I used to take heroin at every opportunity, for over 10 years, now I just take methadone which supposedly "stabilizes" me though I feel more destabilized than ever before despite having been relatively well behaved since late November/early December 2010... and VERY ANGRY about this when I let it get to me so I try not to.
I was told by a mental health nurse that my heroin addiction was "self medication" for a mood disorder that has recently become severe enough to cause psychotic episodes. As well as methadone I take antipsychotics daily. Despite my problems I consider myself a very sane person. My priority is to attain stability. I go to Narcotics Anonymous because I "want what they have" ~ Serenity.
My old blog used to say "candid confessions of a heroin and crack cocaine addict" how come that one comes up when I google "heroin blog" and not this one. THIS IS MY BLOG. I don't flatter myself that every reader knows everything about me and follows closely every single word every day which is why I repeat myself. Most of that is for your benefit not mine.
This is my own private diary, my journal. It is aimed at impressing no-one. It is kept for my own benefit to show where I have been and hopefully to put off somebody somewhere from ever getting into the awful mess I did and still cannot crawl out of. Despite no drugs. I still drink, I'm currently working on reducing my alcohol intake to zero.
If you have something to say you are welcome to comment. Frankness I can handle. Timewasters should try their own suggestions on themselves before wasting time thinking of ME.
PS After years of waxing and waning "mental" symptoms that made me think I had depression and possibly mild bipolar I now have found out I'm schizoaffective. My mood has been constantly "cycling" since December 2010. Mostly towards mania (an excited non-druggy "high"). For me, schizoaffective means bipolar with (sometimes severe) mania and flashes of depression (occasionally severe) with bits of schizophrenia chucked on top. You could see it as bipolar manic-depression with sparkly knobs on ... I'm on antipsychotic pills but currently no mood stabilizer. I quite enjoy being a bit manic it gives the feelings of confidence and excitement people say they use cocaine for. But this is natural and it's free, so I don't see my "illness" as a downer. It does, however, make life exceedingly hard to engage with...
PPS The "elevated mood" is long gone. Now I'm depressed. Forget any ideas of "happiness" I have given up heroin and want OFF methadone as quick as humanly possible. I'm fed up of being a drug addict. Sick to death of it. I wanna be CLEAN!!!
I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE UP TO but the boys and girls in blue are everywhere today. Even "civil enforcement officers" (who prosecute you for dropping a fag end: judicious use of resources by the local council). It's as if there's some secret plot in the air and the Old Bill are out in force to foil it.
I need a new wardrobe, I have decided. I am fed up of looking "like a homeless" (not my words). Even the local council hinted I might prefer to throw my clothes away because a charity shop probably wouldn't take them. I'm going to start out looking in thrift stores as they have the nicest stuff (amongst the tat). I used to wear a lot of Paul Smith, because Oxfam didn't realize it was a designer name and priced his shirts and trousers at 50p. I think they do realize now, and price accordingly. I also had an Armani teeshirt, which I never quite had the guts to deface. It used to be highly fashionable to tear and graffiti designer names. It meant you were hip enough not to care. I haven't a clue what's trendy nowadays and frankly I do care. If you're going to get new clothes they may as well be in Vogue to boot ~ know what I mean?
So I'm left with a clothes crisis and nothing to wear.
By the way I've swapped alcoholic liquor for cloudy lemonade. It only costs 54p for 2 litres and has more of a kick. It's an acidic kick, but it's lovely. I also got free limoncello deserts from Londis. They'd gone past the date so they were literally giving them out free.
So that's all. No big news, as you can see.
O yeah I found this in 100 Cases in Psychiatry by Wright, Dave and Dogra
p89: A 38-year-old woman has taken an overdose. She is refusing to give consent for her blood to be taken for tests. She is also shouting, "you're not going to pump my stomach!"
p90 Although this woman is unlikely to have a mental illness, her acute distress might make he temporarily incompetent. If, however, she has a mental disorder and that disorder is posing a risk to her health, she can be detained under the Mental Health Act even on a medical ward.
Which made my blood run cold. NOT because I am thinking of doing myself in, but that if I did have some illness I would want the right not to be treated for it. And now I find out that because I have a Label, my wishes are wont to be overriden!
Surely it's my right not to have compulsory treatment. I didn't even WANT to have that blood test and only went for it so the doctor would sign the form for an ECG, which I need in order to continue receiving methadone. Yes I let her coerce me but she was playing stupid saying "we'll get the blood results first" even though I told her repeatedly the blood results had nothing to do with the ECG. I wonder whether that woman actually qualified as a doctor or has fake papers. She's the one who wanted to give yet again the the antidepressant that made me psychotic. And she wanted to prescribe it to me while I was clearly hypomanic, cheerful and talking 19 to the dozen. Ie not depressed at all. But not sleeping either. She was trying to pull that move where they fob you off with antidepressants instead of benzos. Hmmm...
Well I have to go. Hope y'all are well... I'm in a NORMAL MOOD. Wow!
RIOT NEWS: it's all gone back to normal now. It was back to normal last night in fact. All the shops open. Some rumour had gone round the night before that gangs would come and trash the place, which meant nearly everything was shut. The big 24-hour convenience stores stayed open world war ii style ~ ie you had to squeeze in past 6 East European bouncers, nip into the partially lit shop (blueberry live yogurt was in stock but they always buy far too much of the apple flavour. No British person buys apple flavour yogurt and everyone knows that so why stock up? You can tell a man has done the ordering in these places. They'll have 5 brands of butter all priced the same. No spreadable, no unsalted. As I say EVERYONE knows these places are fronts for drug money. The most obvious ones have partially empty shelves and yet have remained open for years...
The riots have spread to some northern towns but nobody knows what's happening up there, it's too far away. (I mean too far away to know the word on the street.) I can tell the atmosphere here is far more relaxed than 2 days ago and that's about it.
Oh crapping hell the internet connexion keeps going down. I'm using my neighbours' to get Barbra Streisand crooning free of charge. Stingy old T Mobile have stopped letting me watch Youtube all day except between 4pm and midnight after day one when I bust out my data allowance watching documentaries on Hiroshima etc. One big reason I want to speak fluent Japanese is to read some good books on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I have a real thing about atom bombs. I also like the poetry of Matsuo Basho.
I'm doing Chinese first because I happen to have the CDs as well as the book. I was too addicted to heroin when I got into Japanese to bother buying the discs as well. A Japanese accent is FAR easier to master than Mandarin Chinese. You do have tones, but only as Yoruba has tones. That is the sentence inflects in a certain way and some words are distinguished by high or low pitched syllables. Just as we say "I record a record" altering tone and pitch to distinguish "record" the verb and "record" the noun. I always had an ambition to learn a language that was as different from English as possible. It absolutely had to be nonIndoEuropean (so Hindi was out). Had to have funky writing. Ideally had to have tones. So I picked Thai and chose to go to Thailand. Then I went to India instead. Long story. I do find it irritating that people go "oh that's such a hard language" and yet expect all the Thais to understand English! It's probably easier for an English person to learn an East Asian language than a person from there to learn English because English has torturous grammar compared to Chinese or Thai, which are like pidgin English "today I go shop buy chicken, go home cook chicken eat dinner!" like that. The words are unchangeable, there are no plurals, no inflected tenses (teach/taught). All is simple. And the lazy English claim such languages are exceedingly difficult, just because they sound a bit like a cat being strangled ~ well they do when I try and pronounce them!
Having these yummy zopiclone pills I now don't need sleep. I'm sleeping like a baby all hours of the day. My mood is still a bit elevated and I'm still very excitable compared to normal but I can sit still and don't find myself pacing endlessly at 3 in the morning. I had horrible nightmares last night about heroin and crack. I am sweating like a swine. I was so disorganized last week my house looks like a bomb's hit it (yet again) all my clothes are dirty. I am living on biscuits because I just cannot bear to eat proper food (can't afford it for that matter). The less I spend on drugs the LESS money I have not more!! I was doing OK on heroin. Now I'm in chaos. I'm really glad I gave up alcohol though. Noxious stuff. I'm not one of those people who turns into a psychopath after half a glass. Or one of those who has one drink then won't stop until the bar is dry. Or they're lying unconscious under the bar. For one thing I never drink in pubs; I hate them. The formula of loud music and lots of young people crammed in never made sense. Nowhere to dance. Wrong drug for dancing (Ecstasy doesn't mix with drink at all and E was the only drug that really made me wanna dance. Drink just makes you sway then fall over.) What I really loathed about pubs was not being able to hear a word anybody said for all the loud music. If you want loud music go clubbing ~ then you can dance and do as you please. Ukh I loathe pubs. I never even liked the taste of booze. What other people call a "warm glow" was to me a burning stomach. Alcohol does not give any kind of high, let's face it. It just blanks bad feelings to an extent. When I was manic I barely felt drink at all. When I was depressed it made me feel better but not better enough. Just because it's a CNS depressant doesn't follow that it exacerbates melancholia. They say IN SOME PEOPLE and I don't think I was one of them. I felt just as depressed off drink as on it and I gave it up for weeks at a time just to prove it. This is years ago, when giving up was easy. I only found it hard more recently because the habit of a can in the morning (first thing) and another in the afternoon was so entrenched. Now I can go in the shop and buy the drinks I used to fantasize about but couldn't afford: Coca Cola/Pepsi, chocolate milk, ginger beer (nonalcoholic). Cloudy lemonade. I far prefer soft drinks to yucky old beer, which I avoided on principal. Uptight men drink it because they're too scared to drink anything else. That's why I drank cyder mixed with fruit juice. The fruit juice made it look like a soft drink for the benefit of people in waiting rooms, on buses etc.
By the way my doctor is MONUMENTALLY FUCKING THICK. What kind of an idiot gives someone they know is bipolar an ANTIDEPRESSANT when they're not sleeping because they're MANIC. Fucking idiot. That's how you put someone in a mental unit. That's more negligent than smoking crack. It makes you higher. She really is stupid. The methadone clinic want an ECG. Some bullshit to do with "prolonged QT-intervals". Dr Schoopid went and filled out a bloods form and said "no we'll order the ECG after these tests come back" so I repeated another three times that the methadone clinic want an ECG because my dose is over 100mg but the silly cow would not listen. How the hell this woman manages to practise medicine without killing her patients I do not understand.
Hang on a minute my dr is foreign. I bet her medical degree is a forgery. Wouldn't surprise me at all.
Maybe I should get her investigated by the general medical council...? She brought up the issue of mirtazapine (Remeron) yet again. Mirtazapine that made me so out of it I was stood outside my house in awe at 3am watching lightning course down the walls constantly then dropped me down so low I was hallucinating dead bodies. That drug. I know what she wanted: to fob me off with that crap instead of a true sleeping pill. I'm getting an Indian male doctor next time. They dish out sleepers like sweets.
I've gone long past that prissy stage of believing sleeping pills are bad. My attitude is if ya can't sleep zonk yerself out or just don't go to bed. But don't complain about it. I only get insomnia when I'm too hyper anyhow. When I'm too depressed I sleep all day and all night!! Which is a good thing. I don't WANT to be awake when I feel like that.
Has this gone all boring? Rant rant rant. How did I get myself such a THICK doctor? She even asked WHY she was prescribing risperidone if I don't hear voices. I said to keep me sane. Fucking idiot. I dont' hear voices all the time, only in phases, which she SHOULD KNOW if she knew anything about psychiatry. My consultant sent her a letter which she obviously didn't bother reading ~ the instruction to set up a rispeidone script would have been enclosed, so she can't claim to have received one and not the other. Silly cow. Right I'm off:~~~~~~~
O man I've really gotta do something about my feet. They smell like a dead toad!
And that reminds me: what do frogs drink?
Croaker-Coala!
LAZY AFTERNOON
this is one of Babbsie's best vocals. and a highly intellectual song about beetlebugs zoomin' and there not being another human in view...
THE LOVE INSIDE
the BeeGees recorded a demo of this song for Barb, ruining it with their horrible voices. Hers is much better; she reaches a high E6 in this song...
Illustrated: zopiclone (Chinese version); eszopiclone (Lunestra) nearest equivalent available in the American market. Eszopiclone was refused a licence in Europe for being too similar to zopiclone which was already there... Zopiclone might have been turned down in America because it does cause memory loss. Eg if someone phones you when you're on it you might tell them you've moving to Holland then forget all about it the next day... LIKE I DID!!
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!
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?
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.
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....
AKH. I was in a BAD MOOD earlier. I wrote some crap some of y'all would find truly histrionic, if not truly upsetting. This is my problem. In my mind, opiates and death are thoroughly intertwined. To ANY established junkie, coming off Heroin is a fate worse than death. To ME, being ON methadone is a fate considerably worse than death. I want OFF methadone. O yeah and I was in such a kerfuffle earlier today I went and USED HEROIN AGAIN (straight in the vein, which is a miracle with my collapsed Blood Highways. WHOOSH it went straight in. On a dose of methadone that supposedly blockades the high. All the manifold receptor sites left uncared for and bereft by methadone were suddenly salved. The information given to methadone prescribers is patently FALSE. The criteria methadone clinics use are FALSE. You only have to check the analgesic potency of methadone compared to morphine where 1mg methadone is said to equate to 2mg morphine. Now diamorphine is typically reckoned to have a double potency to morphine, which would put pharmaceutical heroin and methadone at equal potency. Or to use the bullshit on the website they are "equianalgesic". If this is the case, I should have been on at least 350mg methadone. Not 150mg. Last time a doctor spouted the usual crap about 150mg being "a big dose" (I have since reduced a small way) I shot her down in flames by quoting the average retail purity of street heroin (40-50% until late last year) and the heroin-methadone equivalence tables. She quickly shut up. These clinics underprescribe MASSIVELY then fingerpoint at the "Service User" for not being able to cope with a gargantuan reduction in their dose. Methadone is not heroin, does not substitute for heroin. Causes me mania, depression and psychosis ~ which heroin doesn't. When I do die I hope my family SUE the NHS for their negligently inflexible prescribing policy. The doctors "treating" me know very well that I get severe flare-ups in symptoms that get worse the longer I rely on methadone to "stabilize" me. Yet they have done nothing at all to address the issue.
Some American websites parrot the lie that methadone somehow quells moodswings and gives equilibrium. I have never witnessed this. Not in myself, not in anybody else.
Depression and hallucinations are listed side-effects of methadone. Google it and see.
If all this sounds like junkie whingeing, I agree with you. SHOOT 'EM ALL DEAD. That's what I say. Save the beleagred NHS some pennies. This is what I believe. Institute DEATH to all drug addicts. Not for possession of drugs. For BEING ADDICTED. And if that sounds to Fascist: make the death penalty voluntary. Junkies will line the streets waiting to die. Heroin is a fate worse than death; and methadone how much more so!
One day, when I Grow Up I will start a drug clinic of my own. It will have to be private, because of the way things run in this country and most other countries. My clinic will be like an anything-goes version of Dr Colin Brewer's. At my clinic you'll be able to get once a day dosing on oral morphine or hydromorphone (Jurnista). We will prescribe heroin amps, methadone amps, morphine amps and hydromorphone (Dilaudid) amps. Dextromoramide (Palfium). Subutex. Suboxone. Oral methadone (to the truly deranged). Rapid anaesthetic detox. Naltrexone therapy. And so on. I probably will NOT be able to open this clinic on British soil. My clinic will be a sweet shop to every famished junkie. They will come there for a true range of substitution therapies.
And I will do my bit to put the Drug Dealers out of business.
Which the government patently don't give the tiniest shit about.
"Home Detox" kits will not feature on my Fantasia of Druggie Delights Menu.
PS I'VE ANSWERED ALL YOUR COMMENTS FOR THE LAST COUPLE OF DAYS. WAS IN TOO MUCH OF A BAD MOOD EARLIER.
PS the roborovski Japanese says ケッキ食べてリリの "Kekki tabete riri no" which translates as "Lili's ardour to eat"!
AS REGULAR READERS will know I have been diagnosed with a relatively rare psychiatric condition that affects approximately one person in two hundred and accounts for approximately five percent of all patients with serious mental illness. Not much is known about this condition. Varying opinions put have it as a variety of schizophrenia, or a variety of bipolar disorder, or a cross between the two or "the unlucky convergence of two psychoses" (that is that I am bipolar and schizophrenic at the same time.) The name of this condition is schizoaffective disorder.
The name "schizoaffective" originated in 1933. And as I say, nobody knows quite what it is or how it comes about. And though it is widely considered to be a midpoint between type 1 bipolar and schizophrenia on a "psychosis spectrum" it is acknowledged that schizoaffective disorder "has a flavour all of its own". For example, schizoaffectives seem particularly prone to "seeing things" as well as "hearing things". For example, when I'm ill I can see animals in the floor. Just as one can see faces and forms in clouds, I can see them not only in clothes an carrier bags but in floors, on walls and even on my computer screen. I sometimes see pairs of eyes at the bottom staring back at me.
When I was in the mental hospital years ago I saw an angel staring in at me through an upstairs window. At the time I had contact lens problems so I had in one constact lens. So through one eye I saw a blurry angel and through the other the angel was clear. Just as if a real form was at the window staring in at me. What shocks me today is that I never saw fit to tell my doctor about this. I think I was minded at the time to get out of there as quickly as possible without saying too much.
Oh and just to complicate matters there are two subtypes of schizoaffective disorder: a depressive type and a bipolar type. My hyper, manic phases are higher than my depressive lows are low. It's totally normal for mania to be more florid an psychotic than depression but my mania has reached, for short periods of time, the outer extreme of how manic it is possible to go. I'm so grateful that I don't go as depressed as you can go. And, because its quite possible to be schizophrenic and depressed at the same time, it's necessary to have more serious depression than I do to qualify as socalled "unipolar" or depression-only schizoaffective. My friend Pinky is depressive schizoaffective. She gets the faces in the floor thing; but her depressive episodes are generally worse than mine. And I don't think she's just describing them more "dramatically" I think she really does get more intensely depressed. Another difference is that her system will tolerate antidepresants while mine goes haywire on them. My mood cycles quickly. I can be quite horribly depressed, suicidally so, for just one day (an would usually have some degree of mania each side) whereas Pinky's depression is like mine used to be: constant lasting months on end. (Some of my depressions lasted years on end.) Another difference is that if you plotted it on a graph, my depression would be a wobbly line "under the water" as it were (that is under the line of "normality" in other words it used to cycle even back then. Now I cycle between high and low rather than merely different levels of low with infrequent flashes of high (I've had bipolar [manic] symptoms off and on (mostly off) since my mid-20s.)
I found the best schizoaffective stuff by googling "schizoaffective bipolar". The best link so far is from McManWeb: http://www.mcmanweb.com/psychosis.html
I've had a couple of comments expressing surprise that I'm not on a mood-stabilizer as well as an antipsychotic. I now know why. My doctor suspected I was schizophrenic not bipolar when he first saw me "ill". So he treated me using antischizophrenia drugs to see what progress I made. And sure enough I have stopped hearing voices and my mania is damped down. But it doesn't seem to do much against depression. I'd rather NOT be on a mood-stabilizer as no mood swings would just make my life too vanilla for words. If he thinks I'm OK on just risperidone, I'd rather go on purely on risperidone, experiencing some mania, because I love being a bit manic. It's like purely natural excitement (this is why it doesn't fit any drug signature if you wanted to be really precise about it, it doesn't match any upper even though being hyper is like being on uppers. I'd say being mildly hypomanic is like being on a bit of amphetamine; being moderately manic is like cocaine; being ultra high is like trippy Ecstasy type drugs; you could go raving in this state on nothing and actually be the most vibed-up person in there). Mania does take you higher than drugs. You just have to think: how many times have you or anyone you knew thought they literally Ruled the World, or felt like they were literally changing into an angel, because they were high on drugs? These feelings are par for the course in severe mania. In other words severe bipolar (or schizoaffective) takes you higher than drugs ever do. You'd fit out, foam at the mouth, and eventually die on uppers before you ever got that high. Which explains how I could stay awake as my head eventually went into a brainfrying high when on drugs, as I say, you'd just fit out or even die.
Sounds lovely, doesn't it!
Well I'm finding out what I can about this mysterious syndrome named bipolar schizoaffective. I can see that I match it perfectly. All I saw before was that I was bipolar. As a "patient" it's the pattern of ups and downs that is easier to grasp than the fact that you actually are in a mania or a depression or a (mixed state). The mind has a way of convincing itself it's not severely ill so I was in depression for months and seriously considered myself not to be ill and not to be worthy of any psychiatric diagnosis. That would have explained behaviour that was to me inexplicable.
My psychiatrist is a consultant who specializes in dual diagnosis (that is diagnosing people with drug problems and serious mental conditions) and he can weed out drug psychosis from bipolar or schizophrenic psychosis. Schizoaffective disorder has socalled negative or deficit symptoms for example you can spend hours or days staring into space. This is a part of my illness. I avoid social contact with people and I have impaired motivation, meaning I'm content to do very little, despite being largely off heroin. All the stuff that was blamed on heroin turns out to be "what I was like anyhow". As I myself was starting to suspect. I only had to look around at other addicts to see that no matter how badly addicted they were, they weren't in the mess I was in. They tended to be experts at taking psychiatrists for a ride which is why my "not bothering to try" attitude got me written off. I wasn't going to come in presenting a picture of misery just because I felt down. They only got a florid primary-coloured portrait of me when I was manic, highly expansive and unrestrained and very vocal. Then they saw who I really was. Acting manic must be one of thee most difficult psychiatric states to "put on" because you can't fake the presence of excess energy. It's just too exhausting. Another sign that I was real not faking. I grew to suspect that they considered me a fake or an exaggerator. I used to say that I needed to address my mood issues and I'd get nothing but nods and more nods. Then I went floridly mad and suddenly help is forthcoming. I'm just annoyed it had to get THAT BAD before anyboy listened.
I have sudden flashes of insight as I did today where I suddenly realize how deeply messed up some of the stuff is that I come out with. The glib way I talk about death. It really disturbs me to see that I'm this person in such a mess that I'd say the things I say. If it wasn't for my "no embarrassment, no deletion" policy I'd take a lot of it out to save my own face. But I just leave it all in. It's my own record of where I've been, that's my main motivation for blogging when "ill". My blog posts are my own postcards from the edge. Postcards to myself more than to you. I just am horrified at some of the things I thought. What was going through my head? It's sad, very sad to be this person so desperate he's talking about death as if killing myself shows some kind of character strength, when actually it shows desperation or even delusion. I'm much more disturbed about this than about my using heroin every now and then. All I learned from today's gear was that even though it was top-notch by today's low standards, it's still not doing the job it used to do.
All I can imagine is that being on antipsychotics that have squashed my more extreme manic symptoms and stopped me hearing voices or feeling dissociated from my own thought process (so my thoughts don't feel like my own, they feel like something I'm hearing on the radio). Risperidone stops most of this; heroin used to keep my mood on a far more even keel than it otherwise was, an it did a great deal to keep me sane. This is pretty obvious when you consider how badly I lost it when I suddenly jacked gear in last December. I had the most florid psychotic episode with both high and low mood, of my entire life. I have never ever hallucinated auditorily that vividly. Not on drugs, not on anything. When I became manic in February I was far higher, yet less "psychotic" in that I hallucinated less. All this is schizoaffective stuff. Unlike a bipolar person, I have psychotic-type experiences not related to a high or low mood. I remember some years ago feeling heavily stoned on cannabis with very LOUD thoughts, mild auditory halluciantions and racing thoughts from a COMMON COLD. This was while Maple Syrup my "it's all down to drugs" worker, the one who tried to bully me, the one I sacked. If Maple Syrup had even glanced at my files she'd have seen that I was 38 years old and hadn't become addicted to heroin until age 28. Meaning that I had 28 years of issues at that time. Meaning it was ridiculous to pin all my troubles on a drug. Meaning my intuition was right and hers wrong. I always did envisage myself losing it when I eventually came off. This wasn't "bad attitude" it was me seeing myself the way an insurance assessor would. That every single time without exception that I'd detoxified, dropped dose or switched medications I had experienced manic-depressive symptoms to some degree. I got extra meds in rehab BOTH times I was in there. I spent hours in the counselling rooms crying BOTH times. I spent all night wide awake every single night unlike everyone else who said they didn't sleep and promptly took up snoring for hours on end, BOTH TIMES. In other words something was going on with me that wasn't with them. If everybody had been as upset as I was they'd have employed a team of twelve full-time counsellors every day to meet demand. Somehow other people seemed to do a methadone or dihydrocodeine taper and though they had low points they didn't crack up. Yet somehow I did.
What I didn't expect was to go as floridly crazy as I did, or as rapidly as I did (literally the day I left heroin behind was the day I started hallucinating so floridly I literally could not tell whether I was thinking or hearing, I experienced that many voices.
In a way I look at myself from afar and feel sorry for someone who is a desperate mess. Self-pity is only useful when it gets you the help you need. Otherwise it's a waste of energy. My energy is going into finding out more about this mysterious condition with which I live.
It's diagnosed differently in the USA by the way to the rest of the world. The World Health Organization's ICD-10 specifies that bipolar and schizophrenic symptoms are experienced together or within a few days of one another; the American DSM IV-TR insists that I must magically be free of any and all marked mood swings for a fortnight and still exhibit psychotic features. So whether or not I'm merely severely "bipolar 1" in America, I've no idea.
I know I have all the features associated with a poor recovery: mood-incongruent hallucinations, deficit symptoms between the severe mood swings, rapid cycling of the mood and mood switches directly between manic and depressed... all these are associated with poor medication response and a poorer prognosis. So whether or not I'm bipolar or schizoaffective in whatever country I am at the "severe end" of "severe mood disorders" and without medication become "severely manic". This word "severe" is cropping up far too often for comfort and it's my googling that has brought it up.
What I'm after now is to be "severely clean" with a "severe recovery" from "severe mental illness"... so there we go.
"Severely well". That's what I wish to be.
Illustrated: schizoaffectives can see amazing things in trunks of gnarly trees! And I bet you can, too. Especially in the top one!
SCHIZOAFFECTIVE DISORDER
this guy says he took amphetamines as a youngster; but his mother is bipolar i took amphetamines (etc) as a youngster; my mother has recurrent depression
this one is more like me someone asked what i talk like this is the accent i have without the northern bits without medication i go through periods of hearing voices every day and i get depersonalization too (that means nothing is real)
DONCH' ALL LOVE MY LEMON TREE? If you want to see some wondrous colourful birdies go one post below. Two of the pictures are purloined from my Aussie friends' back gardens. Baino and Bimbimbie live along the Eastern Coast of Aus where rainbow lorikeets flap about in profusion.
Last night I was up until past four. I was intending to stay up to go to the chemist then languish unconscious all day. But I slept till nearly midday. Then I went to Morrisons and got Value cheesy pasta (boil in water and milk for ten mins, add grated cheeese it's wondrous, considering especially that it costs 35p a pack and has nearly 500 calories, so you can literally live on 2 of thsoe da day (if you want to be thin) or 3 a day (if you want to be normal). Shit I keep getting my calories wrong I used to live on about 1250 to 1500 and was pretty skeletal but I wanted to be thin. This was the stage where everyone thought I should see a psychiatrist but I didn't want to go. The opposite to when I was on heroin and I thought I needed a psychiatrist and my undertrained drugs workers didn't. Then I get diagnosed clinically manic which means I most certainly DO get depression and I'm putting in a formal complaint. Not naming or shaming, but saying look this is my tangled history please train your staff to spot the obvious. I was an absolute mess.
Anyway I went to sleep all afternoon and had vivid dreams about squating an enormous theatre-type building (one that would seat about 4000) and meeting these nice girls in the foyer. They were hippie chicks. Ie my own kind. The old ones wanted to mother me and the young ones kept following me around, like when I went clubbing and gave out vibes. Sometimes I gave out a vibe that made everybody smile at me. I was very into energy and vibes ta that stage of my life.
Well I got up between 7 and 8 pm meaning I've slept approaching 14 hours today. But I was highly "somnolent" and very tired and slow and sour and down. I managed to put off the idea of glugging back alcohol and bought brown bread instead.
I glugged back a lovely huge dose of methadone and now feel better than I did.
I am forcing myself into daily exercise. I only got myself into bed today by telling myself I was "ill" (an excuse to laze). I don't over-analyse myself (bear in mind my blog is a way of capturing how I was, I don't think how I am by day I just am how I am). The dislike of self-analysis is what puts me off counselling, which I've done three times majorly. The second time, when I was tilting down into full-blown heroin addiction (but not yet physically addicted) was when I had the most issues. My counsellor said I spent one session "in the foetal position, crying" that I "needed more help than she could give me" and all this stuff I hated to hear. I don't remember curling up in a ball crying, I just remember being very upset.
I can't remember why I am telling all this it's supposed to be my diary of my winning the battle over depression. If you want some info on the condition, take a look at the three Youtube screens from the Open University a couple of posts down.
I'm not very good at taking the middle path. I have to not self pity yet self care. And not despair when I hear other people talking about similar problems and realize I'm in more of a mess than any of them. Not more ill, just more of a mess.
The Shawshank Redemption is on. I got it because I thought a little trumpet-ears tonkie was in it. In plain English that equals a wild house mouse. I wanted to see the mouse. And I like prison films. Anything in a prison or a mental institution is for me. Next time someone asks do I want to go in a nuthouse I'm saying YES.
Mental hospitals are nothing like prisons, not as far as I can see. Though long ago I made a decision that no matter how bad I suffered for it, me and prisons were NOT coming together. NO WAY would I tolerate being a junkie separated from my drugs. No way. You can get heroin in a mental hospital dead easy and it's proper dealer bags not "prison bags" (a match-head sized dose of heavily adulterated brown). So the drugs issue was a non-issue in hospital. Guess what's the 2 most popular drugs in the nuthouse? Cannabis and crack! Thee two substances most likely to send you fruiloops are the two drugs fruitloopers most likely smoke. But I asked someone what cannabis did to him: this man was paranoid schizophrenic. He didn't get instant hallucinatory voices. He didn't get extreme paranoia (he had paranoia but the meds brought it down to mild/moderate). In other words his symptoms on cannabis were nothing like mine. I also asked someone whether he ever hallucinated so much he couldn't tell whether he was thinking or hearing and he looked at me like WHAT!??!
This had only happened once at the time when I stood up and voices rushed into my head for a few hours. But it happened again when I was manic. I was very surprised a repeat hospital inmate, and one of my own posse (I hung out with the paranoiacs, the schizoaffectives and the maniacs: birds of a feather, as they say, flock together!)
I hope this isn't too boring for y'all this is personal journal stuff. Not really for public consumption but y'all are welcome to read through.
I have had depression for over a week, apart from Hypomanic Thursday when I felt FANTASTIC I've been down down down. Next week all my care gets transferred to a mental health methadone centre. This fuckup occurred because the idiotic council who housed me put me in a different burrough, so I'm shoved pillar to post but it might be a good post because I'm dual diagnosis now. I'm scared of coming in there down and out as they'll laugh at me. I talk a lot when I'm up. I talk so much they barely ever ask a question. I know the shit they want to know. How much do I eat and sleep, how high (or low) how fast (or slow) and is anything upsetting me or anything transcendently amazing (like the lights are when I go manic) and is my thought process intact. They can tell this last thing by how I speak so I don't need to self-analyse.
When I feel down I have very little to say so I either put on a big act and fill the void with babble (very deceptive babble, so it seems as nobody ever thought I was in desperate need of help when I really was) or when I'm badly off I can't say very much at all but no point dwelling on this. If that happens it happens.
I feel I was meant to say something here that I didnt say. I hope y'all are having a good weekend. Good evening America; good night UK and good morning Australia. And hello to everybody else!
BOY GEORGE: THE CRYING GAME i love this song; it's from a fantastic film of the same name
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
I SLEPT LIKE A BABY last night I don't remember how long maybe 6 or 8 hours i don't recall what time i went to bed (maybe around 4am) I got up after 10. Next thing I knew the stupid alarm was going off. All I wanted was access to my own money from that ridiculous Second Class Citizen Card (ie not a shiny one with Visa Wings you pay money INto because you're rich; one you take Govt money OUT OF because you're poor that rubbishy post office card I had to get because I withdrew £700 I didn't have from my former bank account. I had a real nice heroin/crack binge on that £700 it has to be said. Unlike America you won't get arrested for that over here. In fact I'm considering suing THEM for negligence. They allowed me to overdraw. No fraud was involved. I only went into supermarkets, bought cheapest sparkling wine and asked for £50 a day in cashback (cashpoints wouldn't give this money, neither would over-the-bank-counter) once I realized this was a ready sauce of unending cash I spend away. Shit only hit the fan quite a while later and now they're one of some number of people trying to sue me over these debts. I'm not exactly losing sleep over it. Why do you think I enjoy being crazy so much? Nothing to come back TO.
Well this nonbipolar thing is still going nicely when I get walking I hear lovely voices saying "fuck up" "call a doctor" "oo that's mental" etc. This does have something to do with having watched Angelina Joelie being Mentalist Chic in Girl Interrupted this morning. Those voices don't upset me. Takes far more than THAT to get me upset (no heroin used to do it big time). The drs think I have a real healthy attiude by considering "auditory hallucinations" (ie Reality Plus) as "free entertainment" (which it is) the best one happened yesterday after Valium Marilyn who wasn't half banging on about her problems poor woman anyway I heard my own voice doubled and out of sync in my own head. It was really poetic. [Hearing 2 of me thinking. That was cool.] And the cars on the street start doing this thing where they either speak random words (not so much nowadays as it's piss weak nowadays) but they also sound really whoosh-oosh-oooohhh!! rather than just boring like cars normally do. A bit like a car sounds after a nightspent at a particularly funky hardcore rave.
So I'm sleeping for ages. Oh yeah! My bowel problems! I knew y'all would want to hear this. I feel like I've swallowed a giant jellyfish whole and it's blocked me up. Terrible inconvenience. How will I ever shit again? I'm eating a breakfast cereal wtih cocolate hazelnut inside called Kraves. The kind of stuff us Brits used to look down at Americans years ago over "how CAN you eat marshmallow for BREAKFAST"? Mcdonalds have it all wrong the number of times I've been refused Big Macs before 10:30 or whatever ridiculously late hour a HAMBURGER JOINT actually starts serving up HAMBURGERS I hesitate to recall.
Well I must go I feel fine now. I was all dull, drab, dysphoric etc a couple of minutes ago. I wanted to cry earlier. I had Better Not be coming down. If I am I can just feel it, I'm going to feel really SHIT. Well best not consider that option. Also Naomi will really love it if I'm down next Nutter Club she'll think it serves me right for having had a Personality last week. Well I'm off have fun!
ps i'm watching the aviator or did i say that? very slow moving but quite good. i want voices talking about aeroplanes and hollywood movies, not boring psychiatric crap. i hate psychiatry why did this have to happen to me? only good thing about psychiatry is the other patients they're really funny
oh yeah i had some nutter links but they are somewhere else, here's one that proves a desperate person is capable of speaking plain english (do nurses really believe you have to get to the jib-jib-jib phase before you need help? oh yeah they call that "acting" so just ignore 'em. that's what i do. except when you wanna go outside in which case it's first name terms and lots of flirting. best nurses are always female so be male or a lesbian if you want to go outside
I MIGHT AS WELL CUT STRAIGHT TO THE CHASE: I AM MENTALLY ILL. Naomi, the Dual Diagnosis lady thinks I’m getting too hyper. My Key Worker seems to think this too. Naomi went and spoke to a psychiatrist for me to find out what I’m to do about these meds that disagree with me. Answer: do as I suggested and take all 4mgs risperidone at night.
Thing is I’ve not taken any for 2 days and felt wonderful this morning. Speeding on my own neurotransmitters (and NO SPEED) and going on a DVD shopping spree. I now have 28 films on 27 discs. Meet the Parents and Meet the Fuckers, which I got for £5 is a double movie.
I also got the Incredible Journey 1 and 2, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which is on now, Bounty Hunter starring Jennifer Anniston (love Jennifer Anniston); Gladiator; Cleopatra which I nearly had an argument over at the till over how boring it was. I said it’s moving wallpaper: you put it on silent and listen to music, eat Chinese takeaway and smoke cigarettes nobody WATCHES Cleopatra. I put it on for a bit but had to keep fast forwarding when Elizabeth Taylor was off screen that lady has some beautiful Bulgari jewellery by the way ~ thumbnail sized emeralds; The Queen (Helen Mirren); The Last King of Scotland, which I saw last night and is brilliant; Bucket List which isn’t a rude misogynistic sexual gibe at worn out women it means “a list of things to do before you kick the bucket” starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman; The Good The Bad and The Ugly which is by FAR my favourite western (I’m not into westerns unless they star Audy Murphy); Wall Street 2 disc version (what on earth is on disc 2 I’ve no idea); Silver City which is some spoof about politics (£2 from a charity shop); and The Devil’s Arithmetic which was £1 and is about a New York Jewish girl from the 21st century transported back into the holocaust. I’ll have to be in the mood for that one. Well that’s the main stuff. O yeah and Breakfast At Tiffany’s has soundtrack in German!
Pinky, my schizophrenic friend phoned me today. She thinks I sound really hyper and says I ought to be in hospital. Hospital shmospital. No way! And I’m not taking my meds for at least another week. I want some free Natural full-on Ecstasy high. I LOVE being high.
I asked Naomi whether she thought I had substance-induced mood disorder and she said no, because that’s directly phased in with a substance like crack and loses steam pretty rapidly when the crack is dropped (or whatever: nearly always an upper or a withdrawal state and I’m not on uppers and not withdrawing and she knows my heroin/methadone situation). My illness waxes and wanes and is currently getting stronger. I am going back into a 48-hour day. No sleep at all last night, I was buzzing too much to be bothered sleeping and did recline in bed in a position I’d usually sleep in. No sleep came so ten minutes later (waste no time, that’s my philiosophy!) I was up and pottering about. By early morning I felt pretty high. Mid morning I felt wonderful. I’m tired and a bit ragged now but still hyped up and it feels brilliant to be high not on drugs. Like I’m finally coming home to a Perfect State of Being. I don’t care whether it’s called mentally ill or not. I did point out that hypomania is NOT an illness, but neither Naomi nor my Worker seemed convinced. I was rabbitting so much they had to just tell me to stop talking and start talking about their own boring matters which I’ve forgotten anyway. Also I called the Mental Health Nurse a c**t which made both of them laugh uproariously then have to compose themselves and be all professional.
I also googled substance induced mood disorder and substance induced b-----r and was shocked to find nothing matching me at all. And I checked the American Journal of Psychiatry and everything. “Substance induced” should not be confused with the so-called “kindling” phenomenon, where antidepressants and illicit drugs intensify mood episodes, possibly triggering bipolarity and making the illness more severe. After “kindling” you get mood swings anyhow whether or not you go on taking drugs. Substance induced means DIRECTLY induced by a substance or substance withdrawal. I checked carefully and what Naomi said seems true. Unfortunately. Because if this is so I’m really going to have trouble convincing this psychiatrist I’m not mental.
So this means I have to find ingenious ways to wriggle out of what I knew was wrong with me anyhow. It has ALL the major symptoms of a certain condition with 2 phases. In one you get depressed, in the other you get hyper. A third state exists where you have aspects of both at the same time. I’m not naming it as I don’t want to curse my happiness. This condition is labelled a “severe mental illness” which made me blow my top and rant loudly about the Mental Health C**t who suggested I might have a personality disorder an an anxious-avoidant one at that! This certain condition which I decline to name which I might well have is pretty much DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE to anxious avoidant personality disorder, though avoidant behaviour is common in the depressed phase. This disorder is associated with artists, business tycoons and high achievers and it is NOT schizophrenia. It is a mood disorder. And if you can’t work out what I mean look up bipolar.
I still have no official diagnosis. If I do get diagnosed as a pie-bowler I shall be intensely upset I can tell you that for nothing. Because that will mean I’m a manic-depressive junkie. I mean what greater Loser title can you get? And if I do have that one I’ll probably be on psych meds for LIFE. The fact that I go UP not down off meds is yet another sign that this nasty thing is probably me.
That is all I want to say on the subject. Until I hear more news I’m going to try and steer off this issue because it doesn’t make me happy. It makes me feel very upset and angry because I suspected I had this disorder more than ten years ago and nobody listened. The people who said I acted like I had it (on selected occasions) had ALL seen it first-hand and knew the behaviour. Behaviour I was displaying by being hyped up, impatient, irritable and euphoric. As years went by these symptoms were initially squashed by heroin, then they started emerging again. Weird symptoms like a racing brain accompanied by a very nice buzzing feeling, buzzing so much I remember on one occasion about three years ago having to restrain myself from yelling obscenities out the window into the street. I just felt really really hyped up that day. And I thought I was depressed!
Well I’m going now I refuse to muse on this issue but I’m warning y’all this is what everyone seems to think is wrong with me. Mental health professionals, mental health sufferers ~ and me. And they’re not picking up the idea from me, they’re TELLING me, you see. I have been scrupulously avoiding using any vocabulary associated with this condition, yet they still seem to recognize it in me.
I won’t despair until the Consultant Headshrinker (yeah I have a consultant psychiatrist, not a trainee one) tells me my life is over. Until then I’m thoroughly enjoying yet another free high!
Take care everyone and don’t worry about me. I’m not worried. You shouldn’t be either.
L8Rs xx
PS sorry if this doesn't flow nicely. I'm not reading back over stuff I don't want to know about. I have to put this down for the record. Naomi's sayso will be confirmed or overturned in due course but only my Consultant can do that. My Consultant is on leave. I have an appointment in two weeks' time ... perhaps I'll know more then ...
PPS Nutter Club tomorrow. I hope we talk about little fluffy clouds and other nice things. I'm not in the mood for ANY MORE talk about ANYONE being mentally ill. It's starting to do my head in
HEY I FOUND MYSELF A PROPER NUT-CRACKER DOCTOR!! AT LAST. MY OWN PERSONAL ONE.
Before that he was a dr. I had seen who works there. Now he's my dr.
I'm on antipsychotics. Respiradone or risperadone, I don't know what it's called (I'm not looking it up) 2mg x2 daily. That's not supposed to be very much.
He said it's for schizophrenia and mood problems and it should stop my moods being so extreme. I don't think he was telling me I had schizophrenia. The S word terrifies me even though the other words are probably worse. I don't mean to mystify by not giving other words I just don't want to.
Obviously I had to say how I felt today. Which is less hyperhigh than yesterday, which was less than the day before. Saturday in particular, Saturday morning and early afternoon I was off my rocker. That's when I had to do a car journey. "Had to" meaning chose to and forced self into it. I am a little toddler and a horrible parent.
When I was using heroin the brat was in charge. Strangely even though I was going crazy and knew it (most of the time) ... even then the parent kept charge. If he hadn't I'd have got myself in tremendous trouble. My ideas included 1. walking to Paris (through the channel tunnel) and 2. giving up methadone (all part of the same scheme) and 3. throw all my possessions out of the window and set fire to them on the street (again, part of the same scheme) which was inspired by paranoia and "grandiosity" as they might call it. Feeling I don't need anything or anyone because I'm above it and "turning into pure energy anyway"... ahem. Well I told ya everything else, might as well shove this lovely lot in ya crack pipe and smoke it. Yeah I was going crazy yeah yeah I know. Maybe at that precise moment in time I didn't have quite the same view on things, but I must have had some view as I didn't do it. Also you have to bear in mind my attention was so fractured I sometimes literally could not follow what people were saying. So my hopes of actually chucking everything out of a window and locating lighters and kindling and fuel and walking to Paris were slightly slim, to say the least.
I hope someone somewhere has been really entertained by that revelation as I don't know whether to laugh or... what?! I don't feel depressed. (Thank God.) I just feel less hyperdiaper. The dr. wanting to know how I felt I was I could only say "well I think I'm absolutely fine and would willingly stay the way I am today for ever" (that is less hyper than before but still hyped up a bit)... "but you will probably think I'm still gone"...
... then I had to answer a string of questions about whether some outside agency was controlling my body (no) could other people read my thoughts (no) did I hear my thoughts aloud (yes)... then voices voices. I don't even wanna talk about voices. No I don't hear voices telling me to do stupid things. When I was out of it everything I heard whether or not it was "real" sounded mighty peculiar. Just the noise of a car going past sounded like an inverted SWOO-OO-SHHHHHHHH-H-H-H through a cosmic sound vortex. I kept forgetting I wasn't actually at a hardcore rave. It was like a party all the time. A fantastic nonending over a week long party. Which is not a bad way to feel.
So now I'm on antipsychotics. I hope this is followable and rational and all. I am trying to be boring and grounded. I don't want to be boring. Maybe I'll try just the grounded (one foot only).
I'm looking for a life. Have yet to find one. Did find my DSS Money Card! Wow! Bought cyder and a pie with it.
Oh and stopping drinking isn't my biggest priority, that's official, from the dr's mouth. He wasn't condoning drinking. Just said it's not as hugely bad as ... I dunno. I can do it. I don't WANT to be an old drinker so I'm stopping anyway. Don't need a dr. to tell me to do that.
OK I'm off. Take it easy.
ps of course i'm looking up what crap i'm on, just not today, not now can't believe i'm about to take that stuff. ukkk. has it really got this bad that i'm "severe"... o man... o shuttup gledwood shuttup i'm off
i had to take my psycho-script down my normal chemist. wasn't in mood for sniffy other pharmacist to give me "you're a nutter" looks
illustrated: nutcracker suite. some ballet. i like the picture because it has people flying through the air. and because it is blue
19:50hrs OK I just double-dropped 2x 2mg Risperidone. Might as well get it over and done with. I bosh it all back at night to start with; then one nightly one daily from next week. I have x3 zopiclone 7.5s (as required) which he told me was today, tomorrow the next day. I'd rather save them... That's it
MESSED UP DR APPOINTMENT: something went wrong re the dr's appointment between me, my family, my worker, the dr, and the time but I've got another for later today so no harm done. I had to pick up a methadone script for next week anyhow. And I saw some nutters I know. And some junkies I know. Nutter-junkies are the best. Only type I truly understand.
Where me and normal junkies go off at tangents is in lifestyle as there was no way I was barging into shops every single day, multiple shops per day, stocking up, hiding it all in alleys and bins and hoping no other bastard shoplifter or tramp runs off with it all, then when all that's done having to sell the crap, probably feeling tired and your lovely customers being able to read how desperate you are (not that I've ever "sold stolen goods" but say, hypothetically, that I did it as a favour for someone else; then that someone would have been really surprised at how much cash I got, as I came in daisy-fresh and got money for their toothpaste and shampoo (when I didn't know it shocked me just how humdrum these shoplifted items are! I thought addicts nicked nice stuff. Not coffee, headache pills and razors! Another thing that shocked me was realizing that stuff on sale in small shops was often shoplifted from bigger shops, sold on at less than wholesale. The kind of shop that would go nuts if you got caught nicking from THEM, the hypocrites!) anyway shoplift thing over... what was I on about. O yeah
here's a point (at last)
how can I possibly know how much another person suffers? How good or bad they feel? That's (part of) what stopped me thinking I was clinically depressed when I was. Not having a point of comparison, even among people I hung out with and/or knew very well. As everyone's personal hell is their own, y'know...
Well I SLEPT 8 HOURS which was lovely. From about 6:30 to 2AM. OK probably 7 and a bit all told, and that... does it make up for last night's hardly any sleep? I dunno. I got up at 2am last night after taking the zopiclone late so I can't have got much more than an hour and a half sleep. I write down my sleep for this diary thing I WAS doing properly. Or going to to. You ALL won't remember; someone will.
O I hate going to doctors to describe how I am not how some physical ailment is affecting me. That's a headfucker if you think about it. Doesn't psychiatry mean "care for the soul". Does my soul need caring for? Shouldn't I myself do the caring? What can a headshrinker actually do for me? Apart from write down their medicalized version of how and who I am and think about prescribing drugs of their own. While telling me not to take ones obtained for FAR TOO MUCH MONEY from bastards on mountain bikes.
My phone is full of desperate text messages telling how THEIR gear is the best how one "runs" amazingly even though I'd never in a zillion years SMOKE THE CRAP. Unless it's H4 [for injection] I'm not in the remotest bit interested. H4 is pure white heroin hydrochloride. China White is still heroin. Heroin is shit. I wouldn't actually take heroin. But enjoy the oblique "your wares are shit" dig. Plus being way more knowledgeable than the idiot selling it. Surely if you're retailing you wanna know your product? But they don't. Hence the absolute SKANK sold during the worst part of this ongoing drought....
Khhh. My worker listened very closely when I described having once given up caffeine and cigarettes. Caffeine for more than a year. Cigs for at least 6 possibly as long as 9 months. And the mental persuasion entailed in dumping nicotine. My point was I was so intensely addicted to heroin none of that ever worked on me. Heroin was as intertwined round my soul as anything ever has been. Total and utter addiction. Never again!
And yes I do need to remember this. I'm the sort of bastard who doesn't recognize the same landscape in summer and winter. Message to self:~ Seasons change. No heroin in any season. Thank you.
I was so knackered today. I actually came down to the ground in the morning. Like coming home after a wild an whacky holiday (Vacation you Americans! Not Xmas hols)... yeah an adventurous holiday. Imagine sunning yourself on a beach on Ko Phi Phi, which is said to be sublime, somehow the walls of your own living room impinge into this scene and a sun-lounger turns into your own chair. Wow! Then I had a bit of coffee to get me through both these appointments and I was flying yummily again. On less coffee than most people take to get to Work!!! How amazing is that. Free illegal drugs in my coffee. Wow. Anyway I was so tired I was zombified on the outside, bizzy-buzzing on the inside. Which meant whenever anybody asked me a question I suddenly sprang to life and wouldn't stop rabbitting. Then stared into space again: wearied close to exhaustion. That's why I slept so very long, and it did feel like 18 hours, not just under 8... like when you wring out a sponge and wring and wring more and more water so I got all the sleep out of me I could. A nice good long lie in. Getting up early AM. Yeah I know it's stupid. It's also fantastic not to be addicted to sleep any more. Not the way I was. Not struggling to function on 10, 12, 14, 16 and even more hours. Get my attitude to sleep now? It hits me like a disease and I can't function through exhaustion, depression and sheer ukkhhh-ness. THIS is why I have a rave, an ongoing party when suddenly I'm OK, don't need DAYS of sleep don't need don't want get rid of my old shitty life... ukk. Live on fresh air! That's the ideal. Like a sky blue flower aginst a blue sky. Blue into infinite sunny blue and cool fresh air. I'd love to live in Switzerland, wouldn't you? OK I'm gonna leave it there else this will never get finished.
RESTFUL CLASSICAL MUSIC. OK the restful is sarcasm. Sometimes I am sarcastic you know. E.g. when I asked would a caramel cadbury's creme egg set me off hyper. I'm not the kind to get high off a red smartie you know. And as for caffeine... all it used to do was give insomnia and anxiety. Never got high off that cept when I was on Prozac or naturally high anyway (not drug high).
MOZART: REQUIEM TRANCED UP
MOZART: LACRIMOSA (IE SAME PIEC) TECHNOD DIFFERENTLY oh man: well you might like it, I'm saying nothing about this one
EVANESCE: (MOZART'S) LACRIMOSA OK we're starting to go down a blind alley with this one but here: 05:04 finally got this to play properly: what an oppressive dirge! doesn't suit my mood at all. I far prefer that On With the Story Higher than the Eiffel track (look for a tiny little box, shrunken youtube screen last Sunday) for clish-clashing waves of music. Does anybody like this?:~~~~~
Illustrated: I was trying to find bindweed to illustrate heroin and me and that's the flower ~ WHAT AN AMAZING COLOUR BLUE! The bottom shows what bindweed actually does, view from a beach, Ko Phi Phi (Thailand) which is pronounced "pea pea"
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 Gracehas 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
I WANT OFF METHADONE AS QUICK AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!
METHADONE ~ A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH
Heroin Shortage: News
If you are looking for the British Heroin Drought post, click here; the latest word is in the comments.
Christiane F
"Wir, Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo" by "Christiane F", memoir of a teenage heroin addict and prostitute, was a massive bestseller in Europe and is now a set text in German schools.
Bahnhoff Zoo was, until recently, Berlin's central railway station. A kind of equivalent (in more ways than one) to London's King's Cross...
Of course my local library doesn't have it. So I'm going to have to order it through a bookshop and plough through the text in German. I asked my druggieworker Maple Syrup, who is Italiana how she learned English and she said reading books is the best way.CHRISTIANE F:
TRAILER
You can watch the entire 120-min movie in 12 parts at my Random blog. Every section EXCEPT part one is subtitled in English (sorry: but if you skip past you still get the gist) ~ to watch it all click HERE.
To See Gledwood's Entire Blog...
DID you find my blog via a Google or other search? Are you stuck on a post dated some time ago? Do you want to read Gledwood Volume 2 right from "the top" ~ ie from today? If so click here and you'll get to the most recent post immediately!
Drugs Videos
Most of these come from my Random blog, which is an electronic scrapbook of stuff I thought I might like to view at some time or other. For those who want to view stuff on drugs I've collected the very best links here. Unless otherwise stated these are full-length features, usually an hour or more.
If you have a slow connexion and are unused to viewing multiscreen films on Youtube here's what to do: click the first one and play on mute, stopping and starting as it does. Then, when it's done, click on Repeat Play and you get the full entertainment without interruption. While you watch screen one, do the same to screens 2, 3 and so on. So as each bit finishes, the next part's ready and waiting.
Khun Sa, whose name meant Prince Prosperous, had been, before his death in the mid 2000s, the world's biggest dealer in China White Heroin: "Lord of the Golden Triangle"
In-depth portrait of the Afghan heroin trade at its very height. Includes heroin-lab bust. "Afghanistan's Fateful Harvest"
Classic miniseries whose title became a catchphrase for the misery of life in East Asian prison. Nicole Kidman plays a privileged middle-class girl set up to mule heroin through Thai customs with the inevitable consequences. This is so long it had to be posted in two parts. "Bangkok Hilton 1" (first 2 hours or so); "Bangkok Hilton 2" (last couple of hours).
Short film: from tapwater-clear H4 in the USA to murky black Afghan brown in Norway: "Heroin Addicts Speak"
Before his untimely death this guy kept a video diary. Here's the hour-long highlights as broadcast on BBC TV: "Ben: Diary of a Heroin Addict". Thanks to Noah for the original link.
Some of the most entertaining scenes from Britain's top soap (as much for the poor research as anything else). Not even Phil Mitchell would go from nought to multi-hundred pound binges this fast: "Phil Mitchell on Crack" (just over 5 minutes).
Scientist lady shows us how to cook up gear: "How Much Citric?" Lucky cow: her brown is 70% purity! Oddly we never see her actually do her hit... maybe she got camera shy...
And lastly:
German documentary following a life from teenage addiction to untimely death before the age of 30. The decline in this girl's appearance is truly shocking. "Süchtig: Protokoll einer Hilflosigkeit". Sorry no subtitles; this is here for anyone learning German who's after practice material a little more gripping than Lindenstraße!
Nosey Quiz! Have you ever heard voices when you weren't high on drugs?
Here's the 4-methylmethcathinone molecule. This is the "cocaine plus ecstasy"-style "legal high" I took that time and didn't even know what it was... After a brief but intense craze for meow, it was eventually banned in the UK in April 2010
If you wanna see what manic looks like, watch this. If this is the mood she stayed in all day she'd be moderately manic (severely manic is literally all over the place verging into complete incoherence)... I have been known to yell the same stuff over and over, which is why I like this:
Ferry Corsten remix. William Orbit performance. Samuel Barber's Adagio
DJ Seduction: Starlight August 1992
I love this style of music and WHY do kidz today call it OLD SCHOOL? MAKE ME FEEL ANCIENT WHY DONCHA! I really like that ting-ting-tong tune that comes into it about 3 mins in "release the spirit" yeah....! Respect goin' out LizzyD Yeah ;-)
Angelina Joelie: Crazy Chic
Girl Interrupted: best scenes
Mozart's Requiem Tranced Up
I like danced-up tunes now that I'm "OLD". Like this one... The actual name of the tune is "lacrimosa" which means sad. Which is weird it actually sounds uplifting. but there ya go:~~~~~~~~
Click herefor the Drought Post, news is in the comments.
Because there's more than 200 comments, look closely at the bottom of the form for for "Newer/Newest" - THAT is where you click to find most recent comments.
PETITION THE GOVT FOR PROPER PRESCRIBING TO ADDICTS: CLICK HERE
Figs and roses
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Well that was a shock to the system.
I got up and out to Sainsburys early (9.30). I haven't been on a big shop
there for ages relying these days on deliv...
CATCHING UP WITH OUR FAVOURITE JEWELLERS
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Salvatore's shop, *Gemma*
Gabriele's shop,* Temporè Orologi*
We have met the enterprising Aprile brothers, Salvatore and Gabriele,
before on this blog bu...
After Writer's Block by Janice Seagraves
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After I experienced writer's block a few years ago, I decided to be nicer
to myself.
But so far this year, I have been having the worst time writing. ...
HODGEPODGE DECEMBER 18
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1. What's one thing on your to-do list that you want to get done, need to
get done, or that must get done before the year ends?
*Youpee, my "To do li...
Cancer Update
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Dear Readers,
I need to apologize to you all. I have not provided any updates from my
last post about my cancer diagnosis. So here we go.
(if you are ...
Blogging Break
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I'm taking a break from blogging, for two major reasons :a. I find it
hard to concentrate on chosen topics, while there's war and tragedy going
on in m...
Just a Thought for the HBO Execs
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I want to rename Game of Thrones, “Two Crazy-Assed Bitches.” Mail me my
check, motherfuckers! Actually three crazy-assed bitches if you count
Sansa. The me...
Souls of the Goldhawk Road
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It was one of those tawdry summer evenings and all I could think about was
the heat. It was everywhere, stuffy and humid and crucifying even at that
late...
Yeah
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No, I am not returning, just updating out of boredom. Plus writing on my
phone sucks, so it won't be a long post.
Yep my book sucks, makes close to no mon...
The (complete) rainbowrain
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Today is the last time I'll post blog-photos from my work as tomorrow, the
last day of this blog is a Saturday. So you can enjoy this view one more
time ...
Twelve Months
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I can't believe it's almost 12 months since I posted anything on my blog!
I confess I've been spending a lot of time on Facebook - I know you think
I'm a t...
Graphic Wisdom to Begin 2016
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*By three methods we may learn wisdom: *
*First, by reflection, which is noblest; *
*Second, by imitation, which is easiest; *
*and third by experience, wh...
Obat Herbal Stroke Berat dan Ringan
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*Obat Herbal Stroke* - Penyakit ini terjadi karena peredaran darah didalam
organ otak mengalami penyumbatan atau gangguan. Penyakit Stroke ini adalah
adany...
Iboga- A Magic Bullet?
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Thoughts and random musings
I get the feeling, that this blog and therefore, my own thoughts and
behaviours are, to the average reader, quite controversi...
The People You Meet
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Not saying this is a come back of any type, but after farewelling my
darling friend Jeffrey today, I felt the overwhelming need to blog. Met a
weird Japan...
Despair and Dissolution
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I haven't written partly because I was confused by the new setup. Took me
ages just to get to my blog. Frustration.
Everyone can say "I told you so". Hate...
A long time coming....
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I cannot believe I have neglected this blog for so long.
Just to let you know I will be uploading a post in the next couple of days.
Things are good.
My hea...
Gone but never forgotten
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Hello everyone....
Saturday the 24th May would of been Merle's 80th birthday...
Unfortunately she is gone, but never forgotten...
I just thought I would...
Everything in it's place
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Yum.That people are reading this in Israel and Indonesia, as well as so
many other places around the world that I never would've expected is pretty
fuckin...
How to Negotiate With Used Cars Dealers
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Car traders have excellent discussing abilities. They know how to deal with
their clients with their methods and methods to make sure that they shop.
Amazi...
starry starry night…
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Ho Ho Ho! Hope everyone had a merry fucking Christmas and will enjoy a
drunken orgy of pleasure on New Years Eve. I had a nice Christmas Day with
Melinda(a...
byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
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.....I think the time has come to acknowledge that I'm not actually
blogging any more.....
PLUS
I'm off on Sunday for a Big Adventure Down Under, with L...
Drug Law Reform - NZ Show Australia How it's Done
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It seems that our New Zealand cousins are finally taking some much needed
action on drug law reform. Australia should take note of this and consider
caref...
Daze of Summer
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Her mentor is one of the most gentle people on the planet. He catches flies
in his hands and sets them free outside his studio, and he flicks
mosquitoes a...
Musings
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A week has passed since my last post and it's been a week of contrasts.
Right smack bang in the middle of week, Wednesday, was Australia Day, a
public holi...
Who buys CRACK without Brown ?
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See these F.cking dealers up here they cant get the brown sold cause its
shite so lots of people are just buying Whisky and im thinking to myself No
For Me...
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Would you trust someone who was never sure if they loved you?
I want to be held (or posses a large amount of drugs)
I want to be skinny and pretty
I want...
The Neighbour's Gun
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I remember those lazy summer nights. In my light, light dress, I would open
the window and gaze at the moon in the night. I would look and almost feel
th...
THIS is classic slice-of-life video; filmed from a sushibar conveyor belt in Japan. You don't need sound for this one (unless you speak Japanese...)
Never Mind The Balearics...
LOST WEEKENDS... Lost weeks... Lost lives...
THE SPANISH ISLE of Ibiza is the "spiritual home" of much British dance music...
Eva Cassidy: Autumn Leaves
I wonder if Autumn is as miserable your end as it is here..? This song wonderfully reinterpreted by Eva Cassidy (I think) brought tears to my eyes when I first heard it. See what you think ...
Christiane F
Christiane F
("Wir Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo")
Berlin has long been a centre of "alternative" living, attracting the artistic and dejected. And of course heroin rushes into such a void:
You can see the film in its entirety by clicking HERE.
These are my 3 roborovski hamsters!
(And now there is one...) Itchy, Bashful and Spherical... Itchy, the scruffy, dopey (and tamest one) died a few weeks ago. I was very ****** off (no swearing on this blog (or I'd be effing and blinding all the time...)). Spherical and Bashful were the remaining "Trotters" aka Hamsta MCs, Carrot Nose and Trotter Donkey ... until Trotterdonkey died and now poor Spherical Carrot Nose remains alone ...
What name should I give to my fictional slavering English mastiff hellhound..??
Name the Uncooth Doggie...
NOW I'M PUTTING UP A NEW POLL...My forthcoming fiction shall feature a giant, ill-tempered slavering hellhound of an English Mastiff who spends her time savaging pram wheels, dolls, etc; pulling soft toys apart... growling at houseguests, baying at the light fittings etc etc. She has a total personality change, however, when she gets "raped" down the park by a local rottweiler... leading to a howling, baying, snaggle-toothed litter of puppies!Anyway, which of these three names do you think fits best?(In alphabetical order)GwendolinaPansyTinkerbelle???Vote now ...!!
London Time
GMT (aka "Universal Standard Time"):
ahead of the Americas; behind everywhere else...
Trisch & Jen on the phone
Real life spooky phone call. Trisch Li is speaking to her friend Jen, who has a stalker sneaking round the side of her house. I Love the film exposure. I love the funky background. And I love Trisch. She had bipolar. She died. She left some amazing stuff behind ...You can see Trisch manic here.
Moby: Go
Anyone who was a Twin Peaks fan will know this tune: the in-sequence floaty tune played in-episode (not the theme tune) that made that tellyprog so dreamy.
This tune is something else:~~~~~~~
Future Sound of London: Papua New Guinea
THIS tune is transcendently beautiful.
Thank you to Lizzy who reminded me:~~~~~~~
The Orb: Little Fluffy Clouds (Danny Tengalia)
Archetypal triphead/herb-tokers' tune ...
Urban Shakedown: Some Justice
One of my all time favourite "hardcore" rave tunes. The "woman" singing "we live as one family" is actually a man speeded up. The primal line "Now eeeee-yeah-oh-eeeee-yeah we live as one family," sounded to me like the sun rising at psychedelic dawn. For a long time there was forever a part of me left from this 1991-1992 era, still out there, tripping in a certain corn-on-the-cob field at dawn...
Praga Khan: Injected with a Poison
Sums up what my attitude used to be and is once again to gear. That because, "There's a rainbow inside your mind ... Injected with a poison.... we don't need that any more."
Scott McKenzie: San Francisco
I really used to believe all this crap with all my heart. Peace and love and chemical dreams. If you've ever tripped out high upon higher and sublime upon sublime there is no way of bringing the beauty of the experience back with you... I once had a friend down who brought some cocaine. I did some lines and was soon stuck to the ceiling. I had tickets for a rave in south London. He was too wasted to go. So I had to negotiate an hour and a half nightbus ride all the way down. By Trafalgar Square I was eeing out on 2 pills as well and my eyes such massive discs I couldn't read the bus time tables and had to tell passers-by I'd "forgotten my reading glasses" (how embarrassing)... then I arrived around 3pm. DUR! Not pm (wasn't THAT late 3AM): though these pills didn't wear off till well after 11am which made them superstrong... anyhow... Security let me straight in I'd obviously taken all my drugs (indeed I had: felt like I was flying by this point)... first person I encountered was a middle-aged woman in a ball gown swaying back and forth in the foyer (Brixton Academy: a venue for 5000) I told her: "you are so cool". We subsequently made friends. Watching this video and seeing how stuck in the neverending moment of bliss some "flower kids" are I remember this lady having to tell me: "there's the party. Then the party's over. You have to accept that." But I never could. I wanted happiness to last for ever...
SCOTT MACKENZIE HAS GONE (copyright reasons)
HERE'S JOE BELTRAM 1990 ENERGY FLASH
Who is the superior writer? (From... in no particular order...)
Itchy's "Windy" Face
Not because she has the "farts" but because she "runs like the wind on a windy day" this is Itchy's look when she is nervous...
Bashful and Spherical look like this
(Itchy is a bit smaller)
Bashful's Lookie-Lykie
Hello you Tiny Tubby! Roborovskis are the tiniest of all hamsters, being a mere 5cm/2" fully grown... "Bashful" is pulling a bit of a grumpy face here; but hey!
Should my daily videos stay giant on the top or go mini on my sidebar? (You can only vote once.)
Doggie or Kittie?
You Are: 50% Dog, 50% Cat
You are a nice blend of cat and dog.
You're playful but not too needy. And you're friendly but careful.
And while you have your moody moments, you're too happy to stay upset for long.
38 year-old guy, 6 blogs (the main one is gledwood vol 2 so go there for new postings: blogs are linked via my sidebars), I also have 3 video blogs. One mainly music vids, the other random "novelty" clips from Youtube/etc. The third is my Fabulous Celebrity Blog for fans of trash culture. Unfortunately addicted to drugs - yes it was my own fault but what can I do about it now? Addicted means trapped & can't stop. That's how addicted I am. But that's not ALL I blog about. Apart from drugs I love drink. Apart from drink I'm into little furry animals like Pingpong, my Chinese hamster, and my 3 roborovski hamsters: Itchy, Bashful and Spherical... and ... er, food. Lately there has been a drought of the substance that enslaved me for so long. Will I clean up? Only time will tell...
Fun, comforting, and friendly.
You are a true classic, and while you're not super cutting edge, you're high quality.
People love your company - and have even been known to get addicted to you.