A Morning of Domesticity

(THAT MEANS SCURRYING ROUND THE KITCHEN like a blue-arsed fly, cleaning up to you!) yes I turned up the radio to top volume (I don't know why but I nearly always listen to talk stations) so Radio 4 Extra was blaring out The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe with Lucy meeting Mr Tumnuss under the snowy lamppost... then a boring phone-in without Vanessa Feltz on BBC London and then stuff to do with people being at risk of 20 years in a labour camp for not crying hard enough over the death of the aptly named "Kim Jong ILL" in North Korea. Over this time I filled an entire black sack with rubbish including at least five nearly-full cartons of milk and cleared a table top of paperclips, women's eye makeup, Vaseline lip gel and glass ashtrays. I was about to wipe it down with newspapers to clean it when I found a picture of Sunshine or Sweetie, one of the pair of Chinese pandas that have been lent to a Scottish zoo for 17 years, the tubby furry had a stick of bamboo in its mouth and just made you want to poke it in the tummy and twist those black ears round and round!

I'm so glad the "festive tide" is past us. Now it's New Year's Eve, which I haven't done for 9 or 10 years and only ever enjoyed when I was high on Ecstasy which says a lot about New Years if you require mindbending drugs to enjoy it. Then again I was at a psychedelic trance party and you require mindbending drugs to get into the groove there too so... ho-humm. All this was so very many years ago. I just wish I could kick the drugs I still occasionally take now. Even Valium is bad. I know it's nowhere near as bad as taking heroin, but I'd rather take neither. Do you know the one decent Valium dealer I know of via a friend (I also happen to know his mother) sells a minimum £20 bag. Just like a lot of heroin dealers! 20 blue (10mg) Valium for £20. The only drugs I have clinical need of are the occasional sleeping pill ~ as longterm readers will know I go through periods where I simply do not sleep. Usually I am manic and high or manic and exhausted at these times. I also get occasional panic so I started taking Valium for that over the summer. I had a near panic-attack at the Nutter Club (dual diagnosis drugs and mental illness meeting) I used to go to (where nearly everyone was bipolar, I might add and 50% of bipolars admit to their doctors to indulging in illegal drugs which means the number actually having used them must be far higher. Interestingly nearly all the street drugs tweak the same three chemicals ~ serotonin, dopamine and noradrenaline aka norepinephrine ~ that are activated in manic episodes, are known to go haywire in psychosis and are probably at low levels in depresssion which is why antidepressants are occasionally categorized according to which of these three chemicals they tweak. Antidepressants can actually precipitate mania in susceptible individuals, which is why when I took Prozac I was constantly being told to calm down. One girl, who had a manic-depressive mother and sister said I was acting "manic". I did calm down... about four weeks later. And took Prozac very irregularly after that as it just made me so agitated sometimes I literally could not even sit in a chair I had to pace pace pace. This is the start of my bipolar symptoms, back in my mid 20s when my diagnosis was actually chronic fatigue syndrome. I heard a fascinating description of that condition on television last week when a former sufferer said it's due to the brain being over-activated, hence the extreme tiredness yet inability to sleep at night. I definitely had CFS and wouldn't wish it on anyone. In a way it's worse than severe depression because severe depression is taken seriously by psychiatrists whereas a person cabbaged by "M.E." (as CFS used to be known) would probably still to this day be treated as a neurotic by certain members of the medical profession. One characteristic CFS sufferers are said to have in common is a tendency to push themselves past the point of exhaustion even BEFORE they become ill. They work hard and play hard. They are not the type of people who lie down to take rests before an afternoon of activity. Yet when you have this horrible condition you absolutely have to spend your energy like a person spends money on a tight budget and you have to lie down and close your eyes and it actually gets so bad you can't even watch television because it's all there in your face. This terrible world. Glaring at you. That's what they call photophobia. Oh those were the days. My early twenties. Totally messed up by an illness many people don't even believe exists. Not even I believed it existed because it was me and I had no rights to be ill. I still had to push push push even though I'd already pushed so hard I'd broken. Not one of my friends ever truly gave any support. Except perhaps one, who did it in a subtle way. Then one day someone I'd only just met, who'd asked me about myself ~ and we were on Ecstasy after a huge party and so talking intently ~ said to me Your life has been ruined by this thing. And I cried because that was the one person. The one single person who ever listened to me, understood me and belived me.

Now I have a new idea for the future. Something I'm going to do that I could make good money out of. But it's a business requiring start up investment. I would need £5-10,000 so how I'm going to make that I've no idea. Maybe I should get writing the children's books. I know it's not the gateway to a fortune but I heard you get about £3000 in advance per book. So if I wrote 4, I'd have my money. Oh yeah but there's tax, agent's fees and VAT. OK maybe if I wrote ten books I'd have my money. But I'm determined to do this business idea. It's a magazine I want to publish and I'm sure people would buy it. So that's my wish that can and will come true. My family will remember that as I grew up I'd run to my parents with "business ideas". I was full of them. I even daydreamed of becoming a property developer. Aged 10. People don't understand me. Just because in the illegal world of drugs I'm unwilling to get deeply involved, they think I'm either soft or stupid. I'm just the type of person who likes to do things above board and to know that what's mine is mine and that the Proceeds of Crime Act ain't gonna take my plasma TV away. Know what I'm saying?

Well I'll leave y'all on that note. Have a very Happy New Year everyone. Here's to a fantabulous 2012!!




Illustrated: I love pandas and Freesat is coming! (Without the Plasma TV (for now)).


HARDCORE TECHNO VOL 5

Summer's day prattle

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL SUMMER'S DAY and I'm trying to stay calm. Anxiety came back. I think it has something to do with the risperidone pills I take. Or maybe not. I'm doggedly not doing gear. Can't afford it this week anyhow. But I sat myself down yesterday and decided now this is what I'm going to do and why. I'm not taking any heroin at all. And the reason why is that I hate being addicted to anything, hate cavorting with criminals, don't even feel at home in a room full of addicts any more and have had enough of the whole scene. Confounding factors include the horrible druggieclinic wanting to give some sort of psychological gold star for testing clean, which I'm not interested in. And stuff like that. I'd rather be thought dirty and BE clean than the other way about. Maybe my thinking had become confused but I had to remind myself what I'm doing and why.

Otherwise I would repeatedly give in to the urge to use, which does hit me from time to time. It never hit me before. I don't know why. The summer is the most horrible season to any junkie. Due to excess perspiration. Once it's over I have much better chances.

I'm more into Valium these days than heroin. Even that I haven't taken in 2 weeks yet somehow managed to test positive for. I only take benzos when I can't sleep or feel panicky. I have felt very panicky of late. Every morning I wake up thinking of the horror of suicide. You know, the actual visceral feeling of pressing your neck down on a vibrating rail or pressing blades very hard into bumping arteries or how sick you feel after a whole bottle of pills has been regurgitated yet you're still puking up.

I've managed to distract myself with Other Things today. And I think I'm much better off using one of those professional clinics in Switzerland where there's zero survival rate, when I do do myself in. It gives me something to work towards, even if I'm just walking towards death.

Ukh sorry for being morbid: just being frank. Drugs clinic are doing my brain in. NOT reducing my dose. No idea why. Well they're to blame now for it being so high. They can't somehow blame me, like Duta was doing before.

I've been chucking stuff out of my house. 2 chairs and a plug-in radiator yesterday. Eight records and a manual typewriter today (charity shop). I've endless books I'd really like to get cash for but also just want shot of fast fast fast.

I wish I had hamsters then I could tell you a furry hammy story instead of this boring truth. O yeah and GOOD NEWS I found out I'm hep B, hep C and HIV negative!!

I was convinced I was positive for one of them. Hep C especially. Being positive to that would just give something else not to get treatment for. Know what I mean? I'm taking the antipsychotics again as prescribed as I don't actually enjoy being mad, wondrous as the experience is. Something about sanity appeals to me. I can't say what or why. But it does.

And that's it for today!

Patronizing Pig Problems II

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO HANDLE BUTA THE BITCH, my new druggie keyworker. Of the ten workers I've had prior to Buta, there was only one who I seriously had a problem with and that was Maple Syrup. I handled Maple Syrup by nodding and smiling yes yes yes and then going off on my merry way doing exactly as I pleased. But this one's different. We've only had 2 sessions and things are already bad. She uses exactly the same lines as Maple Syrup. If you don't go to these groups, I'll know... I won't give you your script unless you go... She's even more bullying than Maple and far ruder. And I thought "service users" were supposed to be treated with dignity and respect..? So I'm finding out who's in charge of this new place and putting my complaint in writing. I'm fed up of drugs workers who barely understand methadone dosing, let alone mental "health" issues... Ideally I want a dual diagnosis specialist, but I doubt the new place even employ one.

I'm trying not to let this get to me, although I am back on the Valium. Surprisingly it made me feel better. I had to take 2 pills. One to cure the post-Buta blues; the second to sleep on risperidone. Risperidone doesn't put me to sleep but once I do sleep, it keeps me under. I slept so long last night I would have missed today's meeting anyway. I'm going to try the detox/rehab meeting. I wish Buta hadn't pushed the point the way she did. She's killed what little enthusiasm I had for these seminars. If they're any good I will go again (I'm not cutting off my nose to spite my face). But the main reason I'm going is to be able to say I've done your meetings, I've done endless ones at the old place. I've done six years of counselling outside that. My psychiatrist doesn't think counselling is the appropriate treatment for me (he said that). If Buta has issues about this, she should take them up with my doctor. Whenever I think about this I feel wound up. I've started using heroin again. I don't think Buta cares about my welfare at all. I think she's uncomfortable dealing with "psychiatric" cases. And I don't think she wants to work with me. So I'll be doing her a favour when I insist on a change.

Does anybody know how these druggie clinics work? Surely I have the right to change workers if my present one is rude and objectionable?... Advice, please!

No other news. I've got to go; I need another Valium. In fact I'm thinking of taking my risperidone early so I can go beddy-byes.

I'm taking the risperidone again because I found out it is used as "monotherapy" in schizoaffective depression and psychotic depression. I don't think I'm really "psychotic" but I do feel depressed and cannot break out of it.

I'm not sure I want mood stabilizers. At worst they would turn a choppy sea into an inland lake. I like my waves. Or rather: I like the ones that take me higher. I sometimes described heroin as a mood stabilizer in this blog. It did indeed seem to have an antidepressant effect that methadone lacked. But like the "official" psychiatric meds which commonly lose efficacy over the course of time, heroin doesn't seem to work any more. I feel pretty much the same on methadone. The other effect of heroin seems to be that it kills joy. How many joyful junkies have you ever seen? The gear appears to put a lid on happiness. I don't want a lid. I want a floor below which depression will not sink. I want to get off this nasty methadone. Many of the professionals believe methadone does have some mood stabilizing or antidepressant effect, which means without it I'd be more unstable than ever. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. And like I've said before, I'd taper myself off at a rate of a fraction of a milligram per day over the last few weeks. Of course the clinic wouldn't understand this, much less prescribe for it. But I understand it. It's my body and I'll do as I please.

The only good thing I have to say about this new methadone clinic is that they are at least cutting down my juice every single week. Buta refused a 1mg a day reduction then wrote up a 10mg drop ~ which is steeper ~ so much the better! I have a tiny stash of spare juice in case I do ever feel withdrawals but I don't expect to feel anything until well under 50mg.

Nothing else to put today. If anyone has anything inspirational to tell me, please comment.

Bitch Worker II

ME AND BUTA MY NEW DRUGGIEWORER DO NOT HIT IF OFF. She's cut from the same cloth as Maple Syrup ~ bitch-faced drug worker of yore who I fired. Does not listen. (Yet accused me of not listening to HER! So much for being client-centred!)
All she did was bang on about these amazing groups and how I need to go into a detox unit. I told her I've been in detox twice and had a terrible time. But already she wasn't listening. She grabbed the Group Therapy Timetable, cicrled three: alcohol, detox/rehab and "stabilization". She absolutely insists that I go.

Until she said that I was quite open to going. Now I don't want to go at all. I'm not bothering with the alcohol group on the basis that I'm drinking 28 units per week. This is within the UK government's health guidelines and hence I have no need to sit in a room full of drinkers lying about their consumption because they're under the clinic's roof and know anything they do say might get back to their worker.

I said I would go to the detox/rehab group because you can't knock something until you've tried it. I have no intention whatsoever of going into inpatient detox because they cut you down too quickly. My plan always has to be to taper my methadone "in the community". The end of the taper will be very drawn-out indeed. I don't really care what the clinic thinks about my plan because by the time I'm on 10mg, I'd just buy spare methadone on the street as an when it was required. I'd only consider detox/rehab if I were unable to go on taking methadone "in the community" without using on top of it. My resolve is far stronger now than it's been for a while. So I don't think I'll have that problem.

As for stabilization: I'm fully intending to pee out heroin-free piss next week, which means I will be stabilized. I'm looking forward to this group the most because I know most "clients" will be lying through their teeth about how stable they actually are and how much drugs they use. I envisage lots of opportunity for being mischievous and truthful at the same time. So I'm really looing forward to that one.

So I'm going to these two groups and won't be bullied into any more NHS-run groups again. Difference between these groups and NA is that NA has an atmosphere of Recovery. Most NA members are drug-free (that means methadone-free too). Whereas the addicts at these clinic-run events are almost all still using and trapped in the mentality of a crackhead looking forward to their next pipe. That's why I found the last lot of group therapy so insufferable.

I don't forsee any improvement in mine and Buta's "relationship". She seems to think I'm mentally retarded and speaks to me like a 3 year old. Because I don't feel "well" I am not engaging with anything or anyone very much. I'm not putting on a nicey-nicey happy-smiley act for someone who doesn't respect me. I know the woman's problem: she doesn't know how to handle me, so she patronizes.

One big advantage of attending those awful groups is that you get to know other members of staff. Once I have found an ally I will put my complaint forward, the same way I complained about Maple Syrup. I was rid of old Maple that very morning.

So that's that.

I have heard nothing from this supposedly amazingly integrated mental health care approach team plan malarky. As I write, I have a risperidone pill lying on top of my coleslaw pot. Yes I am going to submit to the chemical cosh once more. I've taken a Valium in readiness. Antipsychotics are so rough you NEED Valium to take the edge off the concussion-like effects of them. I am supposedly meant to continue with these pills, even though they're "antimanic" agents, when I'm depressed. But really I need some kind of antidepressant. I know they won't want to give that, so it'll have to be a dreaded mood stabilizer. Part of me would really like a bit of Elevated Mood. What I could do without is my my mind going into such overdrive I'm falling to pieces. It took weeks and weeks to recouperate from the last "episode".

When depression goes away the worst I've been left with has been some lingering self-esteem issues and occasional automatic depressive thoughts. Mania on the other hand put my brains into meltdown. I couldn't remember simple things. Words. Names. Appointments. I lost the ability to do multitask completely. I even had trouble typing. Words consistently appeared backwards. Occasionally I could glance at a page of text and see meaningless wiggles ~ what an illiterate tribesman would see. Nothing seemed to make sense any more. I didn't know where I was going or what I wanted from life. My attention span was so fractured I had to watch DVDs 5, 6, 7, 8 or more times to get the gist. So that's about all I did. Watched endless DVDs. Because my mood was elevated, not depressed, I felt OK. Like a car crash victim, stoked up to the eyes on morphine feels OK. Totally disabled but not too bothered about it. Every evening I felt a distinct rise in mood as the last pill wore off. On a couple of occasions I went into full-blown mania before I took the antimanic pill. Then I'd potter about totally lost in my flight of ideas and racing thougts, unable to sleep because of the cinematic images I saw whenever I closed my eyes. Sometime in the early hours my energy would briefly lull and then I'd run to the bathroom cabinet and knock back the pill.

Those days are gone now. I need some of that energy back.

Only good news is, my methadone has been dropped another 10mg. I knew they wouldn't countenance 1mg a day.

And now I have this bitch-features hacking away at my mental health. I don't now whether she's trying to give me another breakdown, but that's where I'm heading.

By the way, 豚 Buta is the Japanese word for "pig".

Tigers Off Drugs

HERE are some fiercer animals.



I'm still depressed.



I still want OFF methadone. OFF drugs.



I had £££ today. I walked past Heroin Corner.



I had only to remind myself how piteously weak the "best" gear is to get it together to WALK ON.



Heroin is a waste of time, a waste of life.

Off... off and away!!!

I HAVE BEEN looking into doing a methadone taper and how steep can I make the taper with any chance of longterm success. The gist of the research seems to say you can reduce in 10% or 10mg steps (whichever is the smaller) in increments lasting one week to ten days. Because scripts are one or two weekly I would opt for weekly steps. Ideally I'd just reduce down by one milligram a day: I can't see that I should feel anything at all reducing like that. You certainly wouldn't feel anything reducing heroin by that amount, but methadone is different, which is why I rant and rage about it being "more addictive" it IS. Which is plain ridiculous and plainly true. My own whingeing and complaining annoys me so much I just want this reduction got on with as fast as possible, so the Whining Junkie Persona can be left in the trashcan of the past, where it belongs.

I'm on over 100mg of methadone a day, by the way so I have to think of the reduction in three phases. Phase One: taking the dose down to anywhere between 90 and 60mg. 70 or 80mg used to be the ordinary highest dose an NHS methadone clinic would allow in days gone by and prescribing practices seem to be reverting back, with people who once were on relatively generous doses complaining the clinic won't reinstate them.

Oral methadone is said to have an equivalence to IV diamorphine of anything from 4 to 1 to 1 to 1. 4-1 meaning that 150mg methadone would cover a habit of 600mg diamorphine ie about a gram and a half of street heroin as it used to be at 40% purity (about a year ago). Since the Great Heroin Drought in this country heroin is only a fraction of its old potency, making methadone very much easier to stomach for me. It holds me way, way better than it ever used to.

Once I get down to Stage 2, which will be hopefully not much more than 60mg, I'll push for them to reduce it at 5mg a week until I'm down to about 30mg.

From 30mg methadone you can in theory transfer over to Subutex or Suboxone (same difference, from what I've heard). I would like to go on Subutex but I'm scared of the upheaval it involves. You have to go days without methadone until you're in pretty florid withdrawal, then switch over to this stuff that made me feel hyper, shrivelled my sleep down to a maximum 4 hours for days on end. Even when it started coming back I was only sleeping 6 hours. I felt so high on days 2 and 3 of Subutex I barely noticed the withdrawals. Looking back I had quite a few symptoms of hypomania during this time. I don't mind being hypomanic but my moods and sleep are so incredibly sensitive to withdrawal it would seem unwise to rock the boat unnecessarily.

From much below 20mg if I stayed on methadone I'd want absolute control of how swiftly and by how much I reduced and if the clinic won't accommodate me, from here on I would just score methadone myself and drink it to suit my own timetable. I don't trust drug clinics. The new one I'm at offered to transfer me to Subutex from over 100mg methadone. Which all sounds very nice but would probably put me in a mental hospital. They don't care. So when I have to, I'm looking after myself. The ONLY reason I'm sticking with an official clinic during the cutdown, apart from the will to save money, is so that if I ever DO end up in a nuthouse I'll get my methadone automatically without having to go through "titration" (chemical torture when they won't give you enough for days on end).

When I'm near 1mg I'm just diluting the stuff in a huge bottle of water and supping it all through the day. I would cut down to zero over several days ending up on microscopic doses so tiny they couldn't possibly be doing anything (why not?)... then finally at some point many months from now... I SHOULD BE CLEAN!!!

BTW I have to be heroin-free for anything bar the very beginning of my taper to be worthwhile. So I count myself off the gear as of now. My methadone dose goes down 10mg as of the middle of next week.

********



Ha! Becha all thought I was going to post exclusively about Anna (again). I have little to say about her. Except that I put her book up here because if she wants attention HERE IT IS. She says she faked her suicide because she wanted to end her blog. The post by a "friend" does echo this:

Anna wanted me to say Good Bye to everyone who reads this blog. She's sorry she couldn't keep it up.

I'm not at all convinced she properly thought out what she was doing or going to do.

On 4 June she mentioned an Hispanic guy named Jose staying at her parents' house. On 14 June 2 news reports appeared about a Jose Machiote, who was in possession of drug paraphernalia, being arrested for armed robbery at a corner shop. Which does chime with Anna's post on 24 June:

That homeless guy I had staying with me ended up sticking up a store and getting caught.

~Fox 11
~Green Bay Press Gazette

So that seems to be true. But...

I really wish she hadn't lied like she did...

...o well.

I feel depressed enough and stressed out enough (about coming off this methadone (and moving house)) as it is. I keep waking up in the middle of the night in horror. My head kind of resonates with stray words in an odd sort of way. The way I wouldn't be surprised if I'd smoked a spliff and it did that, only I don't smoke spliffs at all. And I'm pretty fed up with methadone clinic staff for having lectured me that all my problems would evaporate if only I gave up drugs and they plainly haven't and didn't when I was just on methadone. (My depression was constantly blamed on crack. They no longer lay my moods at alcohol's door, as the amount I drink is so tiny now.) I want off drugs because I'm fed up of them, not because I believe life will be any better. What I want to do most of all is just up and away and get out of the country, which I cannot do on methadone. So that's my goal...

Back from NA (ears open)

NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS was packed out. I kept my ears open and my mouth shut. I heard a lot about Resentments. I have realized from reading the AA Big Book that I'm full of Resentment. The more depressed I feel, the angrier I feel; the more resentful I feel towards nearly everything. Then I start to wonder whether I'm clinically depressed at all and not just a plain old Junkie, mired in self-deception, overflowing with Resentment in all directions. Now I realize I'm probably resentful and depressed at the same time. If I am self-deluded, I cannot by definition know that, can I?

What Resentment do drug addicts cultivate? Resentment at not being able to live life on life's terms. That phrase came up a lot tonight. Life on life's terms. Not something I'm at all good at.

One reason I'm keeping my mouth shut at meetings is that I'm afraid that anything I do say may be half listened to and used against me.

Example: self-medication.

Warning: to avoid yet another Junkie Rant, skip the italicized section... If it seems badly written, btw, it's because not even I am willing to read it back. So it stays as it was...

On a bad week people will assume I'm on drugs when I'm not. Then when I do use, they would seem pretty taken in if I claimed to be drug-free. Because when I use heroin I feel happier, calmer, less paranoid and my mood doesn't swing all over the place quite so much. To me this is the meaning of self-medication. It means using nonprescribed drugs as medication. It doesn't mean using drugs to chase a euphoria; it means using drugs to cope. Totally different thing. When I mentioned self-medication, a concept I took a long time to accept, at Intuitive Recovery, the group leader said "yeah I self-medicated with crack after my sister died". And that annoyed me. I've never ever seen anybody self-medicate with crack because crack doesn't have the effect of any medication. People who abuse uppers tend to burn themselves out pretty early. What goes up must come down; so they're chasing an impossibility, and most addicts realize this pretty quickly. Heroin always made me feel better all day, even when I just took a tiny bit on top of my methadone. It stabilized my mood for a long time. It doesn't seem to do that any more, which is why I think I'm wasting my time by taking it. There's a mood stabiizer called lamotrigine (Lamictal) which works better against depression than mania. That's the one I'd be willing to try. A mild state of mania isn't a mental illness at all. I need the energy of mania without psychosis or uncontrollable excitement it gets to at its extreme. Then I'd be OK.

The phrase "self-medication" by the way came from the same nut-nut-nurse who seemed to think I had some sort of personality disorder. I told her, eventually, how lousy I felt on methadone and she said "maybe you're self-medicating" ~ then did absolutely nothing to try and rectify the problem. The way she nurtured the idea I was somehow an anxious-avoidant or dependent personality is ridiculous. That's mistaking me for somebody who gives a shit. People with those types of personality tend to be unduly hung up on others' view of them. If I were like that, I'd hardly be keeping a blog like this now, would I?

I'm still in 2 minds whether or not to write an autobiography. I never wanted to be a memoirist. I don't really want my experience published. I suppose I'd be willing to prostitute myself in a literary way for the money. And to put into the world a cautionary tale that might hopefully put off at least one impressionable unhappy person from ever following in my footsteps. It's true the idea only came to me in a fit of despair. I wanted to leave behind a suicide note that might make my family some cash, and of course if I were to die, the manuscript would be many times more saleable. If I don't die [oh bloody hell shut up will you. I'm not intending to die! I won't die. I won't!} then I'll use any cash I get to pay for private treatment. That means an injectable script, tapering down down down to Subutex. I wouldn't go to rehab, I'd go travelling instead. I'm not at all convinced that whittering on and on about my drugs problem is any way of staying clean (which is why I'd write the memoir while still dirty (methadone-dirty, at least). If I did ever manage to come off all opiates I think once I got 100% clean, I would want to stay as far away from them as possible ~ in thought as well as deed. Anyway maybe I should write my own misery memoir: I can't think of any other constructive thing to do...

Another reason I want to write my own memoir: I'm not convinced there are that many good ones. Certainly not drug-memoirs. I couldn't sell mine on the strength of my nutter credentials because my nutter-credentials are weak. While there's no question I'm a full-blown heroin addict I barely score a 2 on the nut-nut richter scale. I think in publishers' terms (and publishers do like to put things in categories) I'm more of a drug-addicted lost soul than a proper madman.

I did have all manner of ideas of how to promote my book, which I can't give away here because nobody's ever done them. But couldn't do them now. Because if I did try and publish my story I'd most definitely want to remain anonymous. Some of the worst details are just too awful to put my name to. I mean, at one point I just gave up on life so completely I was like a walking shadow. All I wished for was that I might die in the night, and I never did. Which angers me to this day when I think about it. There's so much that I don't want to think about that I'm going to have to, simply to be able to put it down in roughly chronological order, one self-inflicted misery and misfortune flowing from the next. But I'm willing to torture myself if I can get some cash out of it. I honestly can't see what proper job I'm ever going to be fit enough to do. So I'm willing to try my hand at writing. I always wanted to be a novelist when I was younger. Maybe I should write Valerie's memoirs too... Now we come back to the issue of drugs. I don't want to make a name for myself as a drug author or drug addict. Which is why I think I'd wish to remain anonymous. For a long time I didn't want to write a drug-memoir at all... Then I realized I wanted to leave behind at least one thing after I died... So maybe I should just write the fucking thing and leave the reasoning-out till afterwards.

Well I've gotta go. It's late.

Electroboy review. Knowing the outline of the book, despite not having read it, this review encapsulates many of my own reservations about Andy Behrman's story... Is he really a manic-depressive, or just a drug addict?
http://www.amazon.com/review/R3UX8FSBM70MWR/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R3UX8FSBM70MWR


TALES OF THE RIVERBANK
To any of you of Christian bent, I do apologize for the Drought story yesterday btw, in which Hammy consults a wicked guinea pig witch in order to bring downpour to the riverbank....

LITTER BUGS
A hamster, a rat and a guinea swine go off in a hot air balloon...



GP'S MEDICINE

Rock Bottom?

I WOKE UP AROUND 11:30 totally unable to face the day. The Deer Hunter DVD was playing that Spanish Guitar tune "Cavatina" around and around. I felt very sad and numerous miserable thoughts went through my head. About depressed mothers who kill their children. About the dead. I remembered back to yesterday and my commitment to buy more heroin. The last thing I felt was "whoopee". I couldn't face the shower, the post office, or dealing with this bastard drug dealer. Couldn't face today or any other day. I thought about NA and hitting rock bottom. They say you must first hit bottom in order to cast off your dependency on drugs and learn to live again.

(Though there's no "again" about it.)

There is no rock at the bottom. Merely shadows stretching down and down into infinity. Your personal bottom is as low as you can bear to go. Someone, somewhere will always have gone lower. Others will have given up without ever descending half as far as you. Suffering is relative. It's a purely personal thing.

I'm annoyed with Narcotics Anonymous for judging me as high on drugs when I was drug-free and mentally unwell. Even my own family seemed to think I was abusing drugs of some mysterious kind. I've got to the point of not caring what anybody thinks on this, no matter who they are.

My psychiatrist believed me. Naomi, the dual-diagnosis lady believed me. I took drugs tests that proved when I was at my most addled, that I was on METHADONE ONLY. No heroin. No speed or crack. Certainly no hashish and it really puzzled me when someone close to me brought that one up. If they knew me, they'd know me passionate aversion to the Evil Weed. (Why touch heroin if a nasty spliff will mellow you out? I gave up toking years ago because it made me anything except mellow.)

The only nonprescribed drug I took during this period was Librium. Blue and white capsules that looked indistinguishable from Prozac. I felt nothing at all off this stuff, but it's supposed to help you kick drinking. Even that had sunk almost within the British Government's recommended safe consumption limit.

It's up to me to help myself.

There are professionals who can help me, but they can't live my life for me. Narcotics Anonymous have been mooted as an option. But I don't feel understood or accepted by NA as a group. They are a group of laypeople who deal in Recovery. Recovery is when you abstain from drugs, detoxing if necessary. And far from merely not using again, you fill the void with a new passtime: learning to live life on life's terms.

My problem with NA has been their focus on addiction as the cause of all ills. My ills began before I was ever a drug addict. I got addicted to heroin aged 28. Before that I used it so infrequently ~ with weeks at a time between bouts of using. They were bouts because a £20 bag lasted me five afternoons, and I was only smoking it. I used a new introduction to a new dealer every time I scored. The old one wouldn't have remembered me.

Before I became a drug-addict, I'd done years without drugs. Miserable years. My chronic fatigue syndrome years were drug-free: what substance could I tolerate then? I felt worse than ever.

The first couple of years when I did dabble were the most miserable of all; these were my university years, and depression ruined them utterly. I dropped acid while clinically depressed and had bad trips. I tried Ecstasy and felt marvellous. Then I came down from the heavenly high, and felt worse than ever before. Speed at one time seemed an almost-answer. It raised me up to a level where I felt I saw things clearly. Only to drop me down so precipitously I could barely function at all during the aftermath. The evil cannabis was ubiquitous among students, but it brought on acid flashbacks. Yet I craved spliffs, believed I was getting a minor drug problem. Miraculously I cured myself when I took to getting my nicotine hit from ordinary cigarettes that didn't bamboozle the brains. All the joys of smoking without paranoia, fear, confusion, hallucinations.

I still had chronic fatigue syndrome when I took to regular nightclubbing. Psychedelic trance was the music of the day. I hadn't the energy to dance all night, so I spent my nights in superbly-appointed chillout rooms talking rubbish to people from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Botswana, Italy and France. Ecstasy was the only drug that really gave me confidence. I took it in moderation. Most of us did. E doesn't mix with alcohol. Pouring two pints into a one pint pot won't get it any fuller. Once you've gone as high as Ecstasy will take you, you start going sideways, an effect that can be attained more cheaply and less dangerously on fewer pills and a sparkling of magic mushrooms. I was known as somebody who could stay out all night on nothing ~ not even drink. I always had the option of something that would set the night off with a bang, but I didn't always want it.

My mental health was still shaky. I know that Ecstasy damaged it in the late 90s, just as cannabis had in the early 90s. As my psychiatrist said "you and drugs and drink do not mix".

I know I shouldn't take any drugs at all. I don't even "want to" any more. None of the substances from my past are a temptation to me. Ecstasy would be a good case in point. It takes an hour to come on. I never enjoyed taking it anywhere except at a dance party. The peak effects from one moderate dose last about four hours but you're still buzzing slightly the next day. I haven't been out raving in over a decade and thus haven't touched E. There never was a drug I took anytime, anyplace, anywhere... until heroin got its claws into me.

Trust me, my recent use of heroin has been far more out of desperation than indulgence. It started out as what I saw as daring experimentation ~ nearly all of my friends would have disapproved, if only they'd known ~ it turned into a habit so entrenched I could not survive a day without it. They say that methadone gives stability. Some people are so stable on the stuff they can even hold down a full-time job on it. But methadone gave me no such stability. Days on the Mean Green were days spent existing, not living. At some time, at some point along the way, I realized I was merely existing on heroin too. The drug that once had turned life into Christmas every day had turned me into a wreck. Existence was drab beyond words. While heroin was depressing, methadone was suicidally miserable. I no longer have "fun" on heroin. I take it grudgingly. I deplore methadone and only take it as the greater of two evils. But a legal and at least semi-respectable evil. All I can say about methadone is that to a desperate addict, it's better than nothing. And of course, I'd rather be on nothing at all.

If only I'd embraced today's first feelings on the matter, I might have moved just one solitary step forward. Trisha Goddard, the former talkshow hostess, used to talk about embracing your depression. But I don't want to "embrace" anything. I don't just feel miserable, I feel confused. Should I embrace this confusion too? Icebergs clashing in my brains. The want of risperidone pills speaks to me aloud. It doesn't frighten me, but I know my doctor won't be very impressed when he finds out I stopped taking them. Risperidone was prescribed as an antimanic, antipsychotic. It's not an antidepressant. People with bipolar issues aren't generally prescribed antidepressants, which raise the mood. The treatment of choice is generally a mood stabilizer. I've been threatened with these, but I have issues surrounding them. So I don't know what to do.

Depression makes me realize life isn't about fun or enjoyment.

I have work to do. I hate cleaning. No sense of achievement ever came from doing it, at least not in recent times. Yet I decided to clean my house; and to do it for myself. Not for the stern lady who comes round from the council who seems to think the way I live is unacceptable. I'm doing it for me. If I had somebody else to keep my house clean and tidy for, trust me, my home would be spotless. But what's the point doing anything for myself? I've not been able to motivate myself this way in a long, long while. So I'm venturing on to fresh fields with this one.

I have to do what I realized I'd have to when I woke up this morning to a litany of ideas of doom and gloom and destruction. I shall walk away from this. There is no choice. This is what I shall do.

I never intend to embrace my depression. I intend to leave it far behind. It doesn't matter whether or not the whys and wherefores of the matter ever become clear to me. At the moment they seem utterly incomprehensible, so pondering them is an exercise in particular futility. I'm doing what I was taught to do as a very small child when my Dad took me hillwalking. You put one foot in front of the other. No matter what, you keep going. I don't know where I'm going, but I know what I'm going away from. And I'll get there in the end.


STANLEY MYERS: CAVATINA
The Deer Hunter music

Drugs Course

YESTERDAY I WOKE UP feeling like a block of ice. I had two hours until I was due at my antidrugs appointment. This is an intuitive recovery course that'ssuposed to teach you a way of changing your thinking to dump drugs for good.

I drank my methadone, saved from the previous day so I had it when I needed it, namely first thing in the morning when craving is at its strongest. It took me over an hour to thaw out.

Since the "hot weather" ~ since it's been sunny ~ whoever lives in the room with the boiler has decided to turn off our heating. Well thanks very much. Our house is now icy.

All the normal thoughts went through my head re this course. Not today, please. Not right now. Some other day. I do want to do it, just not right this minute.

My landlord was messing around in another room. The mere sight of his van outside was doing my head in, so I left a half hour early and went down to the Shoplifting Therapy office where the course is held, grabbing a Cherry Fizz cyder on the way.

When I got there a crowd of druggielooking people was clustered by the gate. I skulked in through the other entrance, gave my name and left. I was 25 minutes early. So I went down the park and smoked three Sterling Superkings (I love long ciggies: you break the ends off and roll them separately when the main smokes have gone.)

Then we did the course. The lady in charge was letting a trainee commandeer most of the instruction and he was reading the guidebook aloud. I could have read it myself in a fifth of the time.

The other people were OK but full of swagger and shit and there was me at the back with barely any life in me, fighting to stay awake because I'd had barely any sleep.

Rather than making me more resolved to stay clean, all the drug talk just made me want to use. Trust me I came in there with all the best intentions. I was more excited about this course than I've been about anything and I was so disappointed. I couldn't snap out of my own sour mood, I just wanted to get out of there.

And I couldn't help noticing I almost certainly had the longest drug history of anyone in that room. See: feeling like an old junkie again. Doesn't do much for the self esteem.

I got home exhausted. Gave someone money to score. Someone I knew and should have known better and he ripped me off. So now I have to torture him. I popped a Valium and slept from late afternoon through to four thirty am. And I woke up feeling dire. The drugs I had paid for would have been all gone by now anyhow so I'm not bitter about that. When I see this guy I'm going to be real nicey nicey. I'll say "Was that shit as good as you said it was? I got stop and searched, threw it on the ground and couldn't find it again." And I'll reel him in that way. And I will get my refund.

My problem now is the same problem I had yesterday, the day before and every day since my mood levels crashed. I'm down and nothing will raise me up. Heroin makes an OK antidepressant while it works. Crack is out of the question. It makes me jagged, wiry, paranoid and in bipolar terms manic and depressed at the same time. I don't need a substance that does that to me. But heroin is a different matter. Heroin was my medicine for years, and it did what I paid for. Took the edge, and often a lot more than the edge off my despair. It's for that reason that I found methadone days unbearable. On methadone I had nothing insultating me from brain-numbing despair.

Now I have to find something that's going to help me but what? Mood stabilizers will prevent me being manic ever again. Despite the chaos I miss that high. The manic high I was on at the beginning of the year took me higher than any drug has ever done. That's how I want to live. I don't care whether I'm crazy. This world is crazier than I've ever been. Anyone who wants to live in this world straight is in my opinion crazier even than the world.

Don't misread me, I'm not saying I want a high off drugs. I'm saying I want my own natural high back. The name of that high is mania. So I'm bipolar, so what? Schizoaffective if you prefer. Bipolar and schizoaffective are different flavours of the same thing. Schizoaffective just means you're whackier than bipolar. I'm off my antipsychotics because I thought they were bringing me down, and I'm not psychotic again am I? I'm just depressed. Depressed like I have been, to a greater or lesser extent, for nearly all of my adult life. When I wasn't depressed I was high: on a drug high or (during my drug holidays) the natural high when your mind cycles between high and low.

All my mood swings say to me is that I'm more of a person than somebody without such extremes. The narrower your emotional range, the narrower you are as a person. So I'm a very wide person. Heaven and hell are inside me. Why should I medicate myself away on toxic metal (lithium) that will only make me less of a person?

I don't care any more for other people's standards. All I need to do is come off methadone because that is the State's control over me. Without that I can turn into who I truly am. I don't know where this story is going. But before you judge me, ask yourself, where are you going? We think we know. We would like to know. But we don't know really. We don't know nothing.

Poetry and Truth

DOES ANYONE KNOW A SHOP SELLING HUGE WHITE SMOCK SHIRTS? I have decided to become a poet, you see. So I need one. I already have a fountin pen bought on special offer for 30p. It came with 3 blue cartridges but I need poetical black ones. And thick acid free Sketch 100 paper for manuscripts and lots of lovely red wine to leave poetic winestains all over my poetic manuscripts. I already have a special notebook for copying poems into. Problem is I haven't really written one for 20 years. And I have a halfarsed poetry blog not even I read.

Thing is if someone said "here are some oils, paint a portrait after the manner of Leonardo da Vinci" I'd be stumped. But if someone said "knock out a Spenserean stanza, two sonnets, a Shakespearean and a Petrarchan and ten stanzas in terza rima" I could do it and I've found some of my best stuff (with my habit of copying out other people's work) and wondered who on earth wrote it! It was only fragments so nothing ever got copied up and saved. Only finished stuff is saved.

Once I have the shirt and the wine and a finished opus I'll put a bit online. I have thought up a way of promoting my opus that has never been done before, especially not by a living poet and THAT is how I want my work published. If I give away my idea somebody else shall only take it so I can't tell it till it's done.

I dearly would love to switch on to Subutex but don't want to put myself in a mental hospital thinking I'm being sucked through the vortex of a spiral (ie severely manic) so I'm indulging that idea with great care. Ie doing absolutely nothing about it for the time being.

Beatrix Potter is on my television. I got the Renee Zellwegger DVD. She's just like me.


Shakespeare's Sonnet 73. Isn't this sublime?

My Special Tonkie Plan

I HAVE A SPECIAL PLAN. I'm in a good mood now and planning my future. My DRUG-FREE FUTURE. YES A FUTURE WITH NO MORPHIA, NO METHADONE NO NARCOTIC SUBSTANCES.

See I feel hypomanic enough without needing shitty drugs to bring me up here. Why am I hypomanic? Because I scored methadone on the street a while ago and indulge tonight in an extra dose. [A tiny dreg that I had extra, not a whopping huge dose.] That little bit extra plus lots of sleep, plus depression which cycles anyhow (high and low and I really do mean HIGH at the extreme ~ even higher than crack) so this has switched my mood. I was NOT taking illicit methadone during my most intense mania, I ought to add. If anything I was FORGETTING to take the shit, forgetting until I wasn't too far from having my head down the toilet puking from withdrawal [I felt physically sick and didn't know why]. I was so high I not only went into a literal spiral whirl where my words broke up into noise, a brain full of roaring NOISE without words I was turning into literal pure energy and felt invincible. My friends told me not to fuck off the methadone clinic but that was my plan. To tell them where to go and hike along the high speed rail track to Paris. Knowing that withdrawal perturbs my mood severely I would in this state have probably gone so manic I literally didn't know my own name. I was already out of it enough that I didn't grasp what people meant when they said my name in front of me. I wondered who they were talking about.

This was on NO drugs bar a couple of cyders per day as I'd been drinking for eyars on end without mania, and just enough methadone to survive. No speed, no crack, no E, no psychedelics to put me in this state. This is what I mean when I say my highs are higher than my lows are low. And thank God. I've heard tales of manic people believing they are Emperor of the World or at the very least multi-billionaires. And they very often take other people in and get first class air tickets New York to Paris, leaving chaos in their wake. Because I'm schizoaffective I can barely get it together to keep self, house keys and phone in the same place. In my most severe mania I had no glasses (I just lost them) and no money at all (I lost the card). I was pretty badly disabled and only able to post because I type by touch, have been blogging for years and know the procedure for posting back to front. Otherwise I'd no way be able to put up my experience online as I went. All that weird spelling mistake stuff with U U U A A A, that stuff was literal stream of consciousness. I didn't edit because just as I'd keep my private journal the way it was, so I wanted my blog to caputre the moment. This was like holiday photos from the Light Side of the Moon.

How did I get on to this? Oh yeah because I'm UP and Addressing My Drug Problem.

Here's what I'm doing. I KNOW SOMEONE WHO DEALS IN SUBUTEX OR SUBOXONE.

[They're the same stuff: buprenorphine one has a useless added ingredient so you can't inject but I wouldn't waste a vein on it anyhow. I don't know which he's on now but he sells his script and offered it to me several times.]

I'm willing to switch methadone to heroin for a week to sweep the Mean Green out of my system. If you don't sweep it out you have to be down to 30mg AND do 36 to 48 hours of NO METHADONE which is just not something Im going to do, not something Paddster ever did and he's the man as regards Drug Knowledge. He's now 100% opiate clean ie on NOTHING and he achieved this using the same manner of scheme I came up with. So Im going to clear out evil methadone which is MORE ADDICTIVE, WORSE WITHDRAWALS and ONLY superior to heroin in that it can be dosed orally under supervision once daily. Paradoxically methadone's advantage is key to all its disadvantages. The long half life means it's a slow drug, taking ages to take effect, ages to detox out of the system. Most people agree it is better to die than to detox off methadone. Sorry to be realistic. Life ain't too hot. Life without opiates when you're addicted to them is utterly bleak and meaningless and during detox you feel this in all its realism and intensity.

To any person reading this in a state of withdrawal I urge you to keep hold of how you feel and to make an adult decision. Is this really what you want to be doing with your life? You don't need to commit suicide. You need to come off these drugs that are making life not worth living.

There is no need to suffer unduly.

This is why I choose the Subutex option. You do the suffering BEFORE you come off. The worst suffering occurs during switchover. I'm going to switch over under NO medical supervision. I will wait a couple of hours and use heroin to cover the receptor sites Subutex has left wide open leaving me partially sick. I'll start off on 4mg day one, 8mg day 2, 8mg day 3. I'm not going over 8mg. Then I'll tell the clinic I'm on 8mg Subutex and don't need methadone and they can treat me or not treat me but this is what I'm doing. I MUST switch to heroin first as my methadone dose is way too high it would take months to switch down. I'm doing 18 hours clean before I pop a Subbie. Then I'm crushing up the 8mg pills and reducing by approx a single milligram every couple of days. I've BEEN ON SUBUTEX AND DONE THIS. I felt NOTHING. No withdrawal whatsoever after the 3 days of "suffering".

A lot of people say buprenorphine makes them feel terrible for 3 days but I felt fantastic. I now realize I was hypomanic! Music on TV sounded luscious. My mood was soaring, particularly in the mid-morning. I was sleeping approximately midnight to 4am. On the zopiclone the dr prescribed the next week I got another 2 hours; midnight till 6. The pattern of my moods (the precise swing in intensity; my sleep pattern; the way music sounded so amazing) all this matches the mania I get now which is why I can confidently say I was mildly hypomanic in my first few days on Subutex. I was high enough to feel about 95% physically OK on day 2 but not be AT ALL bothered by these slight withdrawals. On day 3 I was about 98% OK and again simply not bothered by the sweats and shivers I had I was so hyped up. I had all the upsides of hypomania, which is mild mania and all the positive feelings people use cocaine for. Unlike cocaine which makes me feel ragged, brittle, paranoid, anxious, and often extremely jagged this was a wonderful smooth secure feeling. It's more like being a kid excited over Father Xmas than being an adult on drugs.

So I'm switching MYSELF to the substance I wish to use. I'm withdrawing myself far more quickly than the clinic would allow (which is why I'm not telling the clinic till it's done). I know my family will worry but they needn't do. I'm NOT doing this next week I'm keeping myself on the most even keel I can manage for several weeks before I even consider putting myself through this. Eg I had NO DRINK YESTERDAY. Not one single alcoholic unit. I need to get used to being FREE, being EVEN, being SURE OF MYSELF OFF DRUGS. Because for the rest of my days, be they many or few I'M OFF DRUGS FOR GOOD. Once I get off the shit that somebody chose to name after a female hero Heroin, once I get off this, that's us DIVORCED.

TILL DEATH DO US PART?

No darling. You cheated on me, you abused me, you nearly ruined my life. WE ARE THROUGH.


Illustrations: with the obvious exception of the perky-eared tonkie house mouse, I found these by looking through schizoaffective and schizophrenia and they sum up how I feel. The most accurate two are the top two, the red one is me when blurry and the woman is how I feel when I'm crystal clear but "ill" I'm all there, just not there as I was when I was "weller" ....

Rethink (mental health charity) schizoaffective disorder fact sheet.


Lizzy, thanks for this
Radiohead - Street Spirit Funkagenda's Spandex+Ketamine Mix
"ketamine mix"



A little tonkie poem.
Byron: Childe Harold Canto 1; XIX

The horrid crags, by toppling convent crowned;
the cork-trees hoar, that cloathe the shaggy steep,
the mountain moss by scorching skies imbrowned,
the sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep,
the tender azure of the unruffled deep,
the orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
the torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
the vine on high, the willow branch below,
mixed in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.

Back to NA

IT'S NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS TONIGHT. NA hold meetings every night and every daytime and as far as I know most mornings in London, but tonight is one of my favourite ones, so I'm going.

I'm thinking of just telling them how I feel about being (as I see it) misunderstood. Then, if I am misunderstood I'm sure somebody will feed something back to me. But if I was understood all along I'll find out that too, so it's win-win.

I have no word to "yell in their face" as I so delicately put it; and more than once, if I remember right... If I were that wound up then I would yell it too, but I'm striving to avoid over-confrontational behaviour, even if I'm merely confronting the Group rather than a person in it... If I had an issue with one specific person then I wouldn't share that to the group, I'd tell that person alone.

What I will tell them is that I'm going to a dual diagnosis group and that I feel better understood there because the dual group accept that I walk in every week hyped up to a greater or lesser extent and the specific culprit drugs that tend to make hyper (cocaine and amphetamines) are ABSENT from my wee-tests. (I love the word "wee"; it reminds me of being four and saying "a wee and a poo"!)

I will have to tone myself down if I do feel amped up and I have felt amped up for most of today. I don't want a repeat of the time when I was raging angry and sent a very tangable jolt round the circle. A jolt of bad-feeling. The woman next to me, who is an itsy-ditsy-smiley-happy former pot-addict nearly jumped out of her skin and I only wish I could find her again to say I'm sorry. (As an ice-breaker.) There's another NA member who gave a fantastic chair (which means a 20-minute potted history of your using and how you got out and stayed out of the chaos everyone comes to NA to crawl out of)... I went and made a mess of the meeting my very obviously hefting up my loud rustly carrier bag full of stuff just as he was cruising towards the finish line.

I wasn't trying to communicate anything to anyone, but that's how it must have looked and I feel guilty because he looked at me a few times as he made his points and I just want to say I'm sorry ~ again as an icebreaker. I don't feel ridden by guilt and I don't feel he's desperately pissed off with me, but if I could speak to either of these two again I think they're both fascinating people to be friends with. Both are brimming over with their own distinct spirits. I suppose I feel bad for having given out bad vibes that it's obvious both have felt and I don't want to go around emanating nuclear radiation. I want to radiate Serenity, and charm. If I am charming now it's very much by accident. I feel most people pick up the vibe of precisely how I am, even though they sometimes misinterpret it. If it's "drugs" it's a distinct lack of, rather than a presence they're picking up on!

It's obvious to me that I'm nearing the end of an over-long story drugs-wise. Because as I said earlier, if I'd done gear at any other time after a break I'd probably have gone on using it until I was penniless and then had to stop (because I wouldn't go out and graft up money these days). I'd use the days without drugs to reset my priorities, then by the time I got paid again I had willpower not to use. This only happened on one occasion, some time in January. I went through four phases with heroin.
Phase one: I only used what money I could "afford" ~ usually £10 a day, though I still got into trouble, running up debts. When the shit finally hit the fan I went hurtling into phase two, where I begged up as much as I possibly could every single day of the week most weeks. I never took a day off at weekends when I already had money. I made as much as I could when I could, and nearly all this money went on heroin, not crack. Crack was only ever a minor part of my using, apart from one binge I indulged in for several weeks. I considered myself addicted because the small amount I did use was very important to me. Eventually I reduced to one day a week and from that to "nothing" ~ I probably lapsed on crack about eight times since giving it up "for good" for new year 2009. And I'm well aware how pathetic "eight times" sounds in conjunction with "gave up for good". I had my last ever toke on the crack pipe in early December 2010. I couldn't go near crack now. Considering how high I get without it, I'd go so far out of the stratosphere on it, I doubt I'd ever come back!Stage three was me as a "giro junkie"; this is an addict who only uses money paid by the state for sickness or unemployment. The final phase is now: no heroin at all bar a couple of lapses, which were me being depressed enough not to care any more. I only crave gear when I'm very low and down in mood or a methadone dose is overdue. If I can manage not to get depressed like that again, I cannot see why I'd turn to heroin. It never did much except salve my pain.

In the fifth and final stage I'll finally have kicked methadone. And I will never have anything more to do with Drugs ever again.


God, grant me the Serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the Courage to change the things I can ~
and the Wisdom to know the difference.


Illustrated: apron representing 15 years clean and serene (other items of clothing, including underwear, are available) I wish I could wear something representing some vast number of years clean and sober and for it to be true. But the truth of that matter is down to me ...

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.

Tonight at NA

I WENT TO NA TONIGHT. I WILL KEEP COMING BACK. And no I do NOT think it an American cult, Jess! I know I'm repeating myself but you must have misread my quoting other people as my opinion. I never have considered NA or AA an "American cult". Antiamericanism wrankles with me and the "cult" accusation is true only in the sense you pointed out.

No offence was ever intended, Jess. It was you who reminded of the Serenity Prayer (which I miss, due to Group Hug Aversion):~~

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the Courage to change the things I can
and the Wisdom to know the difference.

My focus is on the Courage to change the things I can. I think I have a pretty good handle on the Wisdom to know the difference.

But what NA have that I really haven't got is Serenity. That is what I come to NA for. That's why I keep coming back. I want a piece of this amazing Serenity they all seem to have ...


*******


SHOPPING REPORT:

INSTEAD OF 2 TEX MEX PIZZAS and two familiy steak pies for £7 I went DVD shopping in the supermarket instead and got Gladiaotr for £4, D Day the 6th of June for £3 and just one pie for £2.69 (2 for £4 but I'd rather get the films before some other bastard runs off with them!). I'm watching D Day in German. I love this multilingual opiton it's highly convenient. Especially if you set it to German subtitles to read anything you don't catch. Or German soundtrack English subtitles for the lazy!

Hey I've just altered it to German speech, English "Untertitel". Because lazy is what I am!! D Day is in lovely full colour. Unlike my budget war films.

I was watching Gladiator earlier but that's only in English, and 2 languages I can't follow (Spanish, Italian). So I want to save it until I'm in the mood for Gladiatorial entertainment.

Slept/drum & bass/jungle/hardcore/cleaning/shopping/etc

I THOUGHT I WAS running out of energy, having spent most of the night awake, then pinging down the chemist for my methadone, then going home, then having a black coffee for energy (physically tired), then another coffee, then having the most fun cleaning I've ever had in my life. Then feeling physically like I was on speed. Then feeling like I was going to have a panic attack.

Physically exhausted, I put myself to bed, saying "you are ill, and you are mentally ill, lie down, this will pass" ~ so I slept the expected two hours till it sounded like Loose Women or Doctors was on (different channels; couldn't have been both) ... I put the covers over me like a tent and slept some more, aching all over and genuinely feeling ill. Then I got up feeling so hungry I was sick. I seem to have lost a stone in weight: or the scales I found on the street were inaccurate. I've no idea. [One stone is 14 lbs or about 6.5kg.]

This evening I did some irritating little things I had to. Then shopping. Morrisons supermarket. Tex Mex pizza. Best ever. The self service till was like a robot at a hardcore rave. Please please scan (an) the next itemplease scan WAIT FOR AN ASSISTANT!!) lots of fun. And that pizza is amazing. I only had chips (which are Iceland American style curly fries (do they actually have curly fries in America? These are lovely). Then Holby City (hospital drama) came on. I missed EastEnders.

I'm scanning the radio for decent pirate stuff. The drum and bass they're playing sounds a good 17 years old! Proper Ragga Jungle. That's what I'm looking for.

Drink is down to 2 cans at 7.5% ABV ie 1 litre. It's up to 85p a can! Will this torment never cease??!! Nah, don't wanna be a drinker all my life. The alcohol is GOING!

Now I have to not drink coffee, which I appear to be hypersensitive to. I mean this was full on speeding on TWO cups normal one heaped teaspoon. Coffee has never been quite that strong before. I mean, this was physical, hence the anxiety. The highest hyper highs I have had have been totally out of sync with any coffee drinking. E.g. the Mental Hospital Day ~ hadn't had a cup for five hours. Had only had one or possibly two. Don't need caffeine. Nicotine has to go as well. Cigarettes are a terrible poison. Why should I be dependent on outside drugs to poison myself.

Now I have to finish what I barely started that is clearing crap I don't know what is relevant or not. No I'm not allowed a flamethrower, which would make clearing up far easier. Yeah yeah highly irresponsible I know so it's boring old chucking out. Let me indulge a fantasy once or twice. So now the hunt is on for Proper "Old Skool" as they call it to make me feel ancient (ie hardcore rave 1991, 1992) or Ragga Jungle (probably won't find that) or ancient sounding but probably modern rapid drum & bass with an overgrown schoolboy running out of rhymes on top.

Traaaaaaaa!!!! How are y'all. See I'm not irritably ranting tonight. Clean clean clean and cleaner. Clean me clean up. Live a clean life. Clean and Serene. That's me goal ;-)



21:29 London Radio: Eh, the Greek stuff ain't bad...
01:22 hrs Love FM Live .com (lovefmlive.com) good garage after midnight

Clearer

THE MAIN AREA OF MY HOUSE is beginning to approach normality. A cluttered normality with an Everest Heap of clothes in the middle, books to one side all higgledypiggledy because there's too many to stack up... there's still a week's worth of cleaning and clearing to go.

It doesn't quite look like the photo, but it will do. When I win the lottery and move.

If you go away

I'M STILL clearing up. I'm hoping to get the worst of it done by tonight, then I have one clear room. Not completely perfect, but within the bounds of "normality"... At last!

I've thrown away one black bag full of empty sin bins, and I'll have another black sack full of full ones for the exchange! I'm so looking forward to turning up as Junkie of the Year. Not.

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD: IF YOU GO AWAY
This tune just came on tv. I like:~

Toothpaste stains

I GOT UP AT 4:30 this morning. I feel like I could do with a year's more sleep but there you go. After smoking lots of cigarettes, trotting down the shop for smoked mackerel, Hovis bread and 2 litres of cyder (I'm cutting down) plus my tropical fruit juice (supposedly it's as good for you as eating veg, but I find that hard to believe)... after all this I scurried back home and wasted an hour watching BBC's early morning news and rubbish. The guy presenting used to be ITN's royal correspondent but I can't remember his name. Nick something. Being royal correspondent meant tilting your head slightly and inflecting the voice all sentimental-like whenever mentioning the Queen Mother. I was never convinced the Queen Mum was quite as kindly as portrayed. For one thing HM the Queen appeared, from the vast distance I view her, to be completely under her thumb. Since her Mum's death she seems to have become much more of her own woman. Her fashion sense appears to have improved immensely. The Queen is the funkiest-dressing old woman alive. With the exception of Rosie, the Trance granny who made luminous laurel crowns. I met her at the Warp club (Rosie, not the Queen) under an enormous railway arch round the corner from the London Dungeon, but I had seen her picture in the music press. She was famous for her octogenarian psychedelic ways.

There is a bevy of sparrows down my road. They live in a hedge and chirp their tuneless little heads off every morning. Cheep! Chirp! Twit! Twat! Twitter!! They say. My nightingale, who used to live in the nearest tree to our house is still on migration in West Africa. He or she won't be back until the spring. I know it was a nightingale because I matched the bird by appearance and song. The song was amazing, it tweetled and twittered all night like an LSD canary. I kept my window open especially. O man those sparrows are chirruping LOUD this morning. Sparrows all but disappeared from London about 15 years ago. They used to hang out in flocks along with the pigeons in parks. Even today, though you see them more, they're rare.

HEROIN! I haven't used any since I non-used the other day.. how many days clear am I now..? Seven days. I scored on December 23rd. Just checked me blog. That's the convenience of being a blogger. I know the day and date I did everything. Now I'm off to get my methadone. They're usually open by 8:30. I took half as much methadone as usual yesterday and today and am not feeling it so far... does this make me Addict-Invincible or will a horrible rebound come and slam me with creepytime withdrawal..? I bet it will. But there ya go. I want OFF that crap. The sooner the better. Chemical slavery. Heroin without any fun at all. I hate it.

I've got to go. Those sparrows are distracting me bigtime.

This is the twit-twit jug-jug chirrupydirrupydoodles song of the nightingale:



WOW I can't believe this, this is ROSIE from the Warp on film!!!



Warp Club London 1999: on lots of lovely MDMA hippieflipping I accidentally took 2 Mitsubishis at once in here, fell asleep and woke up flying through the roof. That was a good night (well morning: the club finished at 9pm so I never usually turned up till 6 or 7 in the morning)...
The place looks sparse because it was probably 11am by the time this was shot, and there were at least 5 more rooms of equal or bigger size, it was a HUGE club...
... ukh was the dancing really that terrible? I must have been on drugs!!



Illustrated: wow! a sink dirtier than mine! BBC Breakfast with Dermott Murnughan and Sian somethingorother; HM the Queen, looks good in a hat; a nightingale