But I'm too confused to tell anyone. Like I say they would probably find some way of using my own words against me.

I don't feel my drugs worker understands much of what I say to him. I'm too scared to admit how I really feel (that drug addicts, especially me, should be lined up and shot by firing squad). It's probably good to put it in a comedy way like that.

And by the way those bastards in Switzerland are holding a public vote on whether foreigners should be able to travel in and make use of the country's liberal euthanasia laws. Cut off my last hope why don't you.

Anna Grace sicked out her small opiate relapse and was clean last I heard. I don't know what happened to her elevated manic mood but it probably helped her through the worst of the cold turkey. The worst thing about being opiate-sick is that it makes you see how harrowingly bleak and worthless an existence this life is. That's why most detoxing addicts want to kill themselves.

I would say I hope Anna stays clean but she would say that's hypocrisy as I am the ultimate limp handshake as far as any determination to stay drug-free goes. I've decided to give my life 2 days from now, to see how it goes. Then I don't know what I'm going to do. There's no point being on heroin. I'm shocked by the local junkies' low standards. The guy they say whose gear is best is selling utter shite. It's like a gear version of crack. You can only feel it going in, a little whoosh as you IV it. Then nothing. The whole point of gear in the olden days was that it made you feel way better ~ all day ~ than crappy methadone ever did. Unless you're willing to dose yourself somewhere towards 200mg, which the dr offered me, but I never wanted. The drugs clinic's equivalence tables were ridiculously skewed, advising mizzling small methadone doses that never compensated for street gear of decent quality.

Well that's it for today. I'm nagging myself to clean up my house. That's why I got up early to begin with: to turn on Vanessa Feltz on BBC London radio and do the kitchen whilst the populace of this great metropolis ring in to have a good moan.

I just checked yesterday's comments. Too para to open up anything earlier. Don't know who I thought had got in touch with me but ... whatever. Yes Jeannie if I'd been born in earlier generations there would have been no psychiatric treatment bar glorified prison. Least I can take those pills. I wish my head wasn't so confused about all this. I don't know why I am confused. Or how. I just know that I go round and round in circles about it all.

Well I have to go. Cup A Soup is powdered soup Taffeta. You add boiling water, stir and eat the croutons off the top. Anyone who buys Cup A Soup without croutons, in my humble view, deserves to be shot between the eyes.

While Blogger Was Down....

THIS is what I tapped out sometime yesterday....

BLOGGER’S DOWN so I’m tapping this into Word.

I spent the £20 that could have gone on gear on a Royle Family DVD box set. “Princess Anne: the Divorce Years” is particularly good. Nah, I’m just kidding. The Royle Family, as all Brits will know, is a sitcom about four people who sit around watching telly, smoking cigarettes and eating chocolate biscuits. You get series 1, 2 and 3, three Xmas specials and a documentary all about the making of. That’s every second of the Royle Family ever broadcast. Now there’s a complete 30-film Carry On box set. The Carry On films, for those of you on foreign shores, are ancient British comedies full of very repetitive innuendo. Carry on Doctor, Carry on Nurse and Carry on Camping are the three all-time classics. Last night Carry On At Your Convenience, set in a lavatory factory, was on BBC2.

Well my mood was on an even keel pretty much all day. I had terrible trouble sleeping on Wednesday night. Suddenly, as I was pinging around Morrisons I started feeling hyper. Stayed hyped up all day. Like an idiot I went and bought gear, as I posted. But that’s the last gear I bought. It was really weak and did nothing to chillax me. Not that I really wanted calming down. By two In the morning I was in a really psychedelic mood. Loud psychedelic trance was banging out. I even did a spot of cleaning.

Suddenly I realized it was light outside and I hadn’t been to bed. I got to bed by sometime after six, but the glaring light kept me awake. So I hid under the covers and still got no sleep. It took me something like five hours to actually start sleeping properly. Then I got up after three.

Nearly all my depression has evaporated though I can never be sure how long it’s gone for. Today I felt totally normal until this evening when I suddenly got dog tired. I was watching the Royle family and chain smoking and didn’t want to go to bed too early (I want a sleep cycle back). I’ve had trouble sleeping for some days. I wake up again and again and again in the night.

It’s currently 3:10am. I did go to bed over an hour ago but my head was too full of random thoughts pipping and popping in all directions. Sometimes it can be really entertaining listening to them all, but I’ve been feeling a bit ill. Full of fluctuating energy. Sudden whooshes of energy. Sudden exhaustion. It just means I’m having mood swings, but sometimes I really don’t feel well.

I’m feeling a lot calmer than last night so maybe I’ll be able to get some shut-eye if I have a lie-down around four.

I hope this stuff isn’t too boring. If I actually had a private diary I’d write all this here. I know my sleep-cycles probably aren’t a source of fascination to the world, but I’m supposed to be keeping a mood diary, so I keep it in my blog for ease of access. Least I know where my bloody blog is. A journal in book-form I’d mislay all over the place. I hope the mood stays up and doesn’t fall down yet again. I was starting to feel desperate enough to submit to the dreaded Mood Stabilizers. I’m going to have to tell this doctor of mine about all this depression I’ve just gone through. I’ve had depression for most of my adult life. Not always full-blown extreme depression; maybe unhappiness is a better term for it. But whatever it is, it’s become a way of being and I’m fed up of it.

I decided a few days ago to focus myself on more positive things. Which was well nigh impossible when I was back on heroin and just wanted to curl up and die. Now I’m in my right mind it’s up to me to seek out some new interests. Can’t think up much apart from my Valerie book. Valerie has lifted me from the depths of despair on several occasions. She’s the only person who can make me laugh when I’m in depression. Apart from Anna Grace in Wisconsin.

Anna had an appointment at the methadone clinic on Thursday and I don’t know whether she went, thanks to Blogger being down. Anna got herself totally clean. Came off Suboxone. Then relapsed back on heroin and some of those strong pain pills American junkies jack up: oxycodone and Dilaudid (hydromorphone). Anna has a real thing about Dilaudid, it seems to be her favourite drug. I’ve never tried pain pills. Over here the only opiate commonly available to addicts is heroin. And if you’re in treatment, methadone and Suboxone.

I hope Anna manages to get herself on an even keel soon. She purloined an entire month’s supply of her Dad’s oxys and replaced them with aspirin. Apparently he hasn’t noticed. And she blew all her money on gear. She’s been depressed for as long as I remember, with the odd hyper phase chucked in. She doesn’t ever seem to be truly happy. Who does that remind you of?

Well I’m ploughing on with Project Life. Don’t know how the hell I’m going to do it. Has something to do with repeatedly putting one foot in front of the other, from what I know. My house is still a tip. My housing manager person (at least I think that’s who she is: the Stern Council Lady) tells me just to chuck out a couple of black bags full a week. I’m aiming at one bag a day, if not two.

As for other plans, there’s nowt but a gaping hole. I got so badly disoriented by all the crap that’s gone on since the end of last year, what with psychiatrists and methadone and all, I don’t even know what I want any more. I wasn’t living in the same world everybody else seems to live in. I went into a parallel universe. Now I’m relatively OK it’s time to decide what I am doing.

I was going to write a little book called Little Trotter Donkey Goes Away With The Fairies. About a little horse who accidentally grazes on some magic mushrooms, swirls into a psychedelic vortex and meets some gnomes, trolls, imps, sprites and fawns. I’m not sure WH Smiths will want to put that in their children’s section but hey…

Anna Grace You Naughty Girl!

I WROTE SOME BABBLESOME CRAP at 3:30am that even I couldn't understand so I'm leaving it.

My friend Anna Grace "untruthed" about relapsing back on to heroin. That is she said she DID relapse when she DIDN'T.

Somehow I wasn't too surprised and I do believe she's telling the truth now.

I believe her for these reasons:

1. I know Anna pretty well and she glorifies opiates a lot, yet doesn't use them. I know that if she was using over the last 2 years or so it was very light because heroin (or Dilaudid* which she also loves) take your life over completely and that would have shown.

Her reason, she said, for not using was that it upset her parents too much and she's living in their home. I said "if you truly wanted to use heroin, you'd just go out and do it whatever your parents thought".

When I wanted gear, I never gave anybody else's opinion a second thought. Or my own shame for that matter. When I wanted it I went out and got it immediately. Anna didn't do that, which tells me she isn't into it as much as she thinks she is.

2. Anna does have mental health problems very similar to mine but she's no weirdo and it would be very strange to say "I said I was on heroin but I'm actually not I just thought it would make me seem more interesting" and that not to be true.

The "heroin makes me more interesting bit" seems to be the crux of her problem. When she was on heroin, despite the misery and pain and being lost in it all, it probably gave her an Identity (that of the Junkie) and a purpose. It might be a purpose most people can live without ~ a desperate need to get funds, get heroin, get high, get more funds, get more heroin, use again... and so on. But you're always busy and never bored. I think Anna looked back to this time and romanticized it and though she gave up the drug she couldn't give up the fantasy.

She's booked into a Dual Diagnosis Rehab in about 2 weeks where for once she will get mental health treatment and addiction therapy at the same time. Anna is already on Suboxone (glorified Subutex) so she's done the nasty bit in switching on to that stuff (it puts you into withdrawal). Buprenorphine reduction is a walk in the park compared to a rapid methadone taper so she really should not find the detox hard.

Anna's mood issue is currently depression that just does not go away despite mood stabilizer, antipsychotic and antidepressants. I keep telling her that her meds aren't working the way they ought to and I hope this clinic will recognize this and tweak or better still switch them to something better.

She's on nightly sleep meds which I'm sure she'll be allowed to stay on for the sake of her mental stability. The "going 100% clean" thing isn't done in Dual Diagnosis where most patients are expected to be on medication long term if not life-long.

Dual Diagnosis means mental health problems as well as drug addiction. In practical terms this is usually severe depression, bipolar, schizo-affective or schizophrenia. With these conditions you do not play around with medications, so she'll get a much easier ride than she would in a straight rehab where you still find the rather dated attitude that using any psychiatric medication is the same as using heroin and crack when this patently is not true.

The rehabs I've been in were all "regular" ones where the street drug users prevail. There's lots of prison talk, lots of crime talk, everyone's full of front and "we're all in the same boat" (except we weren't: it was me getting the extra meds and endless counselling sessions, nobody else seemed to have a breakdown every time they detoxed...) This isn't the type of place you necessarily want to be if you have mental illness so she's definitely doing the right thing going to a specialist unit.

Good luck Anna!


*Dilaudid is hydromorphone. Diamorphine (pharmaceutical heroin) is banned in America (to back up the American government's fictitious and politically motivated claim that heroin "has no medical use") so hydromorphone, another semisynthetic opiate, is used in its place. Dilaudid is known in America as "hospital heroin". In British hospitals actual heroin is used when a powerful painkiller is required. Heroin is very occasionally prescribed to addicts here, but prescription is so rare you have practically no chance of getting a heroin script, hence the widespread heartache and misery of oral methadone which leaves addicts craving heroin all the time and using on top every single day they can afford it and feeling they have to bullshit the methadone clinic that they're doing really well when all the addicts I knew were doing terribly. For years I told them I was using on top "nearly every day" so when diamorphine therapy did come in I'd be first in line. Then I got a bitch worker who basically put me under blackmail and duress (literally) so I just lied and said I used twice a week. I might use twice a week on Mars, but not in London. Now I use zero times a week because I hate heroin. I'm turning back into my old self from the mid-90s. Someone who actually enjoyed being clean. Wow.

How to get a life in 1000 easy steps

I say one thousand because that's very approximately 3 years and I think anyone Recovering from serious heroin addiction would be hard pressed to truly be able to say they'd broken free in less time.

All I'm doing at the moment is

1. seeing psychiatrists
2. going to mental health groups/meetings and methadone clinic appointments
3. sorting out housing problems (I think this social worker type person is meant to get in touch soon)
4. looking after myself in basic ways
5. going to NA

I'm not sure I could do more than that. Not today.

My attention was so scattered last week I could focus on nothing. Cooking was fun because everything burned (couldn't hang on to the fact it was in the oven) and the smoke alarm which "went right through me" felt absolutely fantastic. Rather than just pissing me off the way it normally would.

I didn't realize I had a truly "high mood" until last Wednesday when I got taken to a Mental Hospital for being too hyper (and proving I wasn't on drugs with a drug test) and having complained of mood swings (up and down) for a long time. And now being tired of just not functioning the way others seem to find it easy to function, and living in a mess. And also getting pretty badly depressed on occasion. These were and are what I'm trying to sort first. Drug addiction itself has to come second. As my old Worker, who was a mental nurse, told me I was "self medicating". At first I thought this was just a load of tosh that sounded good, though I'm sure I repeated it here. Then I slowly realized how true that was. Now I'm after either Nothing (ie I piece my life together myself with no chemical assistance) or I take psychiatric meds. The word "antipsychotics" has come up repeatedly and not out of my mouth. From doctors' mouths.

Yesterday I was in a meeting and couldn't focus for hearing voices. I was nowhere near as hyped up as I've been before. Yesterday morning, for example, I had this weird sensation of actually being in my body, the way I was before, but hadn't been for about 9 days ~ and didn't care about, at the time...

So I'm off to this doctor in about an hour's time. I will post what happened, unless I just decide to hibernate.

This is another problem, and I suppose it comes under self-care in the above list. I just am not sleeping the way "normal" people seem to or the way I used to (which often involved feeling crap and sleeping too much).

I was taking sleep meds (zopiclone 7.5mg). I was prescribed a week's worth and took it every day in an attempt to reset my sleep cycle.

It hasn't entirely worked, as on Tuesday night I slept between 1 and 2 hours then just woke up and got up. Yesterday I was absolutely exhausted and slept about 7 and a half, going to bed in the early evening and getting up at 2. Yes I know that's not ideal timing... just you try and be that tired, that distracted and not sleep, knowing there's a good chance you might go UP and keep going through the night.

Yeah I'm pretty sure this is what doc-docs like to call a "mood disorder". I certainly had one before (depression). Whatever this one is I cannot diagnose so that little issue has to remain there.

Now I'm off. I have pizza cooked for breakfast. It's only 10 past 10 in the morning, but I've not eaten since I got up. I have no appetite, interspersed with sudden, intense hunger.

So that's what I'm up to, and thanks to the person who said get a life at Melody's, you inspired a fairly focused post for once.

I told that person to get their own then tell me about it. I wasn't being entirely sarky: I'd be interested to know what that person does do with their time. I mean if they keep house, have cats, kids, a job. Or whether they're just some addict who cannot break their habit. I know how the latter feels, but not really the former.

Take care y'all...

:-)

Midnight Music

02:58 I've been up since just after 1am, meaning not much more than an hour or so's sleep. I need sleep (far as I understand it) not to set myself off more. Here are some lovely garage links for those into parking cars... the music [of today] is more reminiscent of the rave music of my youth, with a funkier beat on top. Quite good really. I prefer a lot of the newer stuff to the classic garage I've been posting up. If I can find a good tune or two I'll post it up.

GARAGE: this is the station I'm listening. With these things it's usually the later the better. When I woke up at midnight it was pssssht-ta-clonking pleasantly ~ Love FM Live

Melody here's that other garage track I was telling you about. I prefer the no-video version .... this classic track from the mid 90s doesn't have that rave-sound I'm talking about that's new; this is old

ROSIE GAINES: CLOSE



ROSIE GAINES: CLOSE
this is a funkier pirate radio edit, note the lovely authentic needle jump at the beginning!



JOHNNY WHITE FEATURING MY ROBOT: DESENSITIZE
bizarre track, excellent video "be careful if photosensitive epileptic!"
i love this



SCIENCE LAB: FLESH AND BLOOD
Old techno from the hardcore rave era. I used to love this: the quotes are from Shakespeare's King Lear

Schizophrenia

07:07 I HEARD A VOICES SAYING NERVOUS BREAKDOWN AND SCHIZOPHRENIA. They ruined last night.

Schizophrenia Screening Quiz
Please note, this quiz has limited validity.
Please interpret the below results cautiously.


You scored a total of 34
You scored a total of 86

Based upon your responses to this schizophrenia screening measure, you appear to have some early signs commonly associated with schizophrenia or a schizophrenia-related disorder. Your responses are similar to others who experience early symptoms of schizophrenia or a schizophrenia-related disorder. Because no online test is 100% accurate, please be aware that this does not necessarily mean you do have schizophrenia, only that this particular quiz found sufficient evidence to suggest that you may.

You should not take this as a diagnosis of any sort, or a recommendation for treatment. However, it would be advisable and likely beneficial for you to seek further verification and to see if you qualify for a schizophrenia or schizophrenia-related diagnosis from a trained mental health professional as soon as possible in order to rule out a possible schizophrenia or psychotic disorder.

The most common schizophrenia disorders diagnosed are: Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective Disorder, and Schizophreniform Disorder.

Yeah I did a quiz twice before and after writing most of this. I can, especially now, only answer re a viewpoint of mine in a split second in time. Thinking of every possible permutation of what everything means/might mean/represents to me/others/you/some person future/my own future self i cannot do it does my head in. this is the fly-eye vision i have, to which that voice last night was obliquely referring. doesn't schiz mean a split-up mind? if it does and my own split-up-ness concurr then i spose i'm schiz, but only a dr can diagnose that.

last time i saw a shrink, bear in mind i thought i was normal, maybe a bit hyper. now i look back and see i was full-on +3 manic on my own rating scale (with +4 as psychotic manic). I was paranoid enough to be close to assaulting one perticular individual on the bus-ride there, for insulting me twice using exactly the same wording, but I wasn't floridly psychotic... anyway part of what I ranted at him went along the lines of "ha! you can't diagnose me manic because I have to be excited for a whole week and it's only been 5 days..." i carefully looked back and it was 8 to 9 days up, counting first instance of hearing voices as the start. definitely. which puts me into that dreadful DSM diagnostic trap. not to mention my own behaviour. it was in THAT context that i was asked "what do you know about schizophrenia". despite my paranoia centred upon this dr last night, believing he was out to get me, i do trust him more than any psychiatrist i've ever had. he's head and shoulders better. i'm usually a good-to-superb judge of character (though i don't claim infallibility, like everyone i've made dreadful mistakes, and also let WANTING something be override what i actually saw and really in my heart knew, if only id listened...) anyway his question made me ponder the matter far more than was comfortable. i wasn't allowed to google, read or look up anything until the fearsomely intense symptoms receded, and i felt more together, which took perhaps a month from that appointment, even though the "mania" or "mixed affective episode" only lasted maybe 10 days, 2 weeks tops before re-transforming into my characteristic depression... anyway i did eventually have a very quick look through the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia which I had seen and remembered as wide open. that's because schizophrenia is diagnosed in the ABSENCE of prominent mood symptoms ie you think bipolar and depression first, schizophrenia and related illnesses second.

theoretically ANY symptom of schizophrenia can appear in bipolar. I've gone beyond the possibility that what's wrong with me is called "Depression with psychotic features", even mood-incongruent ones (which I have). Depression never feels good. What I have can feel fantastic. It can be terrifying. It can be very upsetting. It can hurt me a lot. It can do all those things and it can make me feel very blank. Last time I was really ill I remember feeling strongly that I didn't exist. The world was real; I was not. That's because I no longer WAS who I'd been I really was all bashed up!

The features schizophrenia has that are NOT usually in mania especially are socalled negative or deficit features. That is, disorders of volition. I very often feel like I'm shouting at somebody behind bullet proof glass. Someone who just won't listen to me, despite the urgency of action required. I'm reminded of the time I was threatened with homelessness. Instead of panicking I instantly went unreal. Moved my stuff to a friend's house rather than engaging with the local council (my landlord). And only actually made it down the council at 4pm, despite the situation. Where I remember the lady talking to me as if I was six. Saying loudly that I "looked a bit confused". Confused? You can say that again. It's these things, and my inability to do stuff or TOTAL UTTER LAZINESS whatever you want to call it. Eg I should have gone laundrette yesterday I just could not do it. I should clean my house I cannot face it. Whether high or low, which runs totally contrary to mania as traditionally envisaged, where people are ultra-involved. I'm involved/disinvolved in everything in every way. I'm a person of opposites, always have been.

no i don't feel people understand me at all. those test-writers really put their finger on it with that one. i feel especially misunderstood at na because they're looking at me through junkie-goggles. i don't FEEL like a junkie i'm fighting something way more formidable than drug addiction ever was; i can feel it; i can tell. It knocks me sideways, it upsets me, it rips into my life in a way not even drugs could do. and it makes me more unstable than i ever was on drugs. i barely think about heroin at all. that is the truth. i'm not craving. every often i semi-automatically want to go score: i need only remember i don't want to do it to squash that one. I won't harp on about na negatives as it's a positive place but i do wonder what they'd think of me if I snapped I HEARD VOICES TALKING TO AND ABOUT ME ALL THE WAY HERE. what they hear is "i'm an anxious/depressed junkie and think i'm ok bc i'm raging one minute, smiling the next yet can't focus on anything at all for any time which they think is drugs. drugs focused me in a way more, not less. every single one i can think of gave me a sense of inner peace, weather it was an upper or downer (not psychedelics though, apart from e which is semi-psychedelic, more transcendent than truly psychedelic...)
and no i don't think i'm "suffering more" than another addict.
i know i'm SUFFERING LESS that is the very point!!
i got what Sid gets from Ibogaine, which costs over £1000 a pop, FOR FREE. And it worked for me. Whatever bad it did, it distracted me from an addiction that nothing could break. Certainly not piss-weak methadone against industrial-steel heroin. As Mother Hubbs used to say, 60mg methadone is equivalent to a £10 bag as was, pre-drought. Meaning you need 120mg to equate a £20 a day habit IV. This is somebody who is a bit discriminating in who they score off. Neither one of us would EVER ring someone we don't want to just to keep a connexion open. I never did that. I scored off the same person for weeks on end as long as they were serving up and still had the good stuff. If it went bad they'd not hear from me until i got a promise all was OK. Heroin is Food of the Gods and anybody who dares sell rubbish is commiting a Crime Against Junkiedom ~ a highly serious matter!
Wow I feel a whole lot more together than I did last night. I need sleep now; it's 20 to 8 and I'm exhausted.

And yet again I've strayed into territory that makes me highly uncomfortable online. Because this really is very personal. I am not comfortable talking online about being near- mentally raped. I'm ashamed to talk about cracking up. I'm embarrassed to have been so very frank. I feel idiotic to have repeated myself so many times, though I only do this so somebody finding one single post by a google search can comprehend it without reading multiple days in both directions... I feel wide open, exposed, when I want to curl up and hide. I feel very hurt and very upset. Among many other things I feel these and if I dwell on them I really will get extremely upset so I'm derailing that train into a chinchilla did you know the fat furries need a marble in summer? Not a little rock-ball or glass ball. A stone chopping board you store in the freezer to take out in high summer for them to lie on, as their heavily furred mountain mars-bunnies. Sorry if that sounds irrelelvant but I can't think about THAT any more.

One last thing: when I talk about "not allowed" it's ME not allowing myself. I do have iron will you know. It is this will pushing me into territory I'm frankly miserable blogging about but I've gone this far, why not totally humiliate myself, y'know..? Iron will and lack of volition can go together. I never expected to find pictures illustrating what I feel you don't understand but here they are. Those images are what I feel, what I try to tell you, what I don't feel you see, but I feel. That.

(Especially picture one, the top one. That's exactly what I am. (But that colour lippie doesn't suit me))

I wish I could find a rave track to perk things up. I could do with some "euphoric recall"..! And I'm posting this NOW with no glancing-over. Else it won't get done, I'll be too self-conscious to do it so here goes...###!

No I don't "think" I've got schizophrenia. I don't "think" any one thing. I think lots of things and know nothing! I'm well aware that drugs drugs drugs have done me no good at all for a long long time, but I'm come to a point where I have to help myself and I don't know how. That's the point!!

09:57 That Jeremy Kyle is on. Always makes someone else's problem his own. But not in an Oprah-like way. (I say this for folks in foreign lands obviously. We're all sick of yet addicted to the bastard.) Like a rude, intrusive diametrical opposite of Oprah.

Just met 2 guys from NA in a van I was off me head. Shambling along the street. One said "when you've dropped the drugs..." which made me laugh my head off. Couldn't stop smiling anyway. Nothing wrong with being happy. Doesn't mean I'm on drugs. Means I'm on the magical powers of Walking Somewhere. And just happy. Woo

LEFTFIELD: (thanks Lizzie) Not Forgotten

This is for Anna

ANNA GRACE POSTED ME A TUNE called Sink to the Bottom by Fountains of Wayne. It was highly appropriate. Here's my reply:~

Mine is not a highly original choice, but I love the tune, I love the sentiment and I love the video.

I've gone all night with no sleep. It wasn't deliberate. I was pottering about then I realized it was 7:15, then it was 8.59.

I hope you're all right Anna. I'm surviving. I can't say whether I'm good or bad, I'm in between :-)


REM: EVERYBODY HURTS



THANKS ANNA. JE T'ADORE

Still here

I WENT TO BED AROUND 3AM, GOT UP AT 7:30AM. I felt dire. I spent an hour in a chair, knocking back methadone and three huge wine glasses of tapwater. I drank so much last night I was actually (slightly) hung over. Buying white cyder in 3-litre bottles was not the good idea I thought it was.

I barely get hangovers now. Somebody told me this has to do with opiate-dependence and I think they were right.

Actually I spent more than an hour in that chair. More like three. Finally at approaching quarter past eleven after two more enormous wineglasses of Hair of the Dog white cyder I'm starting to feel OK.

Everything I said in that earlier post "Gun to my head" was (unfortunately) true.

I got a comment from Gattina just now. Gattina is now a grandmother. She lives in Belgium with her Italian husband. Is German born, but speaks French (and English). In fact she speaks four languages fluently plus Dutch*, which she always says she doesn't speak, but if I can follow it just from knowing German and having studied a tiny bit of Dutch, I know she can. Notice I say "follow" not "speak".

She says I have to do what I have to do and in my mother's words Take Responsibility.

This is the crux of the problem: that's exactly what I tell myself! So why won't I listen?

Anyway who cares about listening; it's doing that counts. So I'm doing what I have to, albeit far FAR more slowly than I'd like. Chucking everything I don't need out out OUT.

*Gattina's grandson lives in Amsterdam and the northern part of Belgium speaks Flemish or Vlaams, as they call it, a dialect of Dutch.

DonkeyTrotterNutterGoblinDongleSnatcher Sleeping...

WELL YESTERDAY WAS FUN. NOT.

I was depressed and stressed and my life is a mess. My house is a mess, but I'm cleaning that up. I'm a mess but that job is near undoable. Notice I say near. Because I will do it, no matter how hard or long the job.

I didn't sleep on Sunday night so I felt crap yesterday. Due to tireness I started hallucinating again, but not very much, and only mildly. That's the only good thing about sleep deprivation, mentally spinning sideways. I never thought there was unything unusual about this wandering my tired brain does, until it wandered right out of my skull, down the road, hopped on the tube, flew from Heathrow to America and Cape Kenaveral ~ then blasted up to the moon a couple of weeks ago! The fellow astronauts, by the way, apparently just thought it was a weird kind of experimental walnut blobbering about in zero gravity with them ...

My friend Valium Marilyn is depressed too. She hasn't been at all well. She's hibernating on pills in front of an enormous widescreen television.

I asked her whether she wanted to score Valium, but it was down to me to get it and there's been a lot of fake about, I didn't want that responsibility. I'm pretty sure the last lot I got was fake. Unless you can get tolerance on 10mg a day, 5 days a week, all throughout the second week, the pills were duff. So I got 6xtemazepam 20mg for far more than I considered reasonable, but I thought what the heck, it's better than heroin.

Then I didn't take ANY pills and slept from 4pm until 2am. Went to bed. Slept through till 9:30am. Didn't want to get up. Slept another 2 hours. Woke up at 11:30am. That's a good 19 hours' under. Fast asleep. Without any drugs or pills or excessive methadone. I didn't need methadone when I woke, but I took it, to avoid Heroin-craving.

When Heroin crosses my mind now I just think of the Misery I'm moving away from. No visualization is required. I associate Heroin with Homelessness, Poverty and Misery.

Heroin did hold me together better than anything else has done. So the Depression-type misery I feel now is just me without Heroin. In the end I felt it with or without Heroin anyway. Heroin took the edge off, there's no doubt about that. But it didn't even do that well in the end. That's how I knew it was time to stop.

I used an outside event, a drought. Originally I assumed that this would be a False Paradise. That if good gear ever does come back, I'd go right back to it. But that's not necessarily true at all.

For months going on years I had genuinely wanted OUT. I just couldn't get out. Now I am out, albeit thoroughly dependent on methadone, I'm staying out. I also obtained enough clarity to realize people DO stop heroin due to outside forces. Marianne Faithfull ODd herself, fell down a flight of stairs, broke her jaw and went from hospital to rehab. No painkillers. She was in such pain, but assumed this was just the pain of living without drugs. Then they realized a splint of bone was unset and had to put something resembling a guitar sproket to tighten the broken jawbone. That the pain of a broken bone can ever be taken as "normal" should tell you something, if you don't know, about how hard life actually is for an addict without opiates.

Example 2 is from another memoir: Kate Holden's In My Skin*. This is very slickly written and ultra-succinct (due perhaps to a good editor, I don't know how much she edited herself). Though it's a very good read, in a way the story is annoying in that she skates over certain issues, never lost anyone she loved thanks to drugs, never ODd, never had an abscess and so on. She never ponders her personal failings. She explains pretty well the descent into addiction but is unable to explain how she came out. Perhaps that is inexplicable. I can't explain why I don't want heroin, either. But her turning point was that she and her boyfriend were on methadone anyhow but using heavily on top. Around Xmas, she told her boyfriend, who depended on her utterly to pay for his drugs, that she was going to her family for a week. She continued working at a fairly upmarket brothel daily. One morning she awoke with him in the room. She told him to get lost and he did. But not before fishing all her money and a week's supply of Heroin out of her bag. And away! Personally I think this served her right, and she never offers a protestation to the contrary. But she did use it as her Turning Point. To take the methadone, carry on working. Stick to the juice, with one aberration, and keep working as the methadone went to zero then nothing. The money she saved paid for a long trip to Europe.

Last example: BMelonsLemonade came off heroin in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Four years later she's still clean. You can read BMelons' blog here: hashishdreamsandheroinnightmares.blogspot.com

So there we have it. It is possible to take an Opportunity and harness a willingness you never truly believed you had. No matter how much damage or devastation it has caused elsewhere, you can use a disaster to your own advantage.

If I'm not living proof enough, imagine BMelons clucking through that hurricane!

The only other thing that happened yesterday was the Broadband Goblin stole my internet stick, and scurried off down the high street singing "Skippadeedoodar-skippadee-day!" hopped on the Chinese Takeaway roof, said something extremely obscene in Cantonese and then vanished. Not that Gledwood would be stupid enough to put a computer dongle in a pocket with a hole in, or anything... So I had to get a new one for nearly £40 from Argos. Considering £40 used to buy a gram and a bit of heroin, and that this was usually gone well within a day unless I carefully hid some from myself, I'm not too upset about shelling out £40 ($60US).

And I still have 6 sleeping pills, untouched.


Anna Grace is having a **** time over "near" Chicago (Wisconsin). Depressed too. Very depressed. I hope it's soon GONE Anna.





*You should be able to read a bit of In My Skin by clicking here.
Without launching into a big critique of the book, it provoked a mixed reaction in me, but it is still one of the best drug-memoirs I've read.
The UK edition looks like this.

You can read BMelons' memoir extract 1 here (heroin sickness).
And extract 2 here.


Am I the only one watching that dreadful Holy Land Xmas story tripe on BBC and loathing it?
Are they actually trying to make it a parody of the Life of Brian?
Everyone has issues. Everybody’s miserable. I have a suspicion every character came with a social-worker file type “backstory” detailing how their mother didn’t love them. Lots of unholy conflict. Even the three wise men are borderline arguing… Akh Xmas! Doncha love it. I’m off for more Morrisons Best Mince Pies. Yumyumyumyumyummmmm!

Did/does nobody like Rebecca Ferguson, by far the most superior contestant ever to appear on the X-Factor? If Beautiful wasn't good enough, here's Candle in the Wind, Show 7

Baileys and Heroin

I AM GOING up Morrisons for Baileys or Baileys substitute. I know I am not supposed to be drinking but I tried the one litre cyder. It's all gone. I tried eating, it makes me feel sick. Not literally food-nausea, more I don't want to eat it so it's like forcefeeding. I slept from 8pm till 1am last night. Thought I was doing really well on no sleep.

First thing I went to the chemist. Gulgged a bit of (methadone) juice. I have more to glug. I'm thinking of glugging it now as I'm so down.

I entertained the thought of heroin for nearly 5 minutes today. But it never made me happy. Also I don't even know where there's any good stuff. Totally off the circuit. As far as I know the drought is almost as bad as it was before.

Most of today I was asleep. From about 10 till 4:30. Complete exhaustion. I don't know what to do. My friend is feeling really crap. We are holding hands across the Atlantic. She is on Suboxone and not enjoying it. Subutex (also buprenorphine) made me feel really "clean". Very much wide awake all day. Sense of smell about ten times more acute. Which probably all sounds good but not everybody is ready for that. On methadone I feel "normal" drugs-wise.

Methadone never intoxicates me. Taken at night it can help you sleep, but it's not like a sleeping pill, that, taken too early, would make you feel drowsy. It's not in the slightest bit a "state-sponsored high" as Anne Widdecombe MP wanted to believe. Addicts hate methadone because it DOESN'T make you high at all. Most say it leaves them flat and empty. For the vast majority of hardened addicts, unless they're ready to be clean, methadone doesn't work. They use and use and use on top, invariably. The reaction I had, if methadone played any part, was extremely unusual (never met anyone else who experienced that).

Now I don't know whether to go supermarket or not. Re O'Grady's/Carolans/Morrisons Own Baileys substitute it's more the sugary gakkiness putting me off than the alcohol. Akh. I think I'm going. I hope those big drug dealers importing lorry loads get really broke. Between them, they cannot even orchestrate a reliable supply from Afghanistan to the street. Far as I know, there's still a drought. I hope some supply chain from Burma and Colombia starts up. I would never in a million years have gone near #3 Afghan Brown Sugar (heroin base) if the proper #4 China White (heroin hydrochloride salts) had been available. Makes me angry to this day just to consider the matter. All that nasty vitamin C and citric acid I banged into my veins. No wonder they're gone. I'm telling myself I'm only using China White from now on, but that felt no different from good brown. So I wouldn't bother. Been there. Had enough to last a lifetime.

I'm not interested in heroin-assisted treatment for myself, but I think it should be dished out liberally to others. Contrary to what you might assume, people on HAT take a level dose, which means they are highly unlikely to overdose unless they have liver disease (which affects drug metabolism) or have been drinking or using sedatives heavily on top. All these can be easily tested for at a clinic, as can street heroin, which has a totally different signature from pharmaceutical heroin (narcotine, codeine other stuff is in street heroin). Numerous trials (e.g. RIOTT, link below) rating injectable diamorphine's efficacy against injectable and oral methadone have shown it more than twice as effective as methadone syrup and a lot more effective than injectable methadone amps.
ADDICTS HATE METHADONE.

Here's the Heroin Therapy link: http://www.actiononaddiction.org.uk/news_and_campaigns/news/187_supervised-administration-of-injectable-medical-heroin-leads-to-larger-reductions-in-street-heroin-use-than-injectable-or-oral-methadone-riott-trial

Illustrated: lovely gakky Baileys; about 20mg British 1mg/1ml green methadone; Swiss Diaphin pharmaceutical grade injectable diamorphine 100mg/1ml. It's mixed up with water a day or two in advance and must be used quickly, otherwise wet diamorphine degrades into 6-monoacetylmorphine (hence the legendary heroin "dry amps" given to a v select bunch of gear-heads in this country)

DIDO: HERE WITH ME
This tune has been going round my brainbox. I had no idea what it was called until just now:~

Broadband is back!

I HAVE A NEW SIM CARD firmly taped into the dongle from which a naughty goblin stole it (yes ~ when I was fast asleep. My life is nothing if not bizarre). I searched EVERYWHERE for the missing card and no sign. The only way it can have possibly left my house is by getting stuck to the sole of my boots and trodden out (highly unlikely; I checked the tread and it's not of SIM-card-grabbing proportions) or getting stuck on my bum, falling off in the loo and getting flushed away (my own pet theory). Or God took it to stop me wasting time on the internet (which is quite possible, in my opinion). Or a goblin sneaked in and stole it (my second favourite theory, though I actually believe in God more than goblins). So there we go.

NO BIG NEWS from when I last was "properly" online all those weeks ago ~ EXCEPT I have a horrible old wound on my leg, which is at least 6 weeks old and hurts and just will not heal. The fact that I "might" have accidentally picked at it constantly for the last fortnight after it started itching probably hasn't helped. It was oozing red gunge, so I thought I would "irrigate" it ~ ie wash it out with home-made saline (freshly boiled and cooled water + table salt). This only made the scab soft enough to partly fall off, and now it's oozing chocolate milkshake coloured gunge that reeks (mildly as running sores go, but still disgusting) ~ of rubbish bins. It's only about 1.5"/4cm diametre, tiny as necrotic ulcers go. But I'm worried it might turn into one.

I don't know what to do. I am fed up of being lectured and patronized by doctors about my druggie proclivities.

I covered it in toilet paper taped down with clean newspaper. Think about it, a newpaper fresh off the press is as untouched by human hands as anything else I can think of. 6 hours later I couldn't resist having a good look. Loads of gunge had seeped into the toilet paper ~ and it had dried enough to rip the edge off the scab. Ach!

Now it's covered losely in taped-on (clean) newspaper. Then again it is the 10p Daily Star ~ what's possibly clean about that?? This has stopped the scab getting constantly rubbed off when I walk, which was getting increasingly painful. But the newspaper doesn't stick to the wound. Which will hopefully heal now. Have I done the right thing?

Ach, I must go. Kippers under grill. Hope y'all are well, see yaz!

PS: perhaps I should have maggot therapy