Not Feeling Well

I DON'T FEEL AT ALL WELL. I think a doctor would call it "depression" but it feels like so much more. Like something's gone badly wrong; that something is about to go wrong. That I can do nothing about it. I'm back on my meds, even though I hate them, even though I want to change tablets yet haven't a doctor who will do this for me because only a psychiatrist is willing to take responsibility and I'm between psychiatrists. I need a psychiatrist. I'm on page 315 of the book I'm reading or rather skimming through in French noting down unfamiliar words. Only another 50 pages to go then I'll be lost because "reading" this book is all I've done for the past week. It takes away the pain. I'm not sure I would have the verve to focus on a book in English. Not without whizzing through it on fastforward; the exact opposite to what I'm doing in French. Once I finish the present volume I'm meant to read it slowly from page one, homemade glossary in one hand explaining to me each and every single expression I do not know; but I don't know if I'm up to it. I can but try I suppose. I have to go now; I'm still computerless. I hope you all are OK. Don't worry about me I'm not doing or about to do crack; that was a complete abbarration. I actually enjoy being clean nowadays. More than I ever enjoyed being on drugs. In some strange sort of way. If that makes sense. More than anything I long for the end of my script; for the day when I'm finally methadone-free and everything-free and can tell myself that nightmare, 11 years and counting of constant opiate addiction is finally and at long, long last... OVER. OVER AND DONE WITH.

Sanity

I DIDN'T POST EARLIER because nothing was new and I don't feel well. I've scrapped two long posts because there was too much telling going on. I woke up at 4am going nuts and have since calmed down. The 1959 film starring Audrey Hepburn, Nun's Story, helped calm me. I was getting very manic, and yet still depressed. And paranoid to boot. I only went outside to clear my head out. I am getting free broadband from the library. My trainers have worn through at the soles, letting rain in. Now they smell like camping material that has been stored in a damp barn all winter. They need burning.

I don't know where I am going or what is happening. I am not well. Hey but I'm well enough not to do crack. Somebody offered me crack yesterday and I got more of a buzz knowing I could watch it and smell it being smoked right in front of me and not still not want the shit.

My biggest disappointment is that it has taken me so long to truly realize that heroin, far from helping me in any way, has only ever been one gigantic con. I cannot think of one single example of anybody whose life has been improved by the use of street heroin. I think the gear has just made me sicker than I would have been, because it's become a crutch. So I'm weaker, more vulnerable and more impressionable on a psychic level and that's what psychosis is: psychic overdrive.

I can never know what I would or would not be doing now without the "helping hand" of heroin but I don't think my existence would be the mess it has become on gear, I just don't.

So there's some sanity for you. I've put the rest of what I wrote this morning in cold storage because it's just more mad ranting and I'm fed up of being that way. I cannot tell what is and is not relevant in that state so I just say everything and edit nothing. Hence the literary mess that is me in a full-flown "flight of ideas" (as the doctors call it).

I hope y'all are well!


To those of you on far-flung shores, trainers are sneakers ~ and mine look a bit like this...


HUMATE: LOVE SIMULATION (PAUL VAN DYK LOVE MIX)



DJ TIËSTO: SUBURBAN TRAIN



ASTRAL PROJECTION: AURORA BOREALIS

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...

Black coffee

IT'S 1:57AM. Some coffee I drank went straight to my head. I only drank 2 cups, several hours apart. I thought it was meant to be good to drink coffee, because it's not alcohol. How come it has to disagree with me so..?? I felt more energized than euphoric and my mood plunged down. I found myself posting in somebody's comments about female drug addicts who have babies and the whole issue is too depressing for words. And I wish I hadn't posted up my thoughts about death and dying here. It all seems incredibly childish, I know. I don't know what else I would have posted though.

Tomorrow there is a Narcotics Anonymous meeting I can get to easily. So I'm probably going. I can't see any future in using heroin. Why on earth I ever started it, I'm not sure. That is a stupid thing to do.

I wish I would sleep, but it probably won't happen for a while. I feel like I've got a crack comedown: depressed and wiry at the same time. I never was a big crackhead. The effects of that stuff are so negative it was never something I wanted to have a big part in my life. I only say I was "addicted" to it in that I found it hard to kick it completely. For a long time I only bought one £10 rock a week ~ that's the smallest rock you can usually buy. I have barely any good memories of heroin and none at all of crack.

I lived in a crackhouse for a few years and saw what it does to heavy users. Even when it doesn't send people clinically psychotic it leaves lives in far worse tatters than heroin does. In fact I'd say that in the short time that I speedballed and smoked it heavily, it erased the small amount of joy that was left in the life of a heroin addict. It's nasty, nasty stuff; I wish I had never gone near it.

O well: tomorrow is another day.

PS: I just realized ~ methadone dose overdue. Dur. Hey I might sleep now...

No Crack Cocaine

SOMEONE WAS SMOKING CRACK right in front of me today and it didn't trouble me too much. He offered me a pipe and I refused. Crack plays havoc with mood, brings on or worsens psychosis. With problems like mine, it's the last thing I'd choose to use.

I did use heroin. I'm using it as an antidepressant because despite my mood picking up a bit over the weekend I'm still feeling down. I look to tomorrow and can't handle the thought of honouring any commitments. Not even going to the drug clinic on the 21st. I can't handle the idea of doing anything. When I'm with people I find it slightly stressful talking to them, but I feel better for being in thier company eventually, because they're my friends. Then I'm scared of them leaving me, of being on my own. I don't know what's happening.

I was so vehemently antidrugs not even two months ago, but I had a naturally "elevated mood" back then. I called it my "higher power"; my psychiatrist called it mania; NA called it crack addiction and backhandedly called me a liar for declaring myself crack-clean ~ which I was very much so back then; I've barely smoked any crack at all since new year going into 2009.

I missed NA tonight because I was with friends but they said there's a meeting in Central London they'd be willing to go to with me next week, so maybe we'll do that. Not much else to say; my brains have turned to porridge. I have to go; I just washed my hair for the first time in a fortnight and it's dripping all over me.

I suppose I crossed a bridge today because I allowed someone to pipe right in front of me and barely craved a go. If only I could confine heroin to that same dustbin every other drug of my past lives has gone in: cannabis, ecstasy, mushrooms, ketamine, LSD (in no particular order) and so on... Nasty stuff all of it.

As my head-shrinker, who's a consultant psychiatrist specializing in addiction and mental health dual diagnosis, the one who diagnosed me schizoaffective said: "you and drugs and drink do not mix"...

Illustrated: crack cocaine as it's packaged and sold in many parts of the United States, in a vial containing about 0.3g or 0.4g, about £15-£20 worth of the drug in UK terms. I asked an American friend why the vials and he said "so you can see what you're getting". Good point. Here in London it comes clingfilmed up so you could be buying anything. Heroin bags (same principal; coloured polythene) were originally called "joeys". A joey meaning "a stupid person". When you buy drugs you're buying a proverbial pig in a poke. You don't really know what you're getting till you get it back and actually try it... lovely business, innit..?!?

CYMBALTA COMMERCIAL
Cymbalta is the antidepressant duloxetine. I like the little tonkie doggie.
But isn't this voice-over offputting!!

No Broadband Still

MAYBE NOT HAVING BROADBAND has turned out to be a good thing; it means I'm overflowing with Things To Do for when I get it back. Reading Anna's book MS being the top priority. Anna wrote an entire book about her life. She has a doggie called Eleanor Rigby who appears in the coke binge. I'm not giving anything away Anna: that is the bit that came out on your blog, remember.

I keep hoping I'm in a better mood. E.g. when I woke up this morning splayed out backwards in an armchair I thought I was fine. Then I went out, got my methadone juice ~ back back BACK. Back to being tired. So it's three steps forward, two steps back.

I have been watching films on the German language setting to try and give myself an educational time. Night at the Museum II is good. Boogie Nights in German is classic. It reminds me of a film my exhousemate was watching once when we came round. That was called Total Anal 2 and featured some German dialogue. The word "ficken" came up a lot... And when I asked whether he'd seen Total Anal 1 he said no. I said won't that spoil the plot and he said "what plot!"

I keep thinking about crack cocaine. Crack, the scummiest drug on earth. Maybe it's because crack makes you REALLY high and I want to be high. Only problem with coke is, it's so jagged. Watching them snort away on Boogie nights you'd think it was some sort of Elixir of the Gods, not some horrible wiry uptight clenched in psychostimulant that just makes you extremely paranoid in the end. There were times on crack when I literally thought people were climbing the walls of my building to get in. No, I want a natural high (man).

Soon as I get broadband back I'll get back to everyone properly. Sorry if these posts have been unendingly dull for the past however long. Wasn't I more interesting ON drugs than off? See why I wasn't so much into stopping them? I felt like a black hole. Nothing there. That's why I pussyfooted around the issue of ever stopping heroin. There seemed nothing to stop FOR. Now I'm cleaner than I ever was before and more boring. And y'all wonder what I saw in heroin! It was the only thing that made life make sense. (How sad is that.) Then again if you think Life in this World is wonderful and you're not a heroin addict or certifiably insane, I think you SHOULD be certified ~ there surely is something wrong with you!

Well I have to go now, else I'll get terminated. Wishing y'all a cheery weekend :-)


Illustrated: this is allegedly a lorryload of cocaine!

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.

Antidepressants

I NEED ANTIDEPRESSANTS. But they don't work. They make me cuckoo (high). I have a great big crispy purple £20 note that could buy antidepressants in brown form. That one doesn't get me cuckoo. Crack and mirtazapine belong in the same category. Difference: mirtazapine (ironically) = more manic-depressive (I went DOWN on mirtazapine after going UP how crappy is that from something that's supposed to level you out?!) crack makes more paranoid. Extreme paranoia. I once thought people were climbing up the walls of the house and hid inside a home-made tent... the one you use once you're fed up of flashing at hidden cameras. That's nutnut for you. I never thougt I was a nutter despite all this. If I'd been a bit more naive I'd have blurted loads of this to psych staff years ago but I knew what paranoid/suicidal ideation meant. Knew what implied what and what they might eventually diagnose from what pattern. Because it's like joining dots. Akh I hate doctors. All I'm trying to do today is join dots of happiness. I have what they call a rapid cycle. That means I confuse myself because I don't know when Im up or down except when it's so extreme... I mean yesterday despite the nerves I was dunking biscuits while I shared at NA. All casual-like. (Manic-casual.) Not one person said anything except someone laughed knowingly. I'm not offended by THAT if I was I'd not have shared to start with. I didn't expect Absolution. Hey it would be funny if that person thought I was lying, would give me something to play up to. Sometimes I annoy myself by doing this; if somebody gets an idea of me that I don't agree with I'll show them the idea is true in the most ridiculous, eventually pantomimic way. When another person is there I never break eye contact with the first to shoot a look over. That gives you away. I do it like a professional actor, never once breaking stride, despite the ridiculousness. Usually I am pretending to be naive or stupid, my 2 favourite things I love to show people. I wear soft on the outside! Just like a tiger. All furry and cute. Nobody sees my teeth unless they rile me to it.

Did you know the lifetime "risk" of developing a substance disorder in type 1 bipolar (severe type) is 61% according to one study. I thought 50% sounded ridiculously small. I would estimate the true figure to be around 85 or 90%. 50% was supposed to be the number of bipolars who ever used drugs. Type 2 bipolar means mostly depressed with manic blips that never amount to full mania. I never got full mania until this year it's the only "up" I would recognize as illness because my head starts saying "power hour shower power shower" that's literally what I think and I say a mixture of things (incoherently, so I'm told that is with the topic jumping all over the place). I have every single diagnostic category among the 7 or so including reckless buying sprees (DVDs) I have so many they fill an armchair and they were bought mostly in 4 days. Great thing is EVERY SINGLE ONE is one I'd ring in the TV guide, so they're shit I WANT. Ben Hur I might not be in the mood for every day. Or Cleopatra. Or Dr Zhivago (a triple £5 pack) but they're there for when I do feel like watching lots of beautiful music and snow (Dr Zhivago) or Burton-Taylor (Cleopatra) or ancient stuff (Ben Hur). Shit no Gone with the Wind was the third in the treble pack, I hate that one but it came essentially free.

Does anyone care about any of this I can't think Up anything to say now so I'm going now.


Illustrated: famous people supposedly with bipolar. Vincent Van Gough is a maybe. Virginia Wolf definitely. Britney Spears absolutely no idea. Kurt Cobain: writing a song called lithium and then shooting yourself does not equal bipolar!

Plum Tree by Van Gogh, Japanese lettering even worse than mine

23:22 Schizoaffective Link. I still don't know what bloody disorder I'm meant to have or what the hell it actually is. [I got diagnosed schizoaffective.] I'm just NOT COMPLAINING that my main symptom is ELEVATED MOOD despite the fact that I had pretty full-blown melancholia this afternoon: exhaustion, Siberian low mood, suicidal thoughts, a feeling of intense guilt and wrongness and the idea that I would never ever feel any better about anything, by mid-evening I was fine by ten o'clock I felt a bit manic even..... PLUS I have "schizophrenia"..! Only fucking disease that made me cry just thinking I could have it and I fucking have it! No-one can ever say I was blowing things out of proportion again because I wasn't I was keeping something so fucking intense it was like a road drill through the head (psychotic mania) and keeping that like it was a little furry hammy in a nest, keeping that inside me head... ukk. How did all this happen?

SINEAD O'CONNOR: REBEL SONG
this is a traditional Irish ballad; despite the title it's more a lullabye than anything else

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 ...

5pm Sour

I CAN'T KEEP UP. I can't keep any buzz any happiness anything good that I feel, it just falls flat, like an actress in a long dress walking up steep stairs in high heels I fall down flat. I've lovely alcohol in my system but I just feel slightly drunk plus depressed. And I have to go to this doctor on Thursday and try not to present as a picture of self-pitying misery. If I do he will just laugh inwardly and think "bipolar". I feel like such an idiot for ever getting swept away on a high that was somehow of my own making, except I can't make it now. Trust me if anybody could get high like that the world would be full of hypomanic and manic individuals spending, bonking, dancing and wandering round in psychotic confusion, clothes inside out going "dib-dib-dib".

Ask any psychiatrist which mental condition they'd chose to have and I guarantee they'll all tell you "hypomania". That is mild mania: euphoria without paranoia, delusions or voices. So I'm watching Meet The Fockers and I still can laugh at Robert DeNiro and Barbra Streisand. If they can outdo Ben Stiller they're A1 comedians. So I try I do try I keep on trying. Where did I go wrong? Considering this was going BEFORE the heroin. I remember a friend of mine saying she wanted nothing more to do with me "while I was on drugs all the time". But I wasn't! It was mood swings she was seeing. Not drugs. I never was a druggie (a drug-taker; yes. A druggie: no!) I wasn't a druggie until I got into heroin and then I took heroin every day. Heroin flattened out my mood. No more depression. No more highs. The "high" of heroin is very mild and weak as drugs go. I only really took heroin as a chemical coping mechanism, not the indulgence people seem to assume it is. That rubbish about recapturing some original high is pure bumkum for me and most people.

Most people, self included feel little more than an indistinct wuzziness, a hot and itchy body and nausea when they first take heroin. More likely than not you'll end up with your head down the toilet, puking. Only when you get used to it: ie get hooked, do you get the full-blown opiate high. And that rapidly fades into an enhanced version of OK. I OD'd on heroin before I'd ever had a major habit, was in hospital for 2 days. And the high I got (in terms of strength, not niceness) was little higher than a 4 out of 10. Heroin feels weak. It feels clean and fluffy as fresh towels. It doesn't feel dirty or depraved and it certainly doesn't feel "hard" like a "hard drug". Crack does. Crack is drug-induced madness. Heroin makes mellow, gives very little but takes much. It takes away pain. It might eventually take your life. So this feels like it's come to and end. See ya later.

Illustrated: what Americans call a pratfall. Looks better when a pretty girl does it

Valerie's Prison Diary

AUSTRALIA'S "CRUELLY IMPRISONED" HOUSEWIFE CHINA WHITE QUEEN, major supplier of Heroin to all of Down Under including New Zealand, has been tapping those blackberry keys in the direction of Anna Grace, her "partner in international narcotic crime"! Part of what she's doing is thanking Anna for a 6-kg "loan" of Colombian White Heroin. Here's the jizz:~

Valerie said...
Anna, Sweetness

Are you seriously after a bare-ass spanking? Me with my pingpong bat? Post some new revelations from the Dark Side of the Gear Spoon.

Listen honey you're doing that poor little mite Gledwood's head in here. Every fucking message that tosser writes comes up on MY blackberry now how wires got that badly crossed I haven't a clue, now it won't stop chirping at me all hours like a deranged cicada!

Well it's all news from here in Sydney Women's Punishment Centre. We're being punished so severely we're off our tits on China White and Crack. Constantly. At least I am, as I'm the Fucker in charge here.

Ho Ling is Dealer to the Stars. She actually shots the deals out. Fat Trish holds on to a lot of shit that isn't stored in Ho-Ling's filing cabinet of private parts. Do you know she even seems to have BOOK SHELVES up there..??! You say "listen honey, here's the gear, here's the crack, here's the sleepers, here's the whacko stuff (got in a few designer drugs to perk up our Dull as Dishwater evenings)... say "oh Sweetness, 2 pieces H, one crack, a rohypnol and a Blue Mystic and there they are before you can say "cockadoodle-do!" she's produced 'em from her "tuppence". That's what me old ma used to call me private parts when I was little. Ho Ling can carry several million units of LSD from a minor European country to here in that Wonderworld of hers, but she's very angry I even suggest the idea so THAT one's out (till Ho Ling's desperate for a year's constant supply China White heroin + yummy coke!)

Now Baby on to your shit. Honey you're back using again; shit happens.

Are you really unhappy about it? Or just unhappy being slammed for telling us?

January 24, 2011 6:54 PM

Valerie said...
That might make a one of those delicious posts of yours. Your attitude to heroin. Mine goes: take as much as you possibly can each and every day. Life's too short. Cracked off ya tits feels wonderful. Which is why when I'm at home with Brucey the little darlings actually live in a separate dwelling next door with their Chinese nanny. Takes the stress off our constant piping if ya know what I mean.

Plus it gives us REALLY WELL EDUCATED kids: they're fluent in Chinese!

Barely speak a word of English, mind. Chinese they can do marvellously well. So the future of Double UO Globules for future generations of Australian fuck-ups looks pretty wonderful.

Thanks for the six kilos Colombia's best Poppy Power. I'll reimburse ya with 10 units 999 or Double Lion, take ya pick. 10 units is seven keys so I'm giving you one extra honey-buns.

Your Mr Kim is doing extraordinarily well, pottering innocently about in that minefield-protected hut, humming incomprehensible Singaporean Chinese pop songs as he effortlessly transforms dodgy H3 into yummy A Grade China White Heroin!

I've had a little taste. A few tastes even and darling: Best Batch we've had in ages!

Thank you so much.

And re that $25 million US don't worry. I'm 17 million euros better off thanks to a little scheme I'd better not get too into here. Something to do with an Ecstasy Factory in a former Soviet Republic making an absolute fortune for ME ME ME ME ME!!!

They don't call me Queen of E for nothing (let alone China White!!)

Now I'm off for fucking lunch with 3 bitches who hate me. Something to do with my having gone for one with a certain sawn-off domestic implement and having told the other two they'd wait for later.

The Governor's being Real Nice to me these days since that half mil US in bribe dollars hit her offshore account. Finally the bitch is stressing less. Less stress for her means less stress for me. She's even letting me browse the old WWW from her swivel chair when she's home for the night (which is a sadly late hour, often past 10pm since the sad fucker hasn't a life).

Now Anna post some delicious details of your funky life. For me. For that fucker Gledwood if you have to. For yourself to "say where you've been" as Gledster puts it. (Been in too much counselling that one: know that bullshit when I hear it.)

Now on with the story Sweet Pea. On with the story. On on on.

WE'RE WAITING!!

xOxOxOx

January 24, 2011 6:54 PM

Crack/Addiction/Doctor Rant

Diagnose diagnose shove it up your nose. Here's my suggestion to anyone working in mental health apart from Lizzie. Do some coke, read this, get a life http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/146/4/459
Yeah my thoughts are all mixed up. And I know it.
They say I have "good insight" "good reality testing" those things. [Well I hope I do!] That's what keeps me out not in. Otherwise I would have been committed to psychocentral long ago. I don't want to be in Braodmoor that is a prison for the criminally insane. I used to think I was gonna get set up falsely accused. Happened to me enough when I was younger. Accuse anybody of anything and yeah they will "look guilty". do me a favour. i was going to come up with a string of links but really cant be bothered now i had osme point i have gone past the point Talking Past the Point. Remember that one from somewhere. Know something about something. PSYCHOLOGY did you know I once wanted to be a psychologist. Not Abnormal Psychology which is half-brained psychiatry (wanna be a psychiatrist BE a psychiatrist, not a psychologist it means you're too thick to do a medical degree, in essence) what I wanted to explore was "individual differences" which means Personality and what distinguishes one person from another person. Their ways. Their means. Their Power. Their powerlessness (learned helplessness is when you torture someone, torture a rat every time it tries to eat and it'll starve itself to death ~ big wow yeah a lot of SYMPATHY goes on in psychology so if you ever think DOCTORS ARE BASTARDS think of what went on to get them where they are today re what they know and where they go. Their attitude to addicts I will not get into. Read Sids blog re him as junkie speaking to medical students. They didn't know fuck all. One TRAINED DOCTOR didn't know what DIAMORPHINE was diamorph as used in actue and chronic pain management, diamorphine as in street heroin, diamorphine as in addictive drug diamorphine as in medicine, diamorphine how the hell can you be a doctor and not understand the difference betweeen [morphine and] acetylated morphine which is diacetylmorphine aka diamorphine (the deacetylation is said to be a lot of the heroin rush) how can you not know that that is utterly inconcievably stupid sorry to say it. Brainy as you get and utterly thick. Typical doctor. In America they're even worse. Anna Grace has been treated so shockingly I wouldn't want to meet the people who did it to her. I think I'm very self restrained but I don't .... what about Silk Taffeta in an American detox clinic detoxing off benzos watching fellow patients FITTING OUT that's utterly stupid. Let someone have one fit they're likely to have seizures again, to become epileptic. Different drug, parallel situation: CRACK COCAINE. In my day (when I started smoking it) the crack was most definitely better than now, stronger and better and I'm talking about how it vaporizes (should melt easily), how long it smokes (shorter the better) etc etc + fact that we weren't breaking rocks up we piped the whole £10 0.2g rock which gave me chest pains and earringing, echoing noises and one time at least a blinding white light into which i vanished into Crack Land zooming out down a Loony Tunes tunnel with My Big Issue (homeless magazine) selling friend at the end of it that was Proper Crack that's what I thought of as Piping. You can literally KILL YOURSELF smoking like this. That's why my heart flapped against my chest like a trapped pigeon. You can GO INTO SEIZURES which my ex had done. Then, years later, she was seeing a neurologist for fitting out. Petit mal in her case. I remember her just blanking, eyes rolling back. I was high but not too high to be bothered. I yelled look at me and held her head and made a drastic V right to her eyes yes I do have self control to Stop At The Right Point I didn't and had no intention of harming her. Point was she didn't flinch. Wasn't acting. Didn't look there. Wasn't there. BECAUSE OF CRACK. It is evil nasty stuff. The vibe surrounding it is nasty. The people surrounding it are patently nasty and if you don't see that take a step or two back. Part of the process of de-addicting yourself involves perspective. If you have no handle on normality or morality or whatever else you'll have no other seat to sit on bar the Addicts' Chair.
Crack is the absolute last thing I want or need that's why I was yelling aobut it down the phone to psycho stone-throwing friend. When he did actually throw a stone at my window even though he'd said he'd do it it was SO LOUD I YELLED AT THE VERY TOP OF MY VOICE YEAH I'M COMING I'M COMING OUT ONE SECOND!!! and i was TRYING to calm down for this magical mystery tour that involved four of us. I was merely passenger. I don't care whether they bought Brown or White (heroin or crack) I didn't ask, didn't even wonder [which is why i note this down: first time ever i've been in a car, someone's got out, i knew it was to score drugs once id got my head round the idea he wasn't running away, and didn't think about, wonder, want what/when/why/any part of it. and if you cannot believe that that's your problem not mine]. This is why NA piss me off, tell a story like that they'll assume it's a tale half told they DON'T GET IT. HIGHER POWER. That's what keeps you off drugs. a Higher Power. They say it themselves. There are 3 Higher Powers: the Power in the Room at an NA meeting, God Almighty, creator of heaven and earth and all of us (I think God is the original meaning of Higher Power but wasn't there so how do I know?) and lastly the POWER IN ME, THE POWER IN YOU. That's my Higher Power and that is more Powerful than Me and more Powerful than You and More Powerful than Heroin or Crack or any other Drug.
I find it hard to believe a reforming addict, "Recovering" as they say. How can they not get that. But they don't. And they don't get me. I'll keep coming back but I'm telling the truth next time. Have had enough of being misunderstood.

OK Crack/other rant over.
Delightful comments please!

Link click Silk Taffeta above, you get the full Xanax Withdrawal story, click this one and it's to Anna and me re Trainspotting

ukk i only read over this enough to find highlight and do the links no i don't hate America I only hate certain aspects of their legal system and medical system and some aspects of their system re drug addiction, it's not like here and here isn't like other places
one reason i wanted to go abroad is because i'm Sick To Death of the British Govt and feel when you're in a foreign country that is Their Government and Their Way of Doing Things you focus on the positives not the negatives. Unless you ARE RANTING ABOUT DRUG ADDICTION where my small irritation becomes explosively relevant. Plus I'm really pissed off at how my friend was abused and mistreated. She is American. She is my friend. Anna. My Best Friend.

AUDIO BULLYS DRUMS (ON WITH THE STORY)
Thanks LIzzie
i love this tune, it's amazing, this is the best one so far. it doesn't start dancing till about 2 mins in



AS YOU CAN SEE FROM THIS I THINK COCAINE IS SUCH A WONDERFUL GOOD IDEA, TAKING A DRUG THAT FITS YOU OUT, GIVES YOU HEART ATTACKS, ADDICTS, MAKES HOMELESS, RUINS MARRIAGES, LIVES ETC. WHICH IS WHY I WAS SO OBVIOUSLY TOTALLY SERIOUS WHEN i SAID "DO SOME COKE"
KKKKKHHHHHHHHHH
i have to be so careful

i don't want some kid to read this and think "drugs are a good idea"

yeah right yeah so bang on yeah yeah look what they did to me

i'm so........... (fill in the blank ya self, lazy fucker!)

14:00 ha! i just linked up Broadmoor Hospital should i read not read cant be bothered reading something so boring. imagine that the absolute pits. got nuff of me own mate dont need yours. someone else read it

NA/higher power (but not a whole hour)

o AM I MEANT TO GO TO BLOODY SLEEP and why is this thing set to caps all the time

wow the computer just threw an eppie and did lines all over the place. i think the computer and my brain are interwired. why did trisch li go and die? i don't obsess about anything FAR TOO much else going on and on in on around and UP UP UP i spent more time looking at the ceiling where i am going than i ever have + pointing at it unconsciously then thinking "do not point at the ceiling you nutter!"

i am a bit calmer. i went to na

i thought the last post was calm then i read back over it ti doesn't seem that way

i am trying not to spin sideways into the bingbontingtong rhymestimes imes thingsings ya know. I only put that to show you what I mean. Before I just wrote as I thought that is what was happening that is all i could say contrary to popular belief i am not into excessive self analysis the dr nurse person man yesterday forced me to give a life history kept saying "we have 45 mins to give your entire life" as a way of making me focus going fast was not the problem i went ultra ultra fast faster and faster every time i am stressed i go even faster until its a food mixer the sound of a blender going faster and faster and setting UP UP UP spinning faster and faster and louder and louder that is what i do. not just what my head does what i myself do. THAT is my HIGHER POWER.

that is why i am eternally grateful for being mad because being crazy is FAR better than being on drugs. it is FREE for a start free free free 4 me me me he heee!! EXCELLENT STUFF!!

being mad took me away from heroin, heroin had addicted me like nothing else i have ever seen in anybody else except one person my friend lucky she is the only person i ever met or knew who i culd look at and think "that one's got it worse than me". or even as bad as me. she had a 35 yr + habit, was old enough to be my mum, dealing (or sorting out deals) let her home be used as a crack smoking venue (more than a crack house, as such, there was none of the outofcontrolness of a crackhouse as i know a crackhouse (bear in mind if you don't know, these often belong to "vulnerable" people housed by the local council who let in a nasty dealer who pays them in crack and/or smack usually both. feeds their habit. fucks them around they lose the key to the door. the dealer may even leave them sick when there's a house full of peple using using using in every room you cannot get rid of them they live there on and on it gets totally uncontrollable THAT is what often IS a crackhouse ther are other patterns but i won't waste an entire post telling every in and out of every bloody thing i'll never stop.))

wow i remembered 2 brackets not one. and i remember to close them. that means i'm coming down

only i don't WANT TO COME DOWN THAT MEANS BEING DESPERATE MORE DESPERATE THAN EVER I WAS FOR DRUGS ABSOLUTELY ABYSMALLY DEPRESSED AND TOTALLY UNHAPPY AND NOT COPING

(and no professional ever giving any help though i was desperate for somebody to just do a few basic things in my favour. not give me a life. not wave a magic wand. just vouch for me on forms. say this person needs this to person x who arranges y. THAT type of thing)

you see the trouble i have i was very close to taking a shower with clothes on this morning because shower, turning on water door clothes me closed in door shower in doors all at once wet as you can get and my head going oingoingoginoginogingoingoingoingoinngoi
like that THAT is why i could would have got in a shower with clothes on i fucking despair of myself
no i didn't do that i give you an illustration
so if you hear me say i need to do this and i cannot do it
that is what i mean, i give an extreme, an extreme day but it goes on has gone on for every day for months on end years on end nothing getting done that needed doing. not properly.

do you see? what i'm trying to say is that i knew i had a problem and i tried to fix it in an adult way and somehow the fixing never came to gether and i feel bitter at professionals who i did tell about this repeatedly as somebody who feels worthless as dirt can insist on anything
even though i could smile
i can smile when i am depressed
it is called smiling depression
it is Japanese
i am japanese in culture ie: i smile when upset; when i nod my head i mean i hear you not i agree those are the 2 features i recall

this guy yesterday asked me to go through my life in some detail saying when depression, voices, too fast too high and too paranoid all started and all separately it was the voices i remember when when a thought first echoed. prozac 1995. age 23. a mild thought echo as he called it. like i think, another voice echoes it back or the last syllable. in my head. and blah blah blah ting tong

the worst thing i remember because of him is me being in a state where i was hearing voices but they were not like bad not bad i heard them i felt very negative though but not because of the voices i was very very down i went to the railway station a few times one time the driver saw me and waved arms at me don't do it in that split second he saw something in me what? I cannot could not still cant work it out. to be doing that i must have been absolutely fucking desperate. yet he says i was using heroin as a mood muffler.
WHAT ON EARTH WOULD I HAVE FELT IF NOT ON THE HEROIN?
this bothers me now because i'm not on heroin, terrified to death of being depressed when it gets that bad and went on and on for months into years
i cannot think of a single period over 18 years when i haven't had this in some way, no clear time lasting more than a month or so
so i think this is my entire life
it isn't a question of give up heroin all will be fine
i always knew this

I DIDN'T KNOW IT WOULD BE THIS EXTREME

get me now?

this is what i was scared of. i CAN FACE MY FEARS HEAD ON fear is not a big issue for me
OTHERWISE I'D BE BACK ON GEAR WOULDN'T I?

what i feel is hacked off, confused and terrified of coming down off this this i'd rather stay crazy than be like that

i know i sound desperate

at least i am surviving.

i am a survivor

never wanted to be, but knew it all along

23:52 I have well am just about to take zopiclone 7.5mg number one. there's a cup of black coffee there why did i make it. wasn't intending on sleeping. i spose i have to be grown up and try and sleepi dont want to sleep i bet this is going to back fire horribly i will end up like i was on sunday not able to face my own house through misery akkikh just swallow the stupid thing swallow it swallow DO IT

throw away the coffee. what am i saying i never throw anything away it's going in the fridge

23:57 coffee in fridge; zopiclone down throat hurrah!

(I hope!!)

Medicinal Heroin Binge

TO ANYONE WHO PERUSED my last-but-one post, "in answer to some comments" I'd first like to point out my rantings were not a personal attack on any friends or commenters. Not a direct attack; not a sideways swipe. Passive aggression (where you express anger obliquely, then deny you're doing it) is not my style. If I have a problem with someone I tell that person ~ it's the only way of doing it. Some of your comments did touch a raw nerve and that is what I was responding to. The fact that I'm me... not me... who am I?

The crux problem I had with heroin was that, apart from killing my pain, it held me very much together as a person. On gear I felt whole. The way other people seemingly feel.

Without gear I am Consciousness Aware of Passing Impressions. I'm expected to behave like and vouch for being "Somebody" but I do not feel like somebody. I feel many things at many times. I don't add them up. Somebody else might try to. Sometimes I have to account for whoever that person supposedly was, what happened to them. That's when it gets confusing. You see that's outward pressure to account for myself, to explain the inexplicable. It causes untold stress.

People seem to read into my words what they perhaps might feel had the words been their own. You need to be careful of doing this. Oftentimes I am comfortably numb. I never needed heroin to induce this and that puzzles me.

What heroin did do was give a certain confidence and a togetherness I had never in my adult life. That's why gear was so addictive. Whenever I tried to give it up, I (unwittingly) gave up my whole life also.

Far from over-analysing or ponderously dwelling on the issue of my life and feelings and future (the way many have assumed I do, probably due to my question-answering style)~ I realized in rehab that I actually hadn't the faintest clue what on EARTH I was going to do afterwards.

I was jumping blindfold into icewater! No wonder I ran out the door within half a week both times ~ despite immense preparation in the form of regimented drug-reduction, especially the second time. Despite what I'd assumed was motivation enough, I simply was not ready. Not the way I needed to be. I just did not know what I was doing.

You might also bear in mind that when I write, I use a naturally analytical style. This doesn't mean that I spend hours pondering myself in this way too!

People sometimes assume that because I write a certain way I must inevitably spend hours picking over my life in this manner too. That simply is not true. If I say I feel lost, I'm expressing a feeling. I don't wander about telling myself "I'm lost I'm lost I'm lost". I only say "I'm lost" when I talk to you.

At the extremes of experience I've found myself thinking far too quickly to ponder anything much. (That "breakdown" not long ago was like a tornado. Some of you read my words and appeared to assume I was more grounded than I really was. I was whirling a good one hundred times faster than usual ~ literally! It felt fantastic! But is not too conducive to self-examination.)

At the other extreme I slowed down and barely thought at all. My writing style cannot not reflect my minute by minute thinking style, unless I was willing to post near-blank pages or ones full of badddadah-dah-DING! Which is what my mind started doing when I was a little over-"manic". Perhaps that's my problem: if anything I ought to engage my brain MORE, not less!

On Sunday afternoon when I was tripping (on nothing; I've not taken psychedelic drugs in about a decade) and the Scouse of the South came blaring out a broken intercom I finally got fed up of people thinking I had DTs or needed Lithium. I popped some Librium which didn't really do much. My so-called Friend put pressure on me to find heroin. This was impossible, I said: it would be tiny, weak, money down the drain. He didn't care. Eventually to great irritation, which spilled into a dur euphoria (because I'm me and I am dur) heroin arrived. I took heroin. It was rubbish. I scored more that night and that was OK. Then I scored again and again and so I've done a lovely heroin binge.

And do you know what? The voices that were chattering away at night have vanished. (So much for drug-induced psychosis. If you wanna use the dreaded psycho-word this is a drug-REMOVED phenomenon. So the psychiatric industry can shove that in their crack-pipes and smoke it! Suddenly I feel put together and sturdy and strong again. All the reasons I got into gear to start with are revalidated.

Mental health nurses at the clinic will limply coo "ooo you're self-medicating" ~ yet they NEVER offer any alternative course of treatment or action. When I got into telling something particularly involved they crossed legs, leaned forward with a look in their eyes as if something really good was playing out on television. That's all I ever was to those people. Free entertainment.

Though I am supremely annoyed at this "Friend" for pushing me in that direction and will lance hi with expressions like "No ******g respect for MY feelings or MY sobriety," next time we meet, I am not "going back on gear" for anybody's sake. I took what was left tonight. I made sure I used it all. When it's gone ~ that's it.

I got a fantastic practical boost from heroin: it put me together enough to clean and tidy my living space back to the bounds of normality. Without it one disparate aspect of me nags "You've got to clear up" yet the other is not listening. I went on nagging myself this way for days, weeks, months with little-to-no avail. I could tell Mental Health Staff and this would provoke loads of engaged scribbling. With no benefit whatsoever to me. I don't care any more about my convoluted notes. I want RESULTS. Doesn't it come to something when only heroin will fix me?

Yes I could have not taken it. And I'd still be in a mess. I wouldn't have slept (I didn't sleep before). Less than a third as much would have been done (that's what happened last time). And my fractured less-than-self would watch caring-uncaring. Who cares anyhow? All I need do is get this task done. It's done enough now that I never need repeat that pharmaceutical relapse. I'm not offering an excuse for having used. I'm merely telling how using helped me. I only took heroin at all because it helped me a lot.

I was no longer crying. On heroin I was a whole person.

I'm willing to fracture up again, that's the inevitable result of pulling the plug on diamorphine. Please don't assume I'm telling you I suffer horribly. I feel nasty when I'm depressed, that much is true. But did you know, when I'm severely depressed it actually feels, in a paradoxical way, not as bad as moderate depression? Moderate depression, to me, involves constant impulses to suicide. In severe depression the suicidal idea is gone because there is no Life. Life is finished. I'm Finished. It's all over. "Rock Bottom" ~ if you want to use that phrase (personally I detest it). In this state I never even saw myself as depressed until afterwards. To me, I was in spiritual crisis. I'm no longer scared of going there because there are plus-points. While desire has gone, so has any sense of life. So I no longer desired to use. At long last I was free. The blackest stormclouds have a silvery lining. There's something to be gained from everything everything. Severe depression freed me from the constant craving to use ~ and for that I shall for ever be grateful.

Which is why I'm not scared. My life is a journey and I'm not even half done. This I am well aware of.

Just because my life is coloured in different hues to yours doesn't make me ill. I know that doctors could well see some of my experience as a mental sickness, but you need to throw out of your mind the idea that I suffer more than anyone else. I really don't think this is necessarily true. As mentioned earlier, I believe some of what's uniquely me is just a nonstandard coping mechanism. I don't walk about telling myself I'm ill. I only feel ill inasmuch as stuff has needed doing for a long long while, yet hasn't been done. No matter how hard I've tried to engage I've so far failed. The room-cleaning was a big one. If I can get this done, I'll be OK. A pigfull of meat shall slither off my shoulders. Then some other person can bring home the bacon.

You see it's not "feelings" that bother me, it's DOING. There's so very much I need to DO DO DO! Time is running out.

So that's my new question: how do I engage a disengaged person without using heroin in the process...? Surely there's some magical method? Some shortcut. Some effective way?

I very much appreciate the Answers I got back on Happiness. Thanks to Akelamalu and others, I made a decision to take a volunteer position at a Hospice. I have never in my life set foot in a hospice, but I believe passionately in what these organizations do. When people are terminally ill there comes a time when Doctors ought to just leave well alone. Stop their needlesticking, blood-letting, scanning, operating, endless interfering. Stop the painful tests, painful chemo, burning radiotherapy. Stop tormenting the dying and leave them in peace ~ dosed up on painkillers, tranquillized and happy as the chemicals can make them. I'd want this for myself. I'd want it for my friends. I'd want it for my loved ones.

I always donate to the hospice charity first when I'm giving away clothes etc (I find vast amounts of clothing on the street that doesn't fit me, so it's always trotting into that shop). I'd love to see how a hospice is actually run. Surely it's a privilege to spend the last days and hours with people who are dying. There's nothing maudlin or morbid in this. To be able to bring comfort ~ or even joy ~ to anybody's final moments would be a great honour.

So these are my feelings on feeling and not feeling, and on gear. As I said, yesterday's post was not a personal attack on anybody who commented, it was merely inspired by your remarks, so please, Syd and others don't be offended. No offence was ever intended.


PEACE, LOVE AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

LINKS: HEROIN AND METHADONE AS ANTIPSYCHOTICS AND MOOD STABILIZERS

1: Methadone reduces the need for antipsychotic and antimanic agents in heroin addicts hospitalized for manic and/or acute psychotic episodes

2: Use of methadone in the treatment of psychotic patients with heroin dependence (abstract)

3: Heroin and psychosis (antipsychotic effects)

4: Heroin improves negative symptoms of schizophrenia

5: Methadone as a mood stabilizer in bipolar disorder

6: High dose methadone as antidepressant and anti-anxiety agent

7: Heroin reduces auditory hallucinations/80mg methadone prescribed as sole antipsychotic


GOOD NEWS: MELODY LEE IS BACK!
If you don't know Melody, she's one of the best junkie-bloggers out there. So read her stuff!

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COLDPLAY: FIX YOU
This video and the Madonna Hung Up Video both seem to have been filmed in the same place the Warp Club happened ~ inside the most enormous railway arch club, just round from the London Dungeon and London Bridge Station ...

This is for Anna Grace especially ...

Drink Day

I ACTUALLY FOUND MYSELF entertaining the idea of taking heroin earlier on. With a longish history of heroin addiction this is hardly a surprise, it just hasn't happened so far (this time). On previous attempts at coming off, it's just about ALL that happened. Apart from wanting to die.

My deepest fear as a heroin addict wasn't dying, it was living. Something I had little-to-no idea of how to do.

I had been all day at a friend's house where we were drinking. First just me and him. Then a knock at the door. Someone I haven't seen in maybe 8 years. He remembers me when heroin addiction was all new and still felt (to be honest) like Xmas every day. Xmas with a lot of desperation and despair and puking on the doorstep waiting for our terminally slow dealer to show up, it has to be said. But the good atill far outweighed the bad...

Nobody drank very much. There was a lot of talking. It was boys' talk. After 3 drinks (I know how much I had, only three!) I started feeling sick from lack of food. So I bought a cheese and red peppers bread in Morrisons (79p). That made me feel better. I tried to go to NA. I went right there, but the meeting that used to be there wasn't on so that was annoying. But I felt let off the hook. Really I wanted to get home.

On the way back I felt empty without heroin to come home to. Very empty and desolate. Even though I was tired and knew what heroin would do: just make me sleep, I still wanted it. In days gone by I would have wasted no time in scoring. Despite being tired and cold and pissed off, I would have ensured lovely heroin was in my hand, then in my veins, making everything all right.

Which is annoying as I was saying only an hour before how much I loathed everything to do with drugs. Mostly the people. I told a story of where I used to live. I would get up at 2 or 3am to buy drink (24-hour shopping, doncha love it!) very often I'd get accosted by a crackhead I knew. There were two in particular, who I knew pretty well, who begged money off passers-by. If I had £4, £4.50 or so, I'd sometimes go in halves on a £10 rock, which we smoked on the mid-level bathroom in my house. One particular night we found ourselves a few streets away, in a downstairs room full of black men who I didn't know. Both of these addicts were black, I suppose I point this out to say it made me feel the odd one out. Being White Boy in this room full of crack smokers where the atmosphere was like something from a lower circle of Crack Hell.

There was a white girl on the couch by the window. Long blonde hair. Sour expression. The archetypal "crack whore". And one on whom the tables have been turned, as they often are. One of the men said to her will you stay here and watch the door/my phone. Something like that. She said yeah yeah. they left, after telling us they had no drugs. One had at least 3x£10 clingfilm crack wraps in his hand. The girl rolled her eyes and said in a quieter voice "As if I have any choice."

I think we left before any more crack returned. Outside I said, "Don't you think there was a bad atmosphere in there?" and he just stared at me, blankly. He was far more interested in his pipe. This is just one event that convinced me I was no true crackhead. Heroin I would have been more than happy to bang up, if only there's been a decent light somewhere in that gloom. Heroin insulates from sensation, like being wrapped in furry blankets inside a bulletproof bubble. I never cared very much what went on elsewhere, as long as I was stoked up on gear. Of course most of the time I never had enough gear and that seemed to be the problem.

When I did have "enough" it got to the point of heroin just not "working" on not much more than 2g a day (speedballed*, with coke extra). In my one proper crack binge, my body said NO NO NO to coke, quite early on. Maybe within a week or so of 24-7 snowballing and piping. (When I slept I don't know. I think I just conked out at various points round the clock. woke up and carried on hitting up, drinking and piping.) Heroin my drug-saturated body said MORE MORE MORE to. But just could not feel it. Yes I was blowing way way too much money on drugs. And of course I'm not proud of it. A friend of mine smoked a house. He inherited a bundle of money and put £100,000 or more on the pipe in a single year. This stuff didn't make me happy (certainly not impressed) then. Now it makes me feel sick.

I know I need to drink less. Thanks for all the comments. Caeser I'm sorry I seem to have missed answering you. I'm answering every point in a second. I want to say to everybody I do read all comments. Not necessarily precisely when they come. The only reason I wouldn't specifically answer one is when I'm upset about something or when lots of people are saying lots of things and I feel deluged but in a good way. I would rather be deluged than left alone, I think any blogger who says they don't want comments must truly live in la-la land.

When I got home, by the way, I slept for five hours, till 1am. Without heroin. See what I mean..?

Re my drug history, so it doesn't sound contradictory the timings are this. All drugs: about 20 years (started age 19). In the 1st 10 years there were long spaces when I just did not use them. I did experiment with everything that came my way so the list is long. I also took acid and other drugs (especially speed) when I really shouldn't have. I was clinically depressed, on high dose antidepressants, seeing a psychiatrist. Me on acid then was not pretty, and I probably caused damage. Full-on heroin (+ heroin/methadone) addiction dates back almost exactly 10 years, though even it is hard to pin down a precise start date. Heroin experimentation began in any "meaningful" way about 2-3 years before that. So that's why I mention 20 years and 10 years. It's not a typo and it's not lies.

Methadone is the only drug I'm on now. The dose is far too high for my liking. I want to cut down and come off as soon as I can. Me detoxing is not a beautiful sight at all. I have had a "nervous breakdown" to some degree every single time I tried and it would be really foolish to try and achieve detox too quickly. Some of these "breakdowns" (I use the word losely) involved symptoms of bipolar** and more serious conditions than ordinary anxiety/depression. This is not to say I think it is bipolar or anything else. I'm trying not to think too much about that particular issue. Probably any inpatient detox would be too fast for me. The standard would go from around 60mg to zero in about 2 weeks. The longest I know of goes from about 120mg to zero in 6. Staying off drugs and cutting down slowly in the outside world, if I can do it, is probably the most sensible route FOR ME. Perhaps for many other people the opposite would be true.

Drink is still an issue. I know I drink too much. I drink about 3 x half litres of 7.5% ABV cheap cyder. Yesterday I managed one litre, by buying it in a bottle not cans, and drinking three smaller drinks. I think I'm going to try the 1-litre bottle from now on, cut down from there to one can. There's no great hurry and this isn't me making excuses. Bear in mind this addiction is 10 years old. To break it overnight may well put me in a Fool's Paradise. The progress may not be real. I need reality now.

I am supposed to be "taking care" of myself. So I'm trying to be responsible. I have to be consistent on the one hand (not breaking resolutions) and not get over-enthusiastic go too quick on the other. Bearing in mind I lost my marbles just transferring to methadone, I cannot see that rapidly cutting out anything would (in my own situation) be wise.

To anyone in a similar condition, my best advice is find yourself a good doctor (not easy). Or a good drugs worker. Or a good drugs/mental health professional. Drugs come under mental health anyway. I say this because what's good for me and what works for me may not be best for you. If you've had specific problems detoxing/switching meds/taking any psychiatric or other meds you need to explain this clearly. The problem could be mental or physical or both. Here in the UK if you need special treaetment due to a co-existing condition, you should get a programme tailored to you. I have tried to explain how a methadone detox would be tailored to me. In a way it's good the dr saw me as I was. Now they know I'm not just exaggerating or fantasizing when I talk about going cuckoo. I was bouncing off the walls in that there office!

Better leave it there. I hope I will look back one day and be able to stand by this when I say: CONGRATULATIONS DRUG DEALERS, THANKS FOR THAT DROUGHT. YOU'VE LOST YOURSELF A LONGSTANDING CUSTOMER.

*speedballing or snowballing means mixing heroin and crack (or cocaine) in the same IV shot. It's v strong and v dangerous

**bipolar disorder is what used to be called manic depression; it differs from ordinary depression in that bipolar involves swings from feeling slow, sleeping a lot, eating a lot and pretty down to going very fast, being irritable and angry and/or euphoric and high and barely sleeping at all. The moods can become mixed up and don't necessarily come in clear-cut "episodes".

Anna's description of bipolar depression (yesterday) is here

Slept!

WOW I SLEPT! For far fewer hours than it felt like, it has to be said. I thought it was evening when I woke up. It was midday. I didn't sleep till long, long into the night past 5 or 6 am. Cannot remember when. Then I slept!!

Without pills, which I didn't really want. Or glugging excess methadone (not really a temptation). Or drinking. I did "imbibe" 2 White Stars last night. To prove what was going on was not DTs.

To even think you have DTs you must be pretty far-gone.

Last night, when I was still going batshytcrazy, the POLICE were everywhere. I have no idea what happened. They were parked up all over the place. Wherever I looked some lady police officer in fluoro jacket seemed to be in the car. One particularly attractive one proved to be a parking meter. Ho hum. I was not in an "ordinary" state of mind.

The lights looked absolutely amazing. Then 2 police cars, blue flashers full on. Wow!! That was a moment!!

Then there were police everywhere, following me. Before that, my house, road, and all the shops were full of obvious crack dealers. Talking their horrible way they talk. And just being horrible people I want to avoid forever. Because i hate crack.

I am not trying to say people were serving up all over the place. Just these off duty bastards. Making piles of cash out of other people's misery. Spending the money in my local shop!!

Haven't a clue what was or was not real. That out of it. At one point my room seemed full of radios left on each babbling some different speech or tune. Then I started hearing voices speaking Spanish and Chinese. Now that has to be loony tunes.

I don't know what the hell has happened, and I don't feel I have fully come down. (Don't want to. Who wants normality anyhow??)

But I did sleep. And I am a bit less destructible, disinhibited... still barely any appetite. At all. Not hallucinating smoke and bubbles. Everywhere. This the baseline. Crazy stuff on top. Saw the Northern Lights in candy colors in my own house!! How amazing is that!! All free of charge of course. No drugs.

I did crave a go on the heroin. For about 0.2 seconds. Then I remembered how crap heroin actually is. First time I properly tried it all I could think was "is THIS what all the fuss is about!!" Marianne Faithfull put it best: "Big waste of time."

So there we go. Don't want that any more. Always kind of knew it was an expensive Chemical Lie. As people off it, especially people who had never been on, seemed far happier and more contented than any addict I had ever met, especially the ones still using.

No amount of heroin, no matter how good (and I know I wasn't being ripped off: nearly always disappointed with intros to other people's dealers) even when I was nearly unconscious, still wasn't good enough enough enough enough. Never ever enough.

Thank God all that is Over.

It actually feels Over. Over. Done with. Gone.

THANK GOD!!

PS thanks mental health person. Did get what you said. Was in a slightly "distractable" state. Couldn't get head round charging a mobile phine, putting key in lock, signing into internet stuff. So was only randomly able to achieve anything at all. How I posted I have no idea!

PPS 2303hrs just found this discussion on my favourite cheapie drink White Cider. (White Star #1 choice; White Ace #2 choice. White Ace doesn't taste quite as nice in my book. If you're foreign, get out of your head any apply cultured drink country pub fantasy. This is dirt cheap alcohol. Like liquid brillo pads. With bubbles.
Really nice with tropical fruit juice though. Addictively so!!
Not bad on its own when you get used. I use a mixer to be a bit responsible and make it less alcoholic. As do not WANT to be an alcoholic.

PPPS read this for a lurid depiction of Xanax/etc Valium/benzo withdrawals. In America. Sadistic Doctors in a rehab clinic?? Surely not!!