5am Chocolate Recovery

CADBURY'S WHISPA (x2) and Yazoo chocolate milk (x1)... severe chocolate craving. Despite the pill I'm not sleeping, waking up for ages. Been surfing since sometime before 2am, intermittently sleeping, (absolutely impossible to fill out a sleep diary for tonight I haven't the faintest idea how many hours)...

The drinking is around 3 cans per day at 7.5% alcohol in 500ml cans. I'm not "out of it" because I'm "drunk"; "alcohol is a depressant" as they loved to tell me. So not being depressed at all, being the opposite of depressed, I should be able to guzzle as much as I like, shouldn't I??! Or they shouldn't patronize us with such an obvious semantic "terminological inexactitude". Yeah I know I shouldn't drink. If I didn't think that I'd drink a hell of a lot more.

It takes some edge off me. Me who I am supposed to be (at last). You see inside every white mouse is a tigress roaring to get out. That's what my thought pattern was doing yesterday. Not me speaking in my head. Me ROARING in my head. I felt pretty hyped up, pretty good. I'd rather be a tigress than a tiger. You can have cute baby... cubs! That's the word. And aren't tiger cubs the cutest! Also tigresses are fiercer than tigers. What's the metaphor for fierce? Tigress, not tiger.

I've no idea what NA made of yesterday's speech except some scattered titters of laughter at the funny bits. Better than the reaction I got last week when I started ROARING. A jolt went through that room. That's the point, I wasn't "roaring" at all. I use that word in exaggeration and retrospect. I was merely making my point in a restful, easy manner.

But the woman I was next to, a reformed heavy pothead, is one of the kindest, brightest spirits I have met in that association (if I'm any judge of character: we've never conversed; I've only heard her share). I don't want her wary of me.

Now I'm going to have to go round making mental notes of damage to repair. Slight damage. Another way of repairing damage is by having a nice attitude. That one might do more. I say having... attitude rather than "being nice" I don't want merely to be as in being for a moment; I want to BECOME the best person I can be. And being on gear was scuppering that one constantly.

It also totally messed up any attempt at self-help. I mean the type of help discussed in self-help books, which in my view, if taken with a reasonable dose of perspective and moderation can actually help one affect constructive changes in one's life. I saw my existence as a means of change. Never wanted to be the same person at the end of a year as at the beginning. Wanted to be better. Gear messed all that up.

It's hard to say what heroin did to me that was negative, bar the obvious cliches.
What did it do? It blanketed my feelings, which I'm beginning to see might have been more intense than I realized. No not all the time but I look back and see myself at various times and think hmmmmmmm what was going on there? So it was self-medication as the clinic told me (not my expression)
I got heavily addicted. I cannot imagine being more addicted to that drug than I was at the peak. I relied on it utterly, not for happiness so much as bearability through life. To sleep, to get up, to eat I most definitely needed gear. It would feel weird, if I let it, eating without having a hit first.
What else did it do? Well something eroded my self-esteem like nothing else. So badly, at one point I had barely any left
It made me homeless
It killed my friends
The whole situation made me feel hopeless and I had no life to go back to and I hated the world we live in. Not strong ingredients for a good recovery.

Which is one reason I am not giving up on NA. My interpretation of their Ways is given below, one thing I've heard said a few times goes along the lines "my friend hasn't got a programme, but my friend isn't an addict"... in other words the friend is worse off, poorer than the Recovering Addict. Because Recovery means everything else good apart from just not taking drugs. That's what Recovery is. Recovery. It's what I want...

KLF FEATURING TAMMY WYNETTE: JUSTIFIED AND ANCIENT (JAM BY THE JAMS)
...this lot tend to get left out of early 90s compilations, nostalgia etc. theirs was by far the best non-ravey dancey pop of the time.... as an "art experience" they also burned £1,000,000 cash they'd made
A 99 is vanilla ice cream with a stick of chocolate flake shoved in at a jaunty angle...



SCOTT GARCIA: A LONDON THING
the proper video this time, Melody



SCOTT GARCIA: A LONDON THING
this is faster, the much more like original pirate radio mix

No drugs for dinner

I'M HUNGRY...


Not for that...
I've food on the brains.



These Fox's Viennese chocolate melts...



...were very nice dunked in tea the other morning.


Flapper usually isn't far from his cherry tree or the neighbours' luxury TV aerial 10 houses down. When he sees me he takes off... Flapper by name, Flapper by nature...


Chinese chicken curry is calling my name!
But at £6.20 with egg fry rice it's too expensive, and it's too late in the day for a combination box...


So I'm going Southern Fried instead!

Sachertorte!

THIS WAS YESTERDAY'S "ACCIDENTAL OMISSION" ... Austria's most famous "tart" ~ Sachertorte:



It's very chocolatey, in a refined type of way:





It would go really well "mit einer Tasse Kaffee"...



Yee-HAR!!

You can gen up more about Sachertorte here ...

Me: Online: Tonight: Talkin' 2U...

I DID NOT STEAL chocolate. I yammed it down this morning... Ritter milk and biscuit which was a compromise for 2 cravings (thick, thick chocolate and biccies)... though I wished I'd gone for neat dark choc as afterwards I felt vaguely sick, yet craving more... Something dark chocolate never does. Ho-hummm.

The picture is supposed to be Whoopi Goldberg from the 80s film Jumpin' Jack Flash, which as you probably know, features lots of onscreen dialogue of the style now possible on my blog via my personal Gabbly Gledwood chatroom!

It's not just for yarning to me you know, you can speak to each others...

You know whether you've got company, and how much, by how many "gabbers" are listed online at any given time... The doorbell sound announces a new arrival at my page; the schmonng sound means someone's just said something.

To reply:

Just tap something out in the dialogue window, press return, and you'll see it join the rolling script.

The screen will tell you you're "gabber 609", say. Change this number into your name by clicking on that and replacing it with your internet "handle".

I shall be online tonight answering notes, queries and making general conversation with anybody around from 8pm local time which would be around 6am Australian and for you Americans is around 3pm Eastern, or midday to y'all on the West Coast...

Please give me a minute or so to reply if you initiate the conversation: I might be on another window, waiting to hear that schmonng that says someone's talking to me. (How do you bring up another window? I scroll down my own sidebar to that Google searchbox and take it from there. It means I can be in my blog twice without losing my place on Gabbly if I happen to skip off-page for a sec...

OK so looking forward to speaking to anyone who can be there 8pm "Universal" Standard Time!!

Here's a tune I hear time and time again:
Guru Josh: Infinity 2008

Candy Craving

I HAVE THE MOST MASSIVE CRAVING FOR SWEETS AND CHOCOLATE TODAY... more to the point chocolate... dark chocolate. Ritter dark chocolate which is German and used to be called Halbbitter because it was 50% cocoa solids. Now it's 71% and even funkier. Nothing around (apart from the very posh stuff) gives a lovely bitter chocolate kick like this. So bad did this fixation become this afternoon I very nearly found myself shoplifting a block, which is so much not me. My own shoplifting career was short with a bitter ending (not nice-bitter like high-cocoa chocolate)... Even though most of my friends think I'm stupid not to lift easy basic things like pens, envelopes, etc, it's my particular scruple not to. Hard to explain why, but I'd rather pay my way. Anyway back to chocolate: first thing tomorrow morning and Ritter and I shall be as one (how sad). But hey at least I'm not writing about heroin! Probably this is what psychologists call a displacement activity. But hey ~ surely it's better to be "displaced", get chocolate-dirty and tubby yet remain heroin-clean (if that is possible...)

Fried Lice Nice; Mini Eggs Are Back!

YET AGAIN I have mysteriously managed to cook a meal just like the Chinese... I always knew they knocked out marvellous dishes with zero effort, but seemed to believe the magic lay ... I dunno where ..??... perhaps in their ability to shout in Chinese while tossing woks over metre-high flames. Or something. Tonight I successfully managed fried rice (no eggs; I saved that pleasure for later). And I must reprimand the authors of online Chinese recipes. If you don't specify "boil the rice first and leave in fridge to dry out for an hour" someone like me is not going to know that! Well that's how I did my rice. Boiled first. Left uncovered in fridge for one hour. Did mixed vegetable stirfry. (Onions, btw are NOT part of takeaway mix vegetable fry rice, at least not round here.) Mine was carrots, mushrooms, peas. I'd have chucked in babycorn if I had any... Then I repeated my chicken and blackbean sauce trick, but added onions to THAT. Far nicer. Wahey!

AND ON TO CHOCOLATE. Cadbury's Mini Eggs are back. Very nice they are too. Cadbury's inimitable (milk) chocolate (cannot be replicated). In a yummy crisp sugar shell. Goes very nicely with a cup of tea (in my opinion). Best dark chocolate is Ritter Dark Whole Hazelnuts (50% cocoa solids). You can click here to see it - look at the bottom right hand corner. Yummmm.

Sorry for the blabber I am fantasizing about chocolate I have to go in case someone buys all the 100g packs of Mini Eggs. They only had 40 left last time I checked...

PS Hamsters really like chocolate!