120 steps to freedom ...

I AM NOT looking forward to going to this new drugs clinic tomorrow. I've only been twice, but didn't particularly like it there, especially last time. They kept asking whether I wasn't using some other drug bar heroin. The doctor asked whether I was manic. The new worker even seem to know what schizoaffective meant. I just want them to take down my methadone as fast as possible. Because I'm a new customer they want me to drink it in the pharmacy. I'm not used to drinking methadone in one go and I'm not used to drinking it during the day. I want to go back to normal consumption so I can drink my juice in bed like a normal person. (Half before sleep, to knock me out; the second half two hours before rising, to stop me wanting to use that morning.) Because I don't think I'm going to find the support I need at this place, I've decided to help myself. I've found three groups that look promising.

Dual Recovery Anonymous
Emotions Anonymous
Schizophrenics Anonymous

Dual Recovery Anonymous UK do groups in London. They might substitute for the now defunct Nutter Club, which was a victim of Prime Minister David Cameron's notorious public spending cutbacks. Ironically it was the psychiatrist who diagnosed me who put the final nail in Nutter Club's coffin (so Naomi hints). I'm writing a letter asking for Nutter Club to be reinstated as it's the ONLY place I've ever found where I can speak freely. NA tend to put everything in the context of addiction, recovery and "working the steps". I've heard of people with psychotic depression being told they're feeling so down because they're "not working the steps". And I've heard numerous stories of mentally ill people and even epileptics being persuaded to throw their medication away because taking pills is "using". This isn't NA's official view, by the way. But it has gone on. I never found the understanding or acceptance I craved at NA; perhaps I might find them somewhere else.

My new worker was enthusing about the wonderful drugs groups this other clinic does. I smiled benignly, because they look exactly the same as the last clinics ones. Groups that made me so wound up and angry at the endless junkie one-up-man-ship ("I'm a cleverer addict than you") and subtle drug snobbery ("I only ever smoked my crack in a spliff") and endless boasting ("I got better/cheaper/stronger drugs than you") that I ran straight to my dealer after every session. Far from feeling empowered or inspired, in a room full of addicts with a non-addict moderator, I just feel like an old junkie at best. At worst I feel misunderstood and out of place, surrounded by crackheads, unable to tell my own experience. The reason I won't take most drugs is that I know they'll exacerbate symptoms of an "illness" I'm not willing to tell a room full of stangers about. Despite all this, I think you shouldn't knock anything until you've tried it, so I'm willing to give these new groups a go. When I'm in the right mood. Hopefully psychotically manic, so I can cause as much chaos as possible (ha-har!)

I'm supposedly getting some mental care co-ordination team thing. And a new doctor. Etc. Yet nothing has happened.

I looked up the NICE guidance on my conditions and found out that as a "service user" with a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis, I'm supposed to be offered art therapy. Whoopee!! I'd love to splosh paint on canvas at the taxpayer's expense (does the taxpayer stretch to canvas? Or would I be painting on cheap fish-and-chip paper? Ho-hum. Whichever). Also I found out bipolar disorder is considered a serious mental disorder. Which didn't make me happy. And I'm supposed to continue the antimanic pills despite feeling depressed. So there we go. I don't really wanna take anything anyway. Don't wanna take methadone. I wish I could wave a magic wand and be done with this addiction.

By the way I looked up people's experience of Rapid Opiate Detox. When I was younger I really wanted this procedure, where you're knocked out cold on general anaesthetic, pumped full of naltrexone, which knocks all methadone, heroin and other opiates off the brain's receptor sites. Two to four days later, depending on the clinic, you wake up drug free and supposedly happy. I have to say I envisaged myself feeling like a human train wreck in such circumstances. I also imagined I'd be extremely manic and probably psychotic. Or else extremely depressed, and probably very anxious. Sure enough I found a testimonial describing exactly the feelings I'd envisaged. The unfortunate person (who had spent over ten thousand dollars on this treatment) described waking up feeling like she'd been hit by a truck and plagued by nearly unbearable depression and anxiety which didn't let up for weeks on end.

So rapid detox is definitely NOT for me. I have been told by those who know me that any detox I do should be as gentle as humanly possible. I was thinking of reducing from 1mg methadone to nothing over the course of two weeks or more (why not?) using a broken off 1ml syringe to measure my daily dose. British methadone is 1mg/1ml so that would be quite easy. See I'm fretting about the final hurdle already, when I've bearly cleared hurdle number one! I'm also fretting about this bloody clinic tomorrow. I want cutting down down down on this methadone and I'm scared they will try and keep me stuck on a level dose. A level dose of methadone is too depressing for words. You're not going anywhere. I need to know I'm nearer freedom with every passing day. Really I want to reduce at a rate of 1mg per day, but I don't know if they'd let me.

Well the weather is really hot this week. And it's 2:30am. I'd better go. Nasty appointment tomorrow. Must sleep.

No, no, no!

THIS is from the Inspectors' Report of behaviour in the dining room at my old boarding school. Just before it got closed down:



Frequently the pupils [those are students to you Americans!]
simply thrust their hands into their plate, fall upon the
common dish, hurriedly stuff their mouths as full as possible
and swallow their food down almost without chewing, or
the spoon is grasped quite lightly with their finger-tips, often
at the extreme end and the handle is used for eating; their
food is invariably stirred about with their forks two or three
times before each mouthful, the vegetables are divided into a
row of equal little heaps, their hands are first wrapped up in
their coats, their nose is stuck into the soup, or there must be
a mouthful drunk between each two mouthfuls of food till
twelve are counted and so on. Others lap the soup like a
dog or pour it with profuse spilling into their mouth without
more ado, press the vegetable dish flat on to their face and
steadily lick it clean. One of the pupils took hold of the
spoon quite correctly with the right hand, but brought it
round her head by the left side to her mouth ; another crept
under the bed cover at meals.


TRAUMATIZED by these horrific schooltime memories, I've been reluctant to go back to instututional life, which is why Rehab has been out of the question.

Nah. Real reason was I couldn't hack the detox. I was out that door quicker than you could say "Giro day!" That's right. Every time I knew more money I was in the bank, there I was in tears of euphoric disappointment, fleeing to the railway station and straight to my dealer, who happened to serve up right behind my local tube station. The celebratory hit was tiny: I divided half a gram in three. I only took 2/3 of my hit and even that knocked the living crap out of me. I remember my friends shaking me awake to say they were leaving me with the TV and purring black cats as they had to do something (probably buy some crack). Y'see contrary to the rumours and lies I tried to disseminate to myself I had actually made a big effort to cut down my using to 12x 30mg DF118s (dihydrocodeine) (4 pills every 4 hours) and one £10 bag of heroin (0.2g) daily. The gear I used that week wasn't the best, but it was my firm intention to cut down, so I saw weak gear as a blessing in disguise. Paid-for willpower, if you will... The morning I left to go to rehab, a friend wanted to see my dealer and gave me either £10 or £20 worth... I can't remember, but it was my Proper Dealer, who served up behind the tube station and his gear blew me away. I was so high on that train journey down to the South Coast, I almost got my head knocked off leaning out the window as we whooshed into various tunnels. I had an entire oldfashioned compartment to myself to smoke cigarettes in. It was a breezy summer's day (very breezy with the window wide open!) I felt wonderful.

I slept like a baby the first night through. I was still high the next day. The doctor said "sometimes the angels are with you" and I thought: wow!

Then, on the evening of my first full day, withdrawal kicked in. I slept barely at all. Or the next. I watched everybody else sprawled unconscious, mouths wide open as if to catch flies (everybody else, who claimed not to sleep a wink. Everybody else who did the best impression of snoring decrepitude I've ever seen!)

The night staff were in no state to talk to me, having worked all day. So I was left alone and tormented by constant suicidal urges in a kitchen full of knives and icepicks (we got through a lot of cold drinks in our tiny smoking area-cum-back yard) and temptingly breakable glasswear and crockery. I had the recurrent urge to gash my throat, cut my wrists, hang myself. And no sleep. Despite everything no, no sleep. It was awful.

Mornings with breakfast TV and then all the crap on BBC1 that reminded me being round my friend's house (where I used to show up like clockwork Monday to Friday waiting for the man)... Midmorning television without the faintest chance of a hit! Intolerable! It was like waiting for a dealer who never came. When eventually I got it, far too late for my ragged system, the meds (dihydrocodeine) did hold me. But by then my resolve was shattered. My mind was firmly tuned to the Using Channel. Would I have to live the entire rest of my life like this? Never feeling any better? Never plunging beautiful gear through a shiny new needle into my glorious veins ever ever again? I just couldn't live like that.

Can't live with gear; can't live without it. Except I could live with it. And for another seven years, I did. I had almost no semblance of a life to speak of, but I did have my glorious, wondrous heroin every single day of every week of every year, year after year. My attempts to stick to methadone during this period were halfhearted to say the least. If they could at least have prescribed it in an injectable form (which private doctors still do in the United Kingdom) it might have soothed the itch to inject at least. As it was, drinking 50 or 60mg (which is all my script was back then) of sticky gloop just didn't cut the mustard when the streets of London were flooded with the cheapest, best quality gear they'd ever seen. At that time a "sixteenth" (of an ounce, which actually weighed a gram and a half) could be had for as little as £45 (in fact, my hazy memory tells me it might have been as low as £40 from one particular bastard I gave thousands to...). That's $60 or so. And a gram was £30 ~ just over $45...

O how vivily I recall the soft aroma of Afghan fields, the golden glow of poppies washing over and through me, making me feel purified and clean. (Heroin doesn't feel rough or jagged or dirty at all, it feels like the softest and most benign of all drugs... until you try to sever relations. Only then does it truly show its ugly side!) The first kiss of the needle ~ and life itself came rushing into my veins. O, how I adored heroin! How could I ever stop it?

Well now I'm old and faded and wearied and grey. I'm looking for a new existence. I'm beginning to think the only way there might be via rehab... Trust me, this is far from a knee-jerk reaction. I have a plethora of issues surrounding rehabs. From the uncomfortable fact that most of them appear to be run to suit the convenience of staff more than "peers" (as they're called in there). To the long night hours of torment as the drugs drain inexorably out of you. No hope of anything exciting to take the pain away. Not now, not ever. I was as galvanized, and resolved; my mind was made up as firmly as it was possible to be when I went before, not once but TWICE. Yet at the first opportunity I ran away and thoroughly enjoyed "relapsing". Drug addiction is the only illness I know of where a relapse is undiluted fun. It certainly was for me. NA's mantra that "one meeting and you'll never be able to use the same way again" (their implication being that you'll be riddled with discomfort and guilt) never washed with me. I understood Recovery and the 12-step process as well as any using addict whose never been able to clean up long enough to actually put the philosophy into practice ever could. And yet I used with gusto. Heroin didn't just feel like life itself, it WAS my life. I've never loved anything or anyone the way I loved heroin. I absolutely adored it. As long as I had it, it never let me down. The problems were invariably caused by dealers, who charged too much, watered it down, didn't come when they said they would... etc etc etc. That's the way I saw it.

Somehow, heroin and I are falling out of love. To be honest, I'm bored of it. When you consider that in actuality the drug is giving you a pleasantly and very slightly comfortably exaggerated version of normality... you might as well learn to live without it and get your normality free of charge from life. Then at least you know your wellbeing is not being held in the hands of ruthless criminals who could snatch it away any time they please (as they did do, last Autumn, when they effectively droughted the entire UK heroin market. There was no good heroin on sale anywhere at all. Only people who had imported their own supply or were personal friends of people who had done, still had gear. The rest of us went without. I didn't even bother touching it for... I can't remember how many weeks. It felt more like a year. I learned to live without heroin. Even though I had the crutch of methadone, I never felt it did very much for me. I'm fed up of methadone more than I'm sick to death of heroin. I don't want either one. I want whatever comes next...

Which might have to be rehab.

I can't stomach a "normal" rehab, it would have to be a place geared to taking on dual diagnosis clients ~ that is, people with "mental health" "issues" alongside their addictions. Every single time I've attempted to come off opiates I've felt like the rug has been pulled from under me. Every single time I had some manner of "breakdown". Every time. No way could I handle losing my marbles in front of a bunch of hatchet-faced crack-addicted housebreakers and prostitutes. Not again. This time, they have to be my kind of addicts: yes, nutter junkies!

I emailed one place yesterday morning and got a reply back saying they could reduce me to 30mg methadone and switch me over from that to Subutex, so I detox from Subutex to nothing. Which is a far brighter move than methadone to nothing. Subutex is very easy to reduce. It's an agonist-antagonist to the brain's opiate receptors, meaning the body is already ready for being clean. Methadone is particularly "sticky", hanging around for far longer than heroin, meaning the withdrawals last considerably longer. In other words, it's harder to come off. Methadone is only prescribed because it's cheap and can be dosed orally once a day. Most opiates require at least twice-daily dosing. A one-a-day hydromorphone (Dilaudid) pill is available for heroin addiction, but it's not given in Britain ~probably on grounds of cost.

Subutex is a different story. You do the nasty suffering when you go ON Subutex. I felt desperately ill. But very rapidly it swooshes into the body, working its own peculiar magic. Best thing about Subutex is, it gave me a euphoric high that I now know was almost certainly a mild bipolar mood swing. It had all the same characteristics: 4 hours sleep a night. Mood most intense in the mid-morning. Constant excited feeling. Music sounding amazing. It only lasted a few days, but it got me through the awkward transition phase, when body and brain acclimatize to a radically different medication, with ease. Tapering off Subutex to nothing, so I'm told, is far easier than methadone discontinuation, so I wouldn't be worried about that.

My email warned me that methadone might be acting as a mood stabilizer, and I can grudgingly accept that it probably does. Heroin stabilizes my mood far more effectively, but methadone probably does do something. So my medication(s) might have to be reassessed prior to and during detox.

Here (really for my information, but I put the list up in case anyone else is looking) are some of the best rehabs I looked up. Castle Craig Hospital in Scotland even do Trotterdonkey Therapy (better known as Equine Therapy)..!

I would quite like to do beekeeping and hamster-keeping. Imagine window set into the wall, viewing right into the buzzing bee colony?! Imagine a big tank of robos pinging around on their wheels atop the rehab telly..? Well here's hoping...

And BTW I go back to Narcotics Anonymous on Monday. I'm still feeling VERY reticent about what I might and might not share. I really found the reaction to my Manic Self rather offputting. But ho-hum. You live and learn...


UK rehab directory
http://www.addictionhelper.com/what-to-expect/9/What-to-Expect:-Dual-Diagnosis-Treatment

Castle Craig Hospital, Scotland
http://www.castlecraig.co.uk

Promis, Kent
http://www.promis.co.uk/enquiries

ANA
http://www.anatreatmentcentres.com/index.html

St James Priory (Walsingham House) dual unit, Bristol
http://www.stjamesprioryproject.org.uk/13.html

Loudon House dual unit, Ayrshire, Scotland
http://www.piramhids.com/case-studies/view-casestudy?resid=674

List of rehabs in Scotland
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2004/11/20231/46408

Park View, Salford, Manchester resiential home (is this ia rehab?)
http://potensial.co.uk/locations/park-view-salford



CAFE DEL MAR: ENERGY 52
classic ibiza trance tune:~

first here's the original tune "3 in 1 version"



OUT OF OFFICE
moi, j'adore cette version; c'est la vraie signification de l'euphorie....


PAUL OAKENFOLD


MICHAEL WOODS
this is the meaning of U4EA

Mentally Ill

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