No more gunk

MY ABSCESS is going down. The skin has all peeled off and it looks more like a pinkish crater than a very rounded purple hill. Also it's going itchy, always a sign of healing. So the time for the doctor has gone. And as I'm NOT injecting heroin there is no reason for any recurrence.

The knife I used, by the way, had one sharp spike on the end, not two blunt ones like the one illustrated. I just couldn't get a picture of tomatoes any other way.

I'm set to borrow money tomorrow as I'm so broke I'm down to beans on toast every day interspersed with oven chips on their own. I'm really hungry even though I've had FOUR small slices of toast and one ENTIRE can of beans this morning. That must surely add up to 700 calories and the risperidone (antipsychotic) I'm on makes you fat. It does this by altering the way your body processes sugar so you need fewer calories. SO I SHOULDN'T FEEL HUNGRY AT ALL. Bloody pills!

I'm due a small plate of American style curly oven chips soon (not yet broke enough to go for straight English ones) plus I have over two litres of 50p cloudy lemonade (more calories) that I use as a substitute for cyder when not drinking. Ie every day. Hasn't stopped me having the occasional one, but the constant hand-to-mouth cigarettes and alcohol is now reduced to just cigarettes.

Speaking of which. I probably shouldn't have tried to give up smoking while I was reducing a methadone dose. And I have an appointment with the DOCTOR at the clinic tomorrow morning, which I'm dreading so please wish me luck. I have to go else I'll get terminated by this public machine. Be lucky everyone!


Illustrated: curly fries and beans on toast ~ what my diet has been reduced to. But only for the next week....


SOLAR QUEST: ACID AIR RAID
This tune doesn't properly get going till nearly 4 mins into it. It's still good though...

Wednesday

I WENT TO the damn group yesterday but it was no good, so I left. My shiny new worker did say if it's not for you it's not for you. I'm not up for talking to a room full of people I don't know. In NA you can say your piece or not say your piece, you can wander in and out as you please, you can arrive late and leave early if you like. And most NA meetings seem to be candle-lit these days. This group by contrast is glaringly lit, everyone is in a circle, so people can look you up and down. You have to "check in" (that is introduce yourself). Then they wanted us to speak again! I was not up for that, really not. There's no atmosphere of recovery in the clinic's own group. In NA I'm the dirtiest person in there. In this other group I was pretty much the cleanest. I don't need to be dragged down. I want pulling UP.

I'm taking that risperidone because weirdly I do feel better on it than off it. It's not like antidepressants that take a week or more for even the first stirrings of a mood change. I always responded to antidepressants quickly. That was the trouble. Within 2 weeks I was often high. Not normal but high. I loved this so much I kept it quiet from doctors for years, knowing it probably meant "bipolar". I was terrified of the word "bipolar" so I suffered depression using nothing but heroin. Heroin seemed to work at the time, though I suspect it counteracted depression in the short term and definitely stopped me cycling, it actually kept me in the depressed mood state. I'm now very cynical about what "benefits" heroin might have brought me. I am sure I would be better off if I'd never tried it. Schizoaffective by the way means bipolar that gets psychotic enough to count as schizophrenia. So I think of myself as manic-depressive. There's another type of schizoaffective that only involves depression and that's said to be more severe. The mania actually counteracts some of the schizophrenia, because schizophrenia makes you very apathetic, disorganized and withdrawn. I'm withdrawn in that I hardly socialize. Professionals I have talked to in the past have been fooled because I was more articulate than a person with my problems is expected to be.

Today I have to clear out my rubbish yet again. I was doing OK until I went hyper, then gave up on the idea. Not by thinking "I can't be bothered" more by thinking of 10,000,000 other things that were more fun. Any elevated mood stronger than just borderline actually makes me more disorganized not less. Though I have tons of enthusiasm for many things, it mostly seems to dissipate ~ like spectacular fireworks ~ before anything ever gets DONE.

Script error on this page yet again. I think this computer has it in for me. My own machine is in hiding, waiting on a miniature screwdriver that I can't afford till Friday.

O by the way I tried drinking and I tried using gear on Monday, the day I felt worst. The gear did nothing to me and only after 3 drinks did I feel better. I'm not going back down that route. To alcohol and drug addiction. No thanks. So yesterday and today I'm clean.

Done in

BOTH MY COMPUTER AND I are done in. The computer has to go to hospital. I'm not going to hospital they would never let me in. So much for giving up drink by the way. I feel far more depressed now than I ever did when I was drinking. I crashed on Friday and have been sleeping endlessly ever since. I only feel bad when I wake up. I am supposed to be seeing Valium Marilyn today. Don't actually want to. She's depressive too. Together on a day like this we are like Laurel and Hardy with no humour.

I have to go to that shitty drug clinic tomorrow. They are persecuting me for being mentally unreal. Their job is to dish out scripts and let me go. They have no input in my life. I'm getting clean for myself, not for them. On the plus side I do have a new worker. On the minus side "better the devil you know" and they are a bunch of demonists in there. I'm not a criminal so they have no right to force me into anything against my will.

The latest thing is some blood test they want. Well good luck finding a vein. The titration nurse said to me "for all we know you could be dying" which only made me laugh. If only. If this my getting methadone truly is contingent on this mysterious test then I'll get it. Otherwise I'm not having no test for no-one. In this country we have a right to refuse treatment no matter how serious the condition. And I made a pact with myself long ago that if I'm ever seriously ill I will go for nothing bar palliative care. Being ill like that is a sign that I'm meant to die. And I'm not going to cheat fate.

That's all.


Illustration: the letterhead my drug clinic SHOULD use.

Many A Topic

IN WHICH GLEDWOOD talks on many a topic in a far happier way than yesterday... Then Barbra sings "Memory"...

I DIDN'T GO to the brainwashing meeting. I only rant, interrupt and express my wonderful opinions when I'm manic. Then I come down and can't face the meeting again. So I'm too depressed and paranoid to go. So I stayed in bed all day and got up at 4pm. I wasn't lying there skulking by the way, I was fast asleep and ignoring my phone. I've learned to ignore it's chirps over the few days I've had it. This phone has the loudest ring of any phone I've ever had. But it's a flip phone AND you have to press the button to pick it up. So I miss loads of calls just by fumbling with it. And I'm too stingy to ring anyone back. Or in too much of a bad mood (today).

I have to go down Morrisons to get a 54p 2-litre bottle of cloudy lemonade. It's what I'm drinking these days instead of alcohol. I did have yet another black cherry flavour cyder today. That makes 2 drinks in 2 weeks ~ oooh. Yeah so I had this drink. The cherry flavour was my attempt at switching from strong drink to soft drink. It was meant to be a crossover. Unfortunately I loved the taste so much I think I was addicted to that more than the alcohol. So now I'm on cloudy lemonade. The acidity of the lemons matches the acidity of cyder. So my teeth don't miss out on being rotted through the lack of drink.

I'm really pissed off with Buta my old drugs worker. Buta was the titration nurse. Titration is chemical torture where they "cautiously" give doses far too small and leave you in withdrawal for days on end at the beginning of your script. Methadone takes three days to reach a therapeutic level (meaning that your blood level is twice as high on day three despite no elevation of the dose) ~ this is yet another bad thing about methadone. It takes days to "go in". But it also takes days to come out again. Making it far, far harder to detox from. Now if heroin is notoriously hard to come off, why on earth give heroin addicts methadone which is EVEN HARDER to detox from? Somehow I get the feeling nobody cares at all for drug addicts. Soon as I can I'm going on Subutex. But yet again we have a problem, because methadone is too "sticky" to transfer over from without doing two days methadone-free ~ ie two days climbing the walls. With heroin you just need 18 hours clean. Everybody who has done it says you basically go on heroin for four days and switch off that. The only other option is dihydrocodeine (DFs), which is so weak it must be dosed four-hourly. I've found a source of dihydrocodeine, so I'll get enough pills for four days and use those. Why on earth the clinic won't switch you to dihydrocodeine I have never understood. But it's just more proof that they don't give a damn about their clients. They only care for their own jobs. I already have two copies of the "how to make a complaint" leaflet. The way things are going, that formal complaint will go out sooner rather than later.

So I'm depressed today. I think sleeping has a lot to do with it. As soon as I heard that loss of sleep is a "symptom and a cause of mania" and that excessive sleep counts the same for depression, I have been sleeping as little as I possibly can, so I can be happy. Also sleeping is the biggest waste of time out there. I was hong-donging to Chinese until the early hours. I've learned to tell the time. I do know the numbers, but I hardly know them fluently. And they're not pronounced the way their transliterated. Yī 一 one is pronounced "ee", wǔ 五 five is actually "oo", qī 七 seven is "chi"... Surprisingly I managed to follow Mrs Li telling me the time on CD. I was really shocked. I was so depressed when I listened to it this evening. I must have felt how "normal" people feel, who don't truly believe they'll ever get far, when hearing a person blabbering on a Teach Yourself Foreign CD. Utterly hopeless. I'm only abnormal because I believe in myself, at least as far as picking up blabbery foreign tongues is concerned. Like I said, intelligence doesn't come into language acquisition; perseverence does. Half a BILLION Chinese speak Mandarin as their second language and they learn it through immersion. If immersion isn't possible, persistence will pay.

Anyway they say you learn a language by it being babbled out around you, but I grew up in Welsh Wales and got nowhere with Welsh ~ mainly because the teachers at school had never learned a langauge in their lives; they merely grew up speaking Welsh from the cradle. So we were never told "this is a feminine noun; that is an irregular verb" just "it goes like this". Which is like teaching mechanics without ever naming parts of the car! Teach Yourself Living Welsh (as it was called) explained all this to me and I got an A grade at GCSE. Had I relied on our teacher I doubt I'd have got better than a C. It was always my ambition to join the mother tongue set in Welsh but I never managed it. I was too thick.

The beginnings of my decline set in when I was doing my A Levels at school. These are the exams you take age 18. GCSEs are usually age 16. I did try and concentrate but my language skills were awful. Essays riddled with mistakes. Years of "tuition" and yet I still couldn't remember which words were masculine, feminine or neuter. In English I did OK essays on the "texts" we studied, but it was only poetry I was truly any good at critiquing. Already I was getting depressed in this period. During term time I felt fairly OK; it was during the holidays that it hit me. Every exam I took I got a grade lower than predicted. Then I took a year out. Rather, wasted a year out. Was more depressed then. And when I did finally go to uni, I was very quickly depressed out of my mind. The shrink I ended up seeing asked me constantly whether I was hearing voices. That should give you some idea of the impression I made on people, because I wasn't going into that office trying to create any kind of impression good or bad. What he saw was what everyone saw. I felt so dire when on my own that I ended up sitting in other people's rooms. I had nothing at all to say. My presence was only accepted because as soon as I got into cannabis (which happened very quickly) I brought a lump of hash with me everywhere so everyone got a smoke. That didn't make anybody like me, but they at least tolerated me.

It took twenty years from first seeing a psychiatrist to getting full bipolar symptoms. In the beginning I only got depressions. Then I started over-reacting to antidepressants, so I got called "manic" by somebody with two manic-depressive relatives. Eventually my mood started swinging on its own. Only the depressive swings were vicious. The highs were really nice. But then I went on heroin, which blanketed my mood to a flat-line so I thought my depression was cured. Then I went on methadone. But the methadone days were so intolerably low I continued using heroin for years while being scripted methadone. Eventually mania did break through so voraciously that heroin would no longer stabilize me. (Though I have to say this only began when there was a drought in the heroin supply and so no chance of scoring anyhow.) Ever since I went manic last December my moods have been all over the place. Deshane says I have the so-called "negative symptoms" of schizoaffective. It means I just cannot engage myself with many aspects of life. Yes I can do Chinese obsessively. I can do things obsessively. ButI cannot do many things normally. As a plate-spinner I'd have one plate going better than anyone else. But the other six spinners wouldn't even have plates on. Let alone wobbly ones. So this is how I run, or rather don't run my life. It's still in utter chaos but I won't go on about that. How did I get back on to mental health? Oh yeah because the clinic are trying to damage it by forcing me into abusive coercive brainwashing bullshit groups. Well I'm not going. Bar one next week which comes directly after my appointment I've had it with their punishment group.

Buta did tell me there was a way I could go to rehab for stabilization, not detox. Which means I could cut down my dose down to 70mls in about two weeks. I'd be up for that. In order to do this I would need to do their rehab group. I don't mind the idea of that one. Hopefully it wouldn't be full of people on a prison-swerve. The bog-standard group I was pushed into attending was for people who had been caught shoplifting. They only went under duress, because if they failed to attend more than a couple they'd get chucked in prison. Well they're lucky. I'd rather go to prison than do those groups. But what option do I have? The ways things are going I'm going to end up in the nuthouse anyhow. Guess what that CRAP they were prescribing me was actually CAUSING my anxiety. The anxiety I took street-bought Valium for. (Very infrequently, it has to be said; but one pill dirties up the test for two weeks.) So I'm OFF the pills and paranoid and depressed as a result. ALL I NEED IS A DOCTOR TO PRESCRIBE THE QUETIAPINE I WANT. But the NHS has let me down yet again. I don't even have a psychiatrist. They have transferred me from a consultant I knew and respected to no-body. My paperwork appears to have fallen down a black hole. So I'll probably only get quetiapine in the nuthouse. I could do with a break anyhow.

Why they just won't prescribe it to me I have no idea. Oh yeah because I used to have a doctor and now I don't. Will someone explain that to me please.

Well I've got to go. EastEnders is on. And they're doing prison scenes on Coronation Street. I love women's prison dramas. Why on earth did they cancel Bad Girls. When I lived with Lona, who kind of had mental health "issues" of her own, the two programmes we watched together (apart from EastEnders) were Bad Girls and Footballer's Wives. Footballer's Wives eventually got Joan Collins then they cancelled the entire show! It was the only thing about football (apart from the World Cup final) I've ever enjoyed watching. And the world cup final was more entertaining for France getting boo'd and Italy getting cheered. Because the French and the Brits hate each other ~ in a loving sort of way. Britain and France have almost equal populations. They have about five times more land. We have a superior language. They have high taxes for the rich, spectacular natural scenery and far better food. We have London. They have Paris. The best parts of London are far superior to Paris. They have Galleries LaFayette (all perfume and women's clothes). We have Harrods which sells just about everything. Harrods' pets department sells axotlotls and fishtanks connected by swim-through tubes. Their hifi department is amazing. It's the stuff you'd buy naturally if you had a proper income.

Did South Africa win the last world cup? I thought the African teams were only in there to make up numbers. World football is usually Europe vs South America. I feel sorry for Americans having to watch American football (a very camp version of rugby) and baseball (glorified rounders). Football is more versatile than American football because it can be played on just about any bit of flat ground with a ball. No special equipment required. I was actually quite good at football. When I troubled to make an effort at playing. Which I did about three times in my life. The main reason I hated it was that I was "supposed" to like it. Also I loathed all team sports in childhood. And I hated ballgames. Rounders/baseball is the worst. You're supposed to hit the stupid thing with a glorified pea-stick! No wonder I always missed. Most exciting thing about playing football at school was deliberately running to the opposite side of the pitch and avoiding the ball at all costs. The only sport I enjoyed was crosscountry walking (though we were supposedly running). The only sports I was any good at were the hundred metres sprint, the high jump, long jump and triple jump. Everything else I was crap at.

I can't remember where this post was going. Why am I watching Coronation Street? Oh yeah because of the women's prison. Best women's prison drama of all time was Prisoner Cell Block H (known by other titles in other countries; it's the 80s Aussie drama by Grundy Television). My favourite episodes were when Meg Morris (formerly Meg Jackson, until her husband was murdered with a pair of scissors by Chrissie Latham) and the governor (both the kindly witch old one Mrs Davidson and the lesbian gym mistress type... Ann Reynolds (not that I just looked that up on Wikipedia).

Oh cripes it's late I've got to go. Dà hǔ tóu fēng 大虎頭蜂！

(Say that to a Chinese person, I dare you. They'll laugh aloud. It means "giant tiger head wasp!")


Illustrated: beautiful sleep; "green" ~ yucky noxious methadone; the Welsh language; not tits and bums but manic-depressive mood swings; Joan Collins and Zoë Lucker in Footballers' Wives; cockney Chrissie Latham from Prisoner


MEMORY

I'm not sure, but this might actually be a real Barbra Streisand pop video...
Barbra's vocal knocks Elaine Page's effort out the window!



HOT NEWS! DANCE DRUG ECSTASY TO BE USED AS CANCER THERAPY!

Punished for Nothing

I haven't edited this wondrous stream of consciousness. It's all I thought in the past 24 hours...

IT'S 4:59AM I am too excited to sleep. I feel this constant low grade HAPPINESS in me. I am INSPIRED. My book is brewing up like a cup of tea with a charming Chelsea bun at its side. My Chinese is coming on better than Japanese ever did. I scored 10/10 on the last test. When I do make mistakes I can see where I went wrong. Instead of being bemused. I'm only on lesson 3 of 22. But it's quite remarkable I got anywhere. Mandarin Chinese sounds more bizarre than any langauge on earth. Far more foreign than other tonal languages like Cantonese (as heard in most Chinese takeaways worldwide), Vietnamese (as heard in war films) and Thai (as heard in Thailand). Thai is one of the most beautiful langauges on earth. Chinese of course has the most beautiful writing. I am learning the names of animals. So far I only know two: a 蓝山雀 lánshānquè is the "tiny tit" that flutters from birdtable to birdbath (a blue tit bird); a 鰍 qiū or 泥鳅 níqiū is a loach; 鰼 xí is another loach or mudfish; a 平鰭鰍科 píngqíqiūkē is a Borneo sucker or hillstream loach (I used to keep one as a pet). I love loaches; they are my favourite aquarium dweller. They skulk around the background of the tank and claim the bogwood as their personal lair. I always identified with our sucker loach Doover. We also had a stripey khooli loach, but that one died.

Talking of stripey nasties: Japanese hornets, at 2" long, the world's largest wasps, have been invading Norfolk! Hornets are called 虎頭蜂 hǔtóufēng "tigerhead bees" in China.

Polyglots of the past; polyglots of the present...

UKH I SLEPT IN IN IN so long I got up at 4pm today. This is the first major sleep I've had all week. I got up angrily stamped down the post office then crowded up the methadonery for my dose. I retired to the library and felt cold wet and paranoid for an hour as I waited for the nonexistent effects of methadone to come on. Anna Grace alwys says 140mg methadone made her feel lovely. Lovely enough to do coke on top. Well I've been on that dose and I can tell you to me methadone does absolutely NOTHING. You literally cannot feel it. Take it away and you'll feel the lack of it. But like marriage to a limp and sappy person with a good job, its presence is not noted though its absence is.

I'm not in a very good mood today because the drugs service are persecuting me yet again. Insisting that I go to their crappy drugs group which is nowhere near as good as NA. Nearly everyone is in there to be punished for committing a crime. And I who have done nothing wrong are made to suffer too. I'm really looking forward to saying this tomorrow. My big problem in groups is learning to SHUT UP. Last time I went I did 95% of the talking on the "client" half. I consciously tried to say a little as possible and yet still dominated every aspect of every topic under discussion [because I was too manic not to talk]. This pisses me off because I know the rest of them ~ who are in there to be made to suffer for raiding Sainsbury's, trading in stolen smoked salmon and other drug-related crimes ~ are tolerating my outbursts only because they have no option but to be there or sent to prison for non-attending. And they all probably think I'm a wanker, a twat, a dork. Stuff like that. Because I dare answer back with statements like "they only give us methadone because they know it doesn't work". This bloke who thinks I'm so perceptive an refreshingly frank will soon realize I'm actually like a stuck record. I WILL not accept a life on methadone as any kind of normality. It is compromise of the worst kind. I would rather be on a proper script, or failing that street heroin. Methadone is worse than either of these because it's MORE ADDICTIVE my habit is now WORSE than ever, more entrenched than ever. I'm only motivated to use heroin because they insist I drink the methadone under supervision, like a big baby. So the day that I'm not Supervised (Sunday) I take it late and do heroin early instead. It's more a fuck you to the clinic than anything else. And I will not "behave" myself just to make some lazy arsed worker look good on paper. All the progress I have made has been despite, not because of, the half-witted efforts of the druggie servies I have been plagued with.

21:42 hrs. WHAT WAS I ranting about there? Something very involving, no doubt. I'm so glad not to be DEPRESSED these days. My mood is just very slightly hyper, pretty much all the time, and I really like it like this. Of course I enjoy going higher and higher, but the consequences are surprisingly inconvenient. I get memory loss. Cognitive deficits. When I'm really high my thoughts run away from one another, like quicksilver exploding on a workbench. So I'll take a mild high any day over a severe one. If I ever get severely high again I'm going in the nuthouse. I'm not looking after myself like a frantic three year-old doing a trolley-dash in a toyshop ever again. I "know" I'm ill when I'm ill. I might not like to accept it, and I might view the situation very differently, but I'm aware that something is radically changed about me and that to a psychiatrist this is clinically significant. Of course when I'm manic I believe psychiatry is like a bullshit mystery religion where the doctors are high priests, medication is the sacrament. Nurses would be like deacons in a church. And the volatile masses, seeking relief from their emotional wounds come piling to the temple day after day, seeking absolution, resolution, evolution and a revolution. I think one reason some sections of the public have become disillusioned with psychiatrists is because they have gone to them for the wrong reasons, not to mention wildly unrealistic expectations.

Just seeing a psychiatrist is not any kind of medical treatment in itself. The psychiatrist prescribes treatment, which may be one of any number of talking therapies. Psychiatrists treat psychiatric conditions. Some such conditions cause mental pain, suffering or discomfort. But this is not to say that anybody in psychological pain, suffering or discomfort is in need of a psychiatrist or can be helped by them! In my experience, psychiatrists are pretty useless when it comes to "emotional problems". They're only truly in their element when dealing with psychotic illness that can respond to medication.

I'm so sick to death of talking therapies. What right has any professional to my personal feelings? Last time I had counselling I deliberately turned up late every time, in order to cut down our time together. Some days I just didn't go, as I resented having to declare how I felt when what I felt was SHIT and there was no explaining it. I don't believe the cognitive theory of depression explains all depression by any means. I vividly remember coming out of a depressive episode and being able to think "I'll go down town" without a sinking feeling coming over me. That is, when I was depressed, anything, any emotionally neutral thing that might excite, inspire or enthuse a happy person, gave me a sinking feeling, a feeling of dread, or desperation, or gloom. Or just despair. Going back into the depression these feelings returned. So it wasn't self-fulfilling prophecies, or predicting the future, or anything else cognitive therapists claim to cause depression. I felt depressed over the pettiest and most basic things. The feelings I had were independent of my thoughts, and I felt depressed over things that ordinarily bore no emotional charge. I'd love a cognitive therapist to explain to me how my thought process was making me depressed when I clearly remember the depressed feelings coming on their own. I didn't think "Oh I'll go to town" and then "but it will be a horrible experience; it's not worth going". That might be how I felt, but I never ever put my depressive feelings into such words. How can a therapist specializing in cognition battle something that wasn't cognitive? Depression is a feeling, not a thought. It's true that depressive thought patterns can become engrained. I once went nuts in a Nutter Club Meeting where this girl I liked complained that her counsellor had demanded she explain why she was having suicidal ideation when not depressed. I exploded that such ground-in thoughts are extremely common in recurrent depression and that any mental health professional should know this. This was another of those meetings where I dominated every discussion. I'm not looking forward to being punished FOR NOTHING tomorrow, forced to sit in a room full of surly shoplifters who are sorry only for being caught, who are victims of a repressive government that once prescribed heroin to addicts as a matter of course and now insists onn methadone treatment, a therapy that is unsuccessful in the vast majority of cases. When you're addicted to heroin, heroin is the only thing that makes you feel OK. Addicts aren't being unusually selfish in funding their habits; they're merely engaging in the fundamental human instinct to self-preservation ~ and yet they're being punished for this and forced to sit through sessions of brainwashing. Well I'm calling a spade a spade. The guy who does the sessions is very nice, so I will tell him what he is: a very nice brainwasher. There's no atmosphere of recovery in such "lessons" because nobody really wants to be there. Just as nobody really wants to be in rehab. They're only doing rehab because they got caught yet again and it's cushier than a prison sentence. Either that or they're just trying to get their kids back. You know ~ when the kids have been abducted by interfering social services. Probably because they didn't arse-lick or kow-tow to the social worker enough. So I'm off to be severely punished tomorrow. I'd much rather go to prison for 3 days than do weeks of these awful meetings. I think I'll tell that to the doctor. It's only fun when someone gets over-emotional, resents being told to switch their phone off, falls asleep, falls over, swears, gets into an argument with the invigilator or otherwise misbehaves. The actual content of the "course" is utterly predictable. That your brain is telling you that taking drugs is good because your brain feels good. That you can alter your habits and thinking patterns. That drug addiction is a cycle. Blah blah blah. All this is only of use when you have a genuine willingness to abstain. And then you're taking second best by going to these classes and not NA which is a hundred times better. So I'm jeapordizing my recovery just because I'm capitulating to an ignorant bullying system that doesn't care for my mental wellbeing one jot. Just wants to keep its own job and tick boxes on forms. THEY get promoted because of MY good behaviour. Eg not drinking. I'm angry enough with the clinic to drink on principal, to inject miniscule quantities of heroin and cocaine just to dirty up my tests and to give a breathyliser reading so I look dirty. I'm never ever going to act like a good boy for those patronizing bastards. See how they destroy everything that's good. By bullying me they only make me want to rebel. I don't trust them. I don't like them. I'm in safer hands with a heroin dealer on the street. Heroin dealers respect their clients more than methadone clinics ever do. Heroin dealers need their clients alive, to keep making money out of them. The methadone clinic just wants me out of their hair. Well they can spit on my grave. I'm totally sick to death of them. Ridiculing me. Patronizing me. Telling me lies. I can't wait to move out of this God-forsaken shithole I'm stuck in. To be away from this particularly noxious service. Even as drug services go they are particularly coercive and intrusive. Valium Marilyn warned me never to open up to them as they'd only use my own words against me and she was dead right. I have to get the hell out of this situation. I'd rather be in the nuthouse than attending brain-rotting meetings like this one I'm forced into going to. Any more of this crap and I'm making a formal complaint. My psychiatrist said that counselling wasn't a treatment he was recommending. Probably because he knows how much I hate it. Yet this place insist on it. I can't wait to get there and let rip with some home truths...


Illustrated: kuhli loach, one of my favourite tropical fish, though they always die; mass bullshitting session; furry entertainers; one-to-one bullshitting session ~ note the look on the therapist's face; the Hazelden Dual Disorders Recovery Book ~ I really wanna get hold of this... Something that might actually work FOR me not AGAINST.

SEND IN THE CLOWNS
... a really appropriate song...

Wind from the Anus

MY ANUS has been thurping and trumpeting away remorselessly pretty much all day through. I had to hide in the lavatory. Then I got reprimanded for talking into my phone too loudly. I was discussing "personal itching" and the benefits of yeast infection control which caused lots of suppressed smirky cackles. It's always good to have an audience on the old mobile phone ~ know what I mean? Specially when discussing Feminine Hygeine with a roaring lesbian.

I went to my Shoplifters' Relapse Prevention Group where everyone had to "sign in" verbally by stating name and mood. I was the ONLY one who said I was in a good mood. The entire session consisted of me talking at every opportunity because I was hyper and could barely sit still, let alone shut up. Then the guy spoke to me for ages after the sesh was ended. He was horrified at my 110mg methadone dose. He said I have to produce clean urines; then they'll reduce it. They'd bloody better. 110ml is far too much to drink of a morning. It gives me nausea and has probably contributed to my thunderous bowels this afternoon.

Ooo hang on I've got to quack another fart out.

That's a relief. Better out than in as nice old ladies say.

Honestly my backside has given me a subsonic rumbling time today. I was "passing gas" so profusely on my walk home I nearly got blasted under a truck by the sheer windy velocity of a "big one".

I think it's because I haven't eaten. I'm gobbling a Morrisons thincrust Tex Mex Pizza.

I felt so high earlier on I actually WENT OFF ALCOHOL. After all it's only a downer that slows you down, bogs you down and vulgarizes most people considerably.

I'm going to the next Shoplifters' Punishment Group. I call it that because a considerable contingent are being punished on probation and forced into attending. A great debate started up after I declared that in severe addiction, drug use is not a matter of choice: it's automatic. The only choice the addict exercises is the occasional perogative NOT to use. Using comes as naturally as breathing. And if you don't understand that you'll be constantly confounded by the behaviour of drug addicts who know they have other priorities: children, partners, rent etc. Yet drugs always will come first. Even when they don't, they're a close second. Without drugs, outings with the kids, Christmas, holidays etc become near impossible torture.

Oh what is this? I have the intestines of a prize pigfarmer. Thurping away like nobody's business despite the pizza. It's merely rolling mid-stomach on a cushion of sulphurous gaseosity. My anus is like a professional volcanic fumerole. After this chili pizza I'll have the craps like spraying lava to boot!

Well my body is so tired today I actually fell asleep at the traffic lights only to be woken up by some sarcastic Irish builders yelling something about elves under my garden gate. Something like that or maybe I'm just going schizo again. Anyway I'm gonna try putting my head down once more. I've only slept 5 or 6 hours in the last 2 days ~ way too hyped to sleep properly. I'm exhausted.

Too much excitement for one day. No wonder my bowels are trumpeting so poignantly!

Getting on better

I AM GETTING ON BETTER with my "horrible new drug clinic" thank God. We started out on about as wrong a foot as you can get.

Talking of creditors I did get a note from them yesterday. The real creditors. Asking me to call them. So perhaps some end is in sight. I am considering phoning them today. My support worker is supposed to deal with all that but I don't see him till Thursday. Maybe I ought to leave it till then. I'm just scared of coming back and finding all the furniture gone. Hey it's not my furniture so what am I worried about..? Still not good though, is it? I think this all boils down to the council tax, which I'm meant to be "severely mentally impaired" for. That phrase just means "disabled" and I found out I am counted disabled for going mad. Well I don't know.

Cripes! It is 0950 hrs I have to bolt down the methadonery and drink it. Like an idiot I scored heroin for the first time in over a week. Yes it's gone down to literally one use per week now. Wish I'd remembered I have no veins it was a total waste of time and I felt NOTHING from the £10 bag. Total waste of time. See if I can stop that once per week I can reduce methadone to nothing, too. The clinic doesn't like me using on a reduction that's why they won't reduce me.

Gotta run!




Frost's Scottish Anatomy: Methadone implicated in 1 in 3 drug deaths...

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!

70s sunglasses day

MY brown sunglasses have come through. Everything looks like it's in the 1970s. The moment I walk outside they start brewing up. Darker and darker. They're like the old Reactolite lenses, except these ones really do go clear indoors. When they're dark, I look Italian with them on.

I just got back from the horrible drugs clinic I have to go to. The dr asked when I had last had a suicidal thought. I said 2 weeks ago. Then I told my dr about my mind-wobble last week. I felt OK by the next evening, mood-wise. Not depressed at all. That's because my mood had spiked up in a very mixed up way. But my head is still unfocused. I try and think of something and think of something else. But I'm OK. For the last couple of days I've woken up feeling horrible, but I'm still not really depressed so that is good.

I couldn't think of much to say about Amy Winehouse because her death came as little surprise. Strange to think of the months and years I spent wishing for nothing but death by overdose or some other accident (not suicide) ~ and yet I survived! I always thought I had some reason for living; I just never knew what it was.

Now I have to go and purchase Mexican chili beef think crust pizza and cheese coleslaw. (It has to be cheese flavour). Not that I'm modern and fussy or anything.

There's a really good book in the library called Doctoring The Mind: why psychiatric treatments fail by Richard Bentall I think he's one of these people who believe mad people aren't really mad. Which, strangely enough, is what most mad people believe. Not that I'm casting nasturtiums or anything...

Illustrated: brown sunglasses (not mine, Calvin Klein's); nasturtiums

In which Gledwood says some more ratty things then tries to change the subject in order not to be too dismal

I WAS TRYING NOT TO SLEEP in order to reset my sleep pattern. It didn't really work because I ended up really tired lying in bed, woken by two people on my idiot phone, neither of whom I wanted to deal with. So I didn't deal with one and did deal with the other. Both probably wanted to borrow money but I don't mind lending it: I get it back next week ~ meaning I cannot spend it between now and then ~ and all is fine and dandy.

I missed the Horror Recovery Group Meeting this morning as I couldn't face it. Couldn't face the world. Couldn't face anything. I told my friend I was a manic-depressive and he said "yes, I know". I have been told I was bipolar since the mid 90s but I never believed my friends' diagnonsense. What did they know except having a mother and a sister with the disorder in one case, actually having it in another, and having spent over a decade in various mental units with depressive schizoaffective in the third. Most experienced nutters can not only spot another nutter at one hundred paces, but usually distinguish what flavour of madness they are customized by. And probably have a better grasp than doctors on what is real, what is exaggeration, what's a lie and what lurks hidden. Because mental states are far from straightforward. I call myself a manic-depressive now as I fit the descriptions in Emil Krapaelin's 1920 classic Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia for "delusional mania" (though I was hallucinating heavily, not delusional as such), even "delirious mania" (when you get so excited you go into frenzy and automatic behaviour takes over. This is when I was so out of it I was losing the ability to speak English and this is why the neighbours gave me a wide berth for weeks afterwards. Because I expressed what I felt. Loudly. And what I felt was loud, loud NOISE in my head. Like a road drill of manic euphoria perseverating through me. It's quite depressing to know you have gone mad and yes I will talk about it again because it's an issue still ongoing, still unresolved and not being treated. The one bit of consolation I found in that book was that I'm not the only one to have been depressed enough into believing ~ or more to the point, feeling that no method of suicide would ever kill me; that I was immortal. That even when I did finally submit to that train, I would lie by the trackside cold, wet and naked and in pain with trains rushing past me for ever afterwards.

This is what Kraepelin writes about "fantastic melancholia" (page 93)

The ideas of annihilation, alredy indicated in the foregoing pages, may experience a further, wholly nonsensical elaboration. The patient has no longer a name, a home, is not born, does not belong at all to the world any more, is no longer a human being, is no longer here, is a spirit, an abortion, a picture, a ghost, just only a sort of shape. He cannot live and he cannot die; he must hover about so, remain in the world eternally, is as old as the world, has been already a hundred years here. If he is beaten with an axe on his head, if his breast is cut open, if he is thrown into the fire, he still cannot be killed. "I cannot be buried any more," said a patiet, "when I sit down on the weighing machine, it shows zero!" The world has perished; there are no longer railways, towns, money, beds, doctors; the sea runs out. All human beings are dead, "poisoned with antitoxic serium," burned, dead of starvation, because there is nothing more to eat, because the patient has stuffed everything down into his enormous stomatch, and has drunk the water-pipes empty. No-one eats or sleeps any more; the patient is the only being of flesh and blood, is alone in the world.

I used to be obsessed with the idea that The End Was Nigh. That only suffering and death awaited us. That Armageddon was coming soon. And let's face it, something is drastically wrong with the world so there's some truth in that feeling (and these were feelings, not "delusions" that I had). I'm quoting the book at some length because finally, at long last, I find I'm not the only one to have thought the way I have thought, to have felt the way I have felt.

And people wonder why I continued taking heroin!!

The only food I can bear to eat these days is live yogurt. So my insides are very clean indeed. I felt as though I had no sense of humour at all this morning. But a couple of drinks and a shot of heroin cured that. The day is now tolerable. I don't know what I would do without my drugs. And I do want to live without drugs, no matter what you feel on the matter: I know. I only find it so difficult because my motives are mixed. Like I said I want to die clean. I want to die. We all want to die sometimes. Old people ill in hospital want to die. Young people, lost and abused, often want to die. We all want death at some time. Addicts are famous for their unwillingness to live life on life's terms. It's not death they're scared of: it's LIFE. So when I say I want to live, I'm not lying. My problem is, I just don't know how to. It would be so much easier to die. And the lower you go, the more death seems like the only sensible option. I've heard suicide described as an escape from pain. But I think if I killed myself I would be doing the world a favour. I'm only a drain on the state for money. I am a manic-depressive junkie ~ and this is the point I was making earlier on when I got distracted. A manic-depressive junkie. The lowest of the low.

Maybe that's why heroin addicts invariably crave death while undergoing withdrawal. Even the supposedly gentle taper at detox units is enough to induce severe melancholia in the susceptible. Ie me. Which is what annoys me about an African nurse, who has no experience at all of opiate addiction and probably none of mental illness telling me with a wide smile that the detox and rehab group session would be really good for me. This clinic I have no option but to go to, really sucks. I am never listened to. There is no dialogue. I wish the staff would do what they're effectively paid to do. Dispense methadone scripts and let you go home. The NHS could save a great deal of money if they would only install a swipe-card activated machine on the wall. It could spit out our scripts and then let us go our own way to sort out our own lives. The way we have to do, every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week that we are not in this clinic with its bullshitty group therapy and Nazi nurses.

You know why Buta was angry with me the other week? Because I came in, stone cold sober but zombified. I don't know whether I was depressed or not but all I did was act the way I felt. And I know now what that bitch assumed. That I'd been using gear. So she was persecuting me for being ill. Doing something no kinder than tipping a man out of his wheelchair and trampling all over him. That's what she was doing to me and I would love to be Christian and forgive her for it, but I never can trust her again. I always knew this clinic's agenda was to cut me off the methadone on the highest dose possible, to do all they can do to push me into suicide. That is what they are about. That is what they're there for. I want to make a formal complaint about them to the local Health Authority. If racist and homophobic language is forbidden, so should persecution of the sick be, and that's what they're doing to me. If I'm not sick then I'm simply a wastrel and I should die. This is the truth of the matter.

I need to get OUT Of this fascist drug clinic and ideally into one that is privately run. Or else I'll just get my script cut down as swiftly as possible because I would rather be off methadone and ill than on it and ill. I'm going to feel ill whatever way; whether I actually am ill or not.

Then I need to write all these amazing books. Problem with writing about myself is what you read here and what you've read for days. It puts me in a bad sour and aggrieved mood because I do not like myself. But I don't mind writing about other things. I never intended to be a memoirist though I did consider penning memoirs to make cash. What I'm doing now is following a passion of mine and writing for children. I looked around the kiddies' section of WH Smith, the major bookseller in the UK (though they actually sell more stationery and magazines than books). I looked through the childrens' books of the ilk I want to write. And was disgusted on the one hand and heartened on the other that NOBODY appeared to be writing anything remotely similar to my ideas. Nobody at all. So the field is wide open. I have bovver boots at the ready and I'm willing to give this nasty world what it fully deserves: I'm going to KICK IT'S FUCKING HEAD IN. Long as my book achieves sales into eight figures I'll be happy. What am I saying: nothing will make me happy, I know that. But I'm angry enough to be all loving and kind and spin enchanting webs of mystery and illumination for the inner child in us all and to spin this luscious entertainment forever on in glorious ever changing forms like shadow puppets playing the Play of All Ages against the wall.OK so I’m bracing myself again. To kick the world’s head in yet again. O Gledwood just write this fucking thing and stop fretting about it. All I can think is how I’m not going to children’s schools, not giving interviews. I think I’ll be like Lemony Snicketts or the other one and be a recluse. Better to put your energies into producing masterpieces than to do the rounds of primary schools full of screaming brats. Ukh. And can you imagine what the parents would think if they knew the author of this amazing non-wizard-oriented book was a dirty HEROIN ADDICT? Ukh! Beyond the pale!

Well I’ve said enough. Sorry this is a ratty post. Maybe I should start blogging about the world in general or just anything else bar my self self self; know what I mean?... Will anybody ever comment or are my posts now un-comment¬¬¬¬-on-able...?



CYBERNAUT: BOO MERINGUE (HYDROPONIX)



HALLUCINOGEN: LSD
unreleased "official short film" accompanying the track...



ETNICA: MOON INFLUENCE

Just another manic-depressive Monday...

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY. Sun is shining. Weather is fine. I have avoided purchasing sunglasses, radical hair dyes and canaries. I didn't avoid purchasing heroin but I've used it already. Felt no better for doing it. Won't be doing it tomorrow. I'm thinking of getting contact lenses again after finding out they're only £5 a month and you can easily make 3 pairs last 6 months if you don't wear them too heavily. It does seem ridiculous to be shelling out on pair after pair of tinted glasses when you can buy what you need down the pound shop. (That's what I used to do.) I used to have a vast collection of shades ~ and that's the biggest disadvantage of being a spectacles wearer: having to keep switching between prescription dark lenses and prescription clear ones. Or wearing those dodgy ones that go dark in the sun and make you look like a child molester. Don't worry: I have a pair on order but Specsavers aren't half taking their time processing it. Watch those children flee from those amber tints! I've still another week and a half until I can play silly games covering half the lens with a piece of card and watching the remaining half darken. Etc etc. As you MAY have noticed I tend to get consumed by these all-encompassing obsessions for trifling things. They usually begin while my mood is good. But I'm hanging on to the last vestiges of enthusiasm for the present one because it concerns self-image and I needed that new image DESPERATELY. Frankly I'd rather be depressed and obsessed by dark glasses than depressed and obsessed by suicide. I look around and cannot really see anything very positive. But I force myself to do the things I would do if I felt normal like buy food. Buy a film I wanted to see when it came out (Red: starring Helen Mirren as a machine-gun wielding pensioner). All that crap. I even bought an essential oil burner from the pound shop because it was blue. I don't even know where to buy the essential oils these days. I like the resinous ones from trees: frankincense, benzoin, myrrh (ie "church incence"). I don't even know where to buy a new washcloth because I haven't gone shopping for anything bar absolute bare essentials in ten years and my Mum used to buy me shampoos and flannels because I never bought my own. My fingernails were constantly black because my hair was so dirty. You see now why I cut it off: it looked truly horrible.

Pinky, by the way, thinks my natural colour looks nicer than the dye. She says I'm "dirty blond". Dirty. You can say that again. If I can, I'm going to clipper it all off leaving just a couple of millimetres platinum at the ends. That might look really good. (Might do....)

This morning, I met an alcoholic who never recognizes me. He had bags of clothes each side, which implied he was homeless. I did ask, but he didn't want to talk about it. A great lump over one eye and a heavily dilated pupil revealed that he had been in a fight. Yet again. I told him he looked like David Bowie. I told him he needed to see a doctor and he said "oh who cares" and I said "well someone should". But he was too drunk to get through to until I started saying "o wel wel bore da ichi gyd, diolch yn fawr nawr te" which means nothing very much in Welsh but he found it endlessly amusing. He went to school just over ten miles up the road from where I did. Last time I encounterd him he was swaying catatonically in Morrisons' toilets so drunk his eyes seemed lost in mid-space. When I said hello to him then he appeared very surprised to hear his name. Then was immediately lost back in his stupor. This man urgently needs to see a doctor. All I know about head injuries is, if one eye is dilated and the other normal and your eyes are pointing in different directions you need medical attention and quick. But he won't get it. He'll take medication all right. In the form of more booze. And he won't see a doctor until the police surgeon checks him out compulsorily on his next Drunk and Disorderly charge.

I'm still glugging away at the live yogurt. I've found a Polish brand at 79p per 500g ~ cheapest going. But it has no mood elevating properties. If only it did... I'm taking it to get rid of the two black eyes junkie look I've had since before I went on the gear. Heroin only made that look worse. So much worse, in fact, someone once said my eyes looked GREEN. That is, green bags beneath the eyes. Which would have matched my own sludge coloured peepers quite well.

Gotta go now. I hope y'all are enjoying mowing your lawns, repotting daisies or kowtowing to your bosses. Whichever you do.

Someone told me I should write a book. Strangely the plot of an amazing story came to me. More to the point the END of the story came to me. I cannot stand writing not knowing where I'm going. I've always planned my fictions like a series of shopping lists. I don't take voluminous notes. If you're going to write, write the bloody book I say. But if you can't see where you're going jotting down each paragraph shopping list style makes the writing very much easier. This is a children's book. The type you can write again and again and again merely altering the scenario. My best scenario has a huge gimmick only it wouldn't make a good book number one (as it couldn't be topped or bettered for one thing). So I'm writing the plainest most basic story first. Then they get more and more gimmicky and full of novelty as they go on. Of course I cannot reveal my Grand Designs to anyone until the writing is done. I did write a short story about a different character, but short stories are difficult. Before they've barely begun they're over with. Novels gain momentum as they go until the writing becomes effortless, but you don't get that with short fiction. So I'm writing novels for kids. I mean the 8 to 12 age group. I do believe the world of children's fiction needs a good slap round the face. And a departure from wizards. Children's book editors must be sick to death of would-be J K Rowlings. I'm the first me and I don't really want to go through the pain of writing my life story (I just liked the thought of profiting from my pain and being paid by Leonardo DiCaprio in the film. Or Paul Bettany if I had to be an English actor. Or Danny Dyer except he'd have to live up to his name and dye his hair ultimate platinum and get a personality transplant to play a white mouse like me.) Well I'd better go: this book won't write itself.

I chose writing by the way as it was the only meaningful activity I'm capable of doing to a high standard despite my bad moods.

I've got to go to the fucking methadone doctor tomorrow. Along with Duta. Which I find very oppressive. Meaning I cannot use a doctor for what a doctor is actually for: to confide in. I'm not prattling a load of positive-sounding shit for anyone. If they rile me to it I will tell them that I only want to clean up so I can die. That's about as positive as you can get, if you think about it. Means whatever mood I'm in I still wanna be clean. The lower I get the more I crave heroin. But this craving is tempered by a hatred of drugs and all they stand for. The more energy and oomph I have, the more vehemently anti-drugs I become. It's all good, you see.

Wish me luck for tomorrow. I really am not looking forward to this doctorly bullshit. Three whole weeks I've been at this shit-arse service and already it's time for a "review". Like I say this means an absolute waste of time. You can't say anything meaningful to the doctor as your pig-ignorant Worker is sitting there. Anyone who seriously thinks 110mg methadone is a high dose really needs their head testing. I cannot handle anything more than a few false smiles and meaningless pleasantries these days so if any more is expected I'm afraid Duta is going to be sorely disappointed. I might bring up the fact that the less heroin I have taken in the past the more mentally unstable I have become and that I want something else apart from methadone because methadone is causing mental derangement. If they won't listen, I'm considering launching an official appeal. I'll get myself a lawyer and everything. I think I am entitled to medical care appropriate to my case and I don't feel that I'm getting it. So Duta and Doc-Doc can shove that in their crackpipes and smoke it!


☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆



three trance classics ...

HYBRID: SYMPHONY 1997



THREE DRIVES: GREECE 2000



INFECTED MUSHROOM: MUSHI MUSHI

Another Week Ends

OK HERE'S THE MISERYGUTS WEEKEND POST.

It is raining.

I am miserable.

I rushed to the chemist. Drank methadone that made me feel SICK. Hung around in Morrisons not wanting to be there, not wanting to leave. I smoked a cigarette in the carpark and watched the sky interlace the paving slabs in puddles.

Oh yeah and the bitch doctor wouldn't see me yesterday because I was more than 15 mins late. This is the methadone dr. I'd already got my 110mg oil tanker sized script. (Well THEY insist, constantly, that it's a lot.) I feel absolutely nothing at all from this dose. It does nothing to stop me wanting to use on top. I'm totally against maintenance methadone I want take this toxin grudgingly and want it OUT of my system ASAP.

This doctor refused to see me. If the dr is late next time I come I'm putting in a formal complaint under disability discrimination legislation as I believe I'm being discriminated against for being a psycho.

Everyone who's been to my present clinic and my past one has the same opinion as me about this clinic. I was wondering how Valium Marilyn, who lives only three streets from me, manages to go to my old clinic when she too lives over the Border in the Borough of Nightmaresville. The simple answer is, she lied about her address. I'm thinking of doing that too.

I haven't taken any heroin at all. I haven't bought any birds. I still want that goldfinch-canary cross. He's stopped panicking every time I look at him. I think he wants me to buy him. I have a huge converted hamster cage with perches gleaned from the local park in readiness. I know the council will go nuts if and when his supersonically loud singing starts ringing out, because birdsong really does sound loud inside a house... but who cares? I've wanted a canary ever since I used to walk past our local florists who had one tweetling away like a bright yellow feathery Whitney Houston.

I had a good look at my neck yesterday. This exfoliation has brought up some fantastic veins there. There's one on the left hand side that looks as thick as electrical flex. Plus I have several thin ones at the front, and another thicker one on the right hand side. I've used the veins running from nipples to armpits years ago when I was addicted to putting crack in my heroin. I was such a junkie.

I read this back and I seem really cheeerful when actually I felt nothing but emptiness between waking up at 11, getting up at 12, visiting the methadonery at 12:30 and hanging around feeling ill in the rain ever since. I don't think anything will ever sum up how I feel (thank God). I'm bored of my new hair colour already. Fair do's it's better than the original chestnut brown (which had nasty grey streaks in it, I now know, having examined the carrier bag full of evidence). To be frank: the current platinum would look fantastic with conker coloured lowlights. If I thought I could do this PROPERLY so my hair looked varigated, like the feathers of a bird, then I'd go for it. Only I don't know where to get the shower cap and hook thing women use for this procedure. And I've never put tinfoil on my hair, ever. Oh yeah and I'm thinking of getting green lenses in my specks. Green against brown. Won't that look funky?

Here's a quote from Sectioned: A Life Interrupted by John O'Donoghue p132

Cerys takes a drag on her fag... I've never really heard Cerys talk at any length before and I sit quietly as she opens up.

"They're fascinated by the likes of us, fascinated by madness, by derangement, because we've been there, we've seen heaven and hell, joy and despair. It means we've got dimensions they've never even dreamed of."

She takes another languorous drag.

"We absolute fascinate them. The groups ~ therapy ~ working on yourself. It's all just crap. They're not trying to help us. No. They want what we've got, but without going through what we've been through. The doors of perception have been wrenched from our hinges. We've seen what no-one else has. But they're scared by the thought of that. They want to stay in control, they're too afraid to ever let go, of status, power, comfort. They're turned on by the idea of madness, but they just sink back into their conventional roles, their straight 'careers', their schtick. And do you know who's the worst? Dan Cassady. Because he's the one with the pwer. He wants to be the Good Guy, Mr Laid-back, Mr Cool. But he'll be the first to kick any oen of us out if we don't play by his rules. He's the one upholding the status quo, making sure we 'progress'. But progress to what? To everything we're running a mile from for Christs's sake! Everything that's screwed us up in the first place: crap jobs, a society that's afraid of us, squalid accommodation. He's fascinated, obsessed. But where he sees sickness, I see health. And where he sees insanity, I see wisdom. Dan Cassady is exactly what is wrong with the world. I'd like to open his doors, to just smash them all down."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

I've always believed bipolar "disorder" makes you more of a person. If your emotions run on a course from minus one hundred to plus one hundred, whereas a regular person barely ever dips below minus ten or exceeds plus nine then bipolar "disorder" is only going to make you MORE of a person, not less of one. Add schizophrenia to the mix and you have a very superior person indeed.

I've always suspected that drugs workers of the ilk who've never used, never watched a sibling or partner kill themselves with heroin. The ones who just take it on as a random job instead of being a librarian or a filing clerk or a plant-waterer. Those ones. They're just junkies by proxy. Too scared of actually taking the stuff. But just loving the vibe that surrounds it. Ie the exact opposite of me, who loved being high and hated the lifestyle. The way they talk about injecting as if it's freakery says everything. Heroin is a drug for injection. DOCTORS INJECT IT into cancer patients. When did you last see an NHS ward full of pain patients chasing the so-called dragon. Well then. Some reality check is required. As long as I take heroin I shall inject heroin. I never ever will go back to smoking it, which I only did in the very very beginning. And being as I no longer use heroin, I expect never to inject it ever again.

I'm only cleaning up so I can die by the way. I want to die and I don't want to die a junkie. So if you're wondering where the sudden motivation comes from: that's it.

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

All to the good?...??

MY QUEST for ever-perfect grooming goes on... with Elnett hairspray (found months ago on street) sprayed to front of head causing permanent pilo-erection. Paddster says I remind him of Billy Idol.

I've also done this trick I used to achieve with a crusty old washcloth but the cosmetics version is nicer. You exfoliate three times in a row with the grittiest facial scrub you can find and then continue to use this scrub every day in place of soap and if it works on you like it works on me you'll look a good five years younger.

In fact when I take off my dark glasses (I'm wearing them at all hours, to get full money's worth)... then stare at my blond microdermabrasioned image in the looking glass I look like an angel. My old look was something like an extra from a Hollywood bubonic plague epic. That kind of look.

So I'm doing all I can. I even wear P20 sunscreen (expired 2001) the sun lotion I took to Goa and Madras. It's so powerful you exfoliate (very important) then apply just ONCE to unmoisturized skin (why moisturize when nature provides something called GREASE??!) anyway so you put this stuff on once a day. It never needs reapplication and even if you swim all afternoon it only reduces 2 factor points to 18.

Oh and I eat pro-biotic yogurts and drink tiny mysterious vanilla flavour drinks that are so nice you knock back eight in a row, ya know, the type containing bifidus digesticus lactobacillus. That habit originated in India too. I came back glowing with health without my normal two black eyes look. Months of pondering ("was it the food? No. Indian farmers use about twenty times more pesticides"... was it the lack of cigaretttes? No. Ciggies are 15p a packet of 10 in Goa so we smoked three packs a day each... I did catch giargia food poisoning but I don't think that would make me look much healthier. Then I realized my biggest change in diet (apart from barely any meat at all for six weeks) was "banana lassi" morning noon and night. Lassi is Indian drinking yogurt. Live yogurt. So maybe there is something in this probiotic bullen-scheisse. I'm rotating brands to get as many "friendly bacteria" as my body can take.

Having said this I hobble up to my chemist's each morning, drink over 100 mls of pig-sick and spend the next hour wanting to puke. My sleep cycle is all over the place. A couple of days ago I was exhilarated to be dropping off at 5pm and getting up with the nightingale at 11. It meant all the bad films I'd missed while I was a heroin addict got caught up on.

I spent all day yesterday telling myself I wasn't really fighting incoming waves of depression, I was just PISSED OFF AND ANNOYED THAT SOME BASTARD HAD BOUGHT MY PET CANARY. The most beautiful one in the shop. Heartbreakingly, this little bird actually sang to me before I said goodbye. (Rather stomped out in fury.)

And if you're wondering how it sang to me after being purchased: this is the very crux of my irritation. The **** who paid for these birds left them in the cages on display so people like me could fall in love with their royal chirpiness only to be told "nah: the two that look like crash-dieting sparrows are on sale but some bastard's already bought and paid for the proper pair"...

So I'm officially feeling SHIT and it just goes to show, as I always knew, moods come and go. They have very little to do with anything else that happens because I've lived in a pigsty covered in cockroaches and been so manic I literally felt my body turning into cosmic energy. Now that's HIGH MAN!! I've also been depressed as can be when I had everything going for me. I frankly don't care any more. Oh and I did buy heroin this morning. And no it didn't make me any better at all. Best move I ever did was memorize the last arrivals and departures into and out of London. It means when suicidal thoughts strike late at night I know what time to lie across those rails. I give my odds of survival at 50:50. I have nothing worth living for. Not really.

Yeah yeah I can distract myself watching the news, smoking cigarettes, being glad I never bought a loudly chirping canary (recipe for psychosis) but deep down. No, I tell a lie. Barely a millimetre deep under the glowing exfoliated peroxided good health is despair just as black and pustulent as it ever was and I don't think it will ever go away. That's why I wanted to win the lottery. The proper Euromillions lottery, at least £100,000,000 lump sum untaxed. Then I could prove to myself for once and for all that happiness is a mere illusion. In fact when I think I'm happy other people think I'm mentally deranged. So what does that say about me?... More to the point WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT THEM??

Canary Craving

I'VE JUST COME OUT OF THE DRUGGIECLINIC where the local petshop is now selling brown-and-yellow varigated canaries for fourteen pounds each. Considering I have a large convertable hammy cage which with the removal of shelves and addition of perches would make an ideal home for Mr Chirper (see I've named him already: bad move!)... I'm highly tempted. I love songbirds. So to have one chirping its head off at top volume in my own home would be the most amazing thing. I know they're not the calmest of feathered critters, but I'd also really like to make mine hand-tame... Does anyone see any reason I shouldn't buy one? The shop's right round the corner. I have the dosh on me. I'm very tempted.

I just had a long talk with my Drugs Worker. I'm going to change her name from Buta to Duta. Buta, you see, means "pig" and she isn't a pig. She was just in a bad mood with me for coming in depressed to the point of zombification. Which I understand is going to be interpreted in a certain way in a drugs clinic.

The staff behind the counter couldn't believe it was me. The fact they remember me even though I've only had two appointments in the past month says something. I was a walking trainwreck. Or more to the point a haystack. Complete with scurrying creepy crawlies when you lifted the straw!

Duta was well impressed with my new look. She said I'm like a ray of sunshine. I get treated totally differently in shops. People I don't know talk to me on the street. Occasionally I catch someone gazing in my direction and think "what are you looking at, fucker?" then I remember how fantastic I look and my bad mood turns to good.

I said I was going to make an effort with Duta, didn't I? The effort has paid off. It woudln't surprise me if news of my distraught phone call to the manager got back to her. I think the effort now is mutual. We get on OK. And like the lady said, Duta is a nice person. We just failed spectacularly to hit it off on our first two sessions...

I woke up at 2 in the morning and couldn't sleep so I did a spot of cleaning, then I washed my hair. My fingernails were permanently dirty up until Sunday - with muck from my mucky old hair. Now they're perfectly clean. I can now wash my hair in two minutes flat. Wet it looks a pale lemon yellow colour. The new style dries off completely within 5 minutes. I absolutely hated having straggling long dirty dreary drippy hair. I hate long hair on men. I only let mine get that way due to a total lack of self esteem. Do you understand what I'm saying now when I say I just wanted to curl up and die? I had no interest in any aspect of life whatsoever, bar heroin. Yes I liked hamsters. Yes I posted music I liked. But without grains in my veins all this was meaningless to me and a lot of the time I really was depressed enough for life to feel vastly empty and utterly meaningless. The new meaning comes from me. By the grace of God I put it there by loving myself. The meaning of life is the energy of life. God is energy. God is love. God is the meaning of life.

Now I've got to go and daydream about little birdies...

Watch the birdie....

I NEARLY BOUGHT A TINY BIRDIE this afternoon. It was the only one left in the shop, apart from a cockatoo who kept inclining her head and whisping, "oh hello!" This poor tiny little blighter, who resembled an anorexic robin was fluttering to and fro between two tiny perches looking distressed. He looked in dire need of taming. I asked the man what it was and was told a golden finch or a redfinch. I can't recall which. But it was a boy bird, who would sing beautifully. The man only wanted £35 for him and they had a cage for £12 that would have suited him perfectly. I SO wanted this feathery little teletubby to brighten up my abode with a dawn chorus all of my own. I walked off to the clinic fantasizing about possessing this bird and telling myself how perfect my life would suddenly be if only I had this feathery entertainer in my house ~ the way compulsive shoppers have justified bizarre and/or useless purchases since time immemorial. Next to the petshop was a sweetshop with a bouncyball dispenser. 50p got me an ultra-bouncy spongey model. As I meandered down the street bouncing away I pondered my lot and suddenly realized my sudden bird obsession £35 + £12 cage + sundry seed sticks, spare perches et al... was all the doing of my MOOD SWING. That I really need to exercise more care and attention in these matters. And so I didn't buy and went to my new mental health clinic, and quizzed them on my new appointment. Then I went to my Stabilization Seminar.


Group therapy was FAR more entertaining than envisaged. The moderator had an attitude problem. So much so that somebody knocking patiently at the door for five minutes was studiedly ignored as clients' increasingly fractious demands as to why this person was not allowed in pinged about the room like a hoarde of escaped roborovskis. Eventually a sweating blushig cockney girl blustered in. One man was reprimanded three times for reading The Sun newspaper; two blokes wearing electronic tags were reprimanded for conversing about their crack dealer. An Irish tramp kept fallig asleep and was repeatedly told to wake up. Then blushing cockney girl took to crunching a packet of crisps at top volume.

I did say "don't knock it till you've tried it" and I'm so glad I didn't knock it. I've made friends with a South African alcoholic. I'm looking for the next meeting early next week.

Back down town I paid the opticians another £70 for glasses that darken in the sun. When I was into contact lenses I had the most enormous collection of sunshades that all got broken or stolen or left behind when I moved. So I thought I deserved at least ONE pair. The lazy old shop are taking THREE WEEKS to put a simple pair of specks together. I'm not happy about that. But they're paid for so all I have to do is be irritated every time the sun comes out between now and July 27th.

I'll soon be wandering the streets probably looking like an escaped paedophile. (Perverts wear brown tints don't they?)

Well I've got to go it's 4am. I bought some Valium in town and it knocked me out. I needed knocking out; I was wide awake ALL last night feeling hyper-diaper. I don't know whether it was post depression rebound or a touch of the manics. Long as I don't buy any terrified fluttering caged birds in that state, I don't mind...!

Everybody says I look unrecognizably well. Giving up heroin and eating cherries probably has a lot to do with it ....

And how was YOUR day..??!


I was talking about who doesn't have the best voice in pop (not Mariah Carey, certainly not Beyonce) THIS is the best:~