Electric Cigarettes

TOMORROW I'M GETTING AN E-CIGARETTE (as illustrated ~ don't they look real?!) I'm DETERMINED TO GIVE UP SMOKING!!

I'M FEELING WAY BETTER than yesterday and the previous few days. I think finally I have caught up on my lost sleep.

I have been eating microwave cheeseburgers that are so addictive. Seriously you want to try one. Use all the relish and extra relish (and extra cheese) if so desired. And mound it up with salad and I promise you that just like with mama heroin you'll be crawling back for more.

I did have a tiny bit of gear last night but I couldn't even feel it. It just made me sleep through till morning without waking every hour (like I normally do). I also realized my methadone isn't actually holding me properly as I'm getting bad sweats from my heater. Then I get bad sweats again by venturing outside into the freezing cold! I won't promise never to touch the "B" again as y'all know I will. But I'm determined to get my methadone dose cut down to nothing as quick as poss. I can't wait till I get to the magic 20mg. That means, to my mind, that I'm not a raving addict any more.

I saw a funky SQUARE satellite dish this morning. Just like one of those BSB Squariels (remember them) ~ but massive. BSB who went against Sky's (then) 30+ channels with SIX of their own and expected to win the war! In the end the 2 companies merged into "BSkyB". Freesat is operated by the BBC and ITV (the main terrestrial TV companies) but they use the same satellites as Sky. Anyone who stops subscribing to Sky automatically gets Freesat but lots of people don't seem to realize that. 100+ channels FREE. And supposedly 200 more if you tune them in manually.

What was I talking about? O, the weather. Yes it's FREEEZING COLD and yet I've had terrible sweats when walking to the chemist. O yeah and HERE'S THE NEWS.

TOMORROW I'M BUYING AN ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE. They cost £8 for a nonrechargable disposable one that contains as many blasts on the nicotine as 30 real fags. I'm determined to get my absolute money's worth by holding in the nicotine as if it's crack smoke. £8 is $12 and almost as much as real fags cost anyhow but I'm determined to give these electronic ones a whirl. I've seen people use them and they look so funky. The rechargable ones used to cost £40 ~ then you have to hunt down a supplier of refill cartridges and of course I'd only want maximum strength ones. I'll let you know how it goes...

Freezing

IT IS RIDICULOUSLY FREEZING COLD these days and I trudged up the road wearing 2 jackets, sweating heavily under these and a scarf. Then I drank the evil methadone, went round Morrisons in the worst mood ever and retired to the library for over an hour to let that gloopy green crap take effect. Methadone is the slowest acting drug I have ever tried. It takes a good 90 minutes for any real effect and "peak serum levels" are reached after four very long hours. I wake up each morning sweaty yet cold and it takes a good 2-3 hours to steel myself for that nasty same old same old walk to the chemist for a sip of barely effectual linctus. As you all know I can't stand methadone. I have an appointment in the new year to see the doctor who should hopefully reduce the dose still further from 60mg to 40mg over the course of a month. After that I want to get down to 20mg and from then on if the clinic won't give me take-homes, I'm just buying methadone on the street and weaning myself off it at my own pace.

I got woken up by the crackheads or whoever they are making the biggest rumpus at 5am, then this idiot went and rang every single doorbell in the building at about 11. As if that's going to endear her to the residents of Halfwit House where I live.

I got a call at around 10 saying finally I have a date for satellite TV installation but it's in 7 weeks' time and there are no earlier appointments. How pathetic is that? I'm beginning to wish I'd just shelled out extra and got the installation done privately.

I'm munching "American salad" like it's going out of fashion. The British government recommend its citizens eat at least 5x80g portions of fruit or vegetables per day. Well 2x200g salad bags works out the same and finely chopped mixed salad is just about the only veg I can bear to eat (apart from broccoli and peas). I loathe cabbage (except raw) and hate brussels sprouts. They smell like farts. I eat my salad totally undressed (70s lower middle class style) so I'm keeping my calories to a minimum. I could do with losing a bit of weight. Last time I weighed myself I was 220lbs! ~ that's gotta be close on 15 stone! I've also been eating those industrial microwavable cheeseburgers you get from the chilled meats isle. They come with a relish sachet and aren't bad doused in American salad.

I was reading Jason Donovan's autobiography in the library ~ only the bits where he details his coke habit, of course. I love reading about and watching films of other people doing coke as the drug is so "glamorous" ~ to them, but not to me. Powder coke only ever made me feel jagged and exceptionally moody and there's no fantastic rush like with crack. I always thought crack was rubbish, too. As for heroin, Keith Richards got it right when he says it's all in the name ~ the arch seductress. And just like any dirty tart you can live without her without too much hassle. Methadone is like a stern overweight babushka reprimanding you for past misdeeds but I take methadone as a means to an end. And that end is a life on no drugs at all...

I wasn't back on heroin...

I WASN'T BACK ON HEROIN when I made my last post I was off it. I was enthusiastic about everything because I wasn't sleeping and was a bit hyper. Nowhere near hyper enough in my opinion, but there you go. I haven't taken heroin in more than a week and I don't miss it. The relapse started off when an ancient dealer of mine ran up to me on the street and led me to his car where he gave me a sample of B that he guaranteed would be better than anyone else's. It was. So I scored it every day for about a week. Then one day he couldn't get it together to come to my house so I thought **** it and just left it there. I was scared of getting withdrawals so I scored off someone else whose gear was reliably crap. And the day after that, and the next day, and so on I have used no drugs at all. When I couldn't sleep I tried Valium which only took the jagged irratable edge off. I kept getting told not to talk so loud and I was losing my temper with certain people on the phone who owe me money and the Valium probably did calm all that down. One night I took a zopiclone but not even that made me sleep and zopiclone is the best sleeper I've ever tried by a mile. Even in a severe manic episode if I dropped it at 10pm I'd be asleep by midnight (and then get up, raring to go at 2:30am!!) So it looks like I had a miniature half-arsed manic episode as I was only sleeping about 2 hours a day for days on end. Then one day I slept all afternoon. Then returned to not sleeping. Yesterday and last night I slept for hours and hours and hours and surprise surprise I feel sluggish with flashes of depression. I really hope I'm not going down.

Yesterday I had to go down my ****hole of a drugs clinic. They really are the most inept bunch of people. Couldn't even book me an appointment for the new year when I NEED A DOCTOR'S REVIEW to take my methadone down even further otherwise I will be stuck at 60mg and that's beyond the pale. I want to be on 40mg now. Then from 40 to 20. Once I get down to 10 I'm either telling the clinic I want a level dose (so I get take-home doses) or scoring methadone on the street. I'm not going through the horror of reducing methadone from 10mg to nothing under their patronizing and condescending system of "supervised consumption".

I bought a fan heater (£15) so that I can urge myself into the shower with the luxury of hot winds instead of freezing damp and cold (my other heater was completely blown, even when I changed the fuse). Plus various items from Asda including a bag of finely chopped salad. So I've been reading the Andy Warhol Diaries while munching like a rabbit.

It took me quite a while to get a hang of Andy Warhol's personality. There's more humour and warmth there than you'd credit at first glance. He did his last christmas day giving handouts in a soup kitchen, which was sad. No Halston. No Bianca Jagger. None of the glamorous friends. Just him and a member of Interview staff handing out free food to the homeless. In fact at the very end it seemed a lot of his old social set had dumped him ~ and then he died, after an operation as minor as a gallbladder-ectomy.

I'd love to be an artist with millionaire collectors but I can only paint cartoons. I'd also like to be a TV magnate ~ I have ideas for channels that haven't been done. And of course I want to be a bestselling novelist. Only problem with that last one is nobody buys novels any more and my inspiration has deserted me.

Well I've got to go and eat more chicken legs and salad. I'M OFF HEROIN. And down to 65mg methadone as of tomorrow. Have a nice day y'all...

Cable

I WAS READING THROUGH the tat I have written and what a boring life! Oh yeah FINALLY I have paid the princely sum of £67 to get this free satellite dish. You only get the crap channels but hey it's better than 4 channels of snow that are about to be switched off anyway. I went outside and had a good scout round for satellite, cable and other TV inputs going into our house. The aerial on our roof doesn't work but there IS an old satellite dish up there, right on top of my bedroom and I looked and looked for a line coming in. I found the cable line which the installers helpfully split so I can route that in through my upstairs window. Does anybody know how to get free cable TV? I have the right box and everything but no viewing card. I plugged it in yesterday and it said "digital TV initializing" which was the biggest wind up as I knew it wasn't even lined into the cable. But please anybody how do I get free cable? As you can see I have become obsessed with television. This is because my life is otherwise empty and I was getting so depressed that as recently as yesterday I found myself lost and staring into space in Morrisons. Not just once but three times. I even did it at the till. Just nothing nothing nothing there. No inspiration no joy no hope and barely any life. I feel much better now because I've started taking my medication again and it works QUICK. I had genuinely forgotten to take it for about two weeks hence the lull. Remember those happy days when not taking medication made me totally off my head manic? I wish I could be on that side of the equation. Not raving mad. But a little bit high. That would be good. There is a drug dealer with heroin I can actually feel so guess who I've been phoning. The bags are tiny which just shows how rubbishy most heroin must be nowadays to even be able to get high on such a tiny dose. I don't know what I'm going to do. My only hope in practical terms is a bit of mania. When I am manic I feel high anyway and go vehemently against drugs. If I could be manic I could be clean. I want away from all these drugs but look in despair at my own life and my own behaviour and think what for what for what for?

Acrobatic Mice

I WAS LOOKING for the Jordans advert with two harvest mice talking in posh accents and kissing. My robos never spoke but I'm sure they would have been posh if they did. Roborovski hamsters are like the aristocracy: a rare breed. My robbies did used to kiss hello though the way French people kiss on both cheeks. One day Itchy was running the wheel with Spherical sitting next to her on the ground. Itchy kept stopping to kiss-kiss Spherical hello. Spherical was highest in pecking order and so got the most kisses... Anyway aren't these harvest mice tiny?



I have been staying off drugs which made me very miserable yesterday when I really wanted some heroin. Somebody offered me some crack today but I turned it down outright that stuff doesn't agree with me. All these drugs affect my mood. Heroin by flatttening it; crack by switching it sometimes. Some days when I was on heroin and crack, I could stay high all afternoon just off of one pipe on the crack. It just seemed to keep going. When I smoked too much I got paranoid and my life became more miserable than ever.

I'm finding it hard not to take heroin as a life without it seems like a life devoid of meaning. Some days like today it's easy. Other days like yesterday when I ordinarily would have used it, it seems far far harder. I can't remember when I did last use it. Over a week ago. I've been using it probably once every two weeks on average so it's more and more infrequent. Luckily they're testing me each time I come into the clinic so they can see the tests are negative. Heroin stays in your system for about 4 days; crack is a bit longer, I think. I was never interested in giving clean tests before so I barely know anything about the issue. Last time they tested me using a lollypop you pass around your mouth he ticked just about everything in the "please test" boxes including stuff I'd never use in a million years like cannabis.

I think the reason I find it hard without heroin is that I was relying on it as an antidepressant mood stabilizer and without it I get far more depressed. Up until about nearly a year ago, I just couldn't handle doing any more than a day off heroin and even that one day was hard. The methadone just didn't seem to work the way it was supposed to. So I'm fighting through unfamiliar territory with methadone declining by 5mg per week at the moment. I don't feel withdrawals from that reduction as the dose is still 95mg; quite high.

Well I have to dash time is running out I hope y'all are well...!

Thanks Bimbimbie

THIS PICTURE is courtesy of my Aussie friend Bimbimbie, whose name means "birdie-wirdie" or "place of the birds" in the local aboriginal dialect. She knows red king parrots or "king reds" as I call them are my favourites and this is what flapped down from the trees only a few hours ago.

If you go to Bimbimbie's blog you'll find endless snapshots of rainbow lorrikeets, sulphur-crested cockatoos and other delicacies direct from her garden.

So this is my feathery Friday on Saturday. Thanks Bimbimbie!

As y'all may have noticed I have been feeling down and flat for nearly a month now. I'm hoping the mood swing is petering out. Because that's all it is, a mood swing. Just as my OTT excitements are mood swings too. It's hard to accept that how I feel is labelled and illness. The "sickness" part lies not in the undulations but in the extremity of the the highs and lows. I have been "high" enough to be hallucinating voices from the walls, have seen spirals everywhere, especially in ceilings, which I stared at a lot, seeeing as I was going "up". I once saw a purple face appear in a man's neck at the Nutter Club I used to attend before it was disbanded due to lack of funding (my one lifeline snatched from me ~ thanks NHS) so I have had extremes. I've also had weird ideas when I was low but am too paranoid to describe them in any detail. Not because they're real to me now. More that they're too embarrassingly nutty.

Well I wanted to ask y'all who've followed this space for a long time, do I really seem nuttier now than I was before the last year when I knew I was labelled "schizoaffective"? I'm not sure I'm any madder than I ever was (between the extremes). Just that there's a name to it. I am, I believe, what is known as a cyclothymic personality. That just means someone whose moods swing up and down, in and out, like high and low tides. You could say we're all cyclothymic then, but it's a matter of degree. I'm rarely on a truly even keel for very much more than a week. In bad periods I seem to have been up down left and right all the time for weeks and weeks on end. I am not claiming to have been at the very extreme of how up down left right it is possible to be. Merely that I was to some degree in some such direction.

Well this is solipsistic twaddle yet again. I am trying to heal. I am doing my Spanish every single day for at least half an hour if not 90 minutes or more. Every single day. Without fail. Everything else has been half-cocked as my sleep has increased in line with my depressed mood and low energy. I think some days I must have been sleeping 16 hours. Not in one single go, but endless dozes, then ultra long periods in bed. I haven't timed myself as i'm no longer interested.

There was a time when I knew something was wrong, didn't know what it was, knew most of the doctors were barking up the wrong tree by calling it depression triggered by drug abuse (when actually I abused heroin because I never felt truly well and heroin did make me feel truly well. At least for the first couple of years. Thereafter I was truly addicted. So take from that what you will but don't take this as my blessing that anybody young, lost and vulnerable ought to experiment with hard drugs. I would be horrified if anybody got themselves a habit because of me. I'm anti drugs yet still a drug addict (on 99% methadone; 1% heroin ~ it's that 1% I'm fighting against). Hence the shifting sands of viewpoint you'll encounter here.

Now I must go it's getting late. Have a marvellous weekend everybody thanks again Bimbimbie, and don't get pecked by a king red!

Cigarettes Level

MY CIGARETTE SMOKING IS LEVEL at about 15 per day. That's not bad, considering they're spindly rollies. I can get by on 10 superkings per day. Those are very long, ordinary thickness cigarettes. I break off the ends and get about 6 or 7 rollups as well as 10 ordinary length cigs. So my habit costs me about £20 per week. British cigarettes are very expensive.

I used NO GEAR yesterday or today (Sunday and Monday are the only days I've used on for weeks, mostly just Sundays). So I'm over 7 days clean now. I don't miss heroin at all. I did crave it yesterday, because I'm used to using on Sundays. But I do not want or need that muck in my veins.

I'm keeping my last memory of a needle in my vein a bad one: the blood test nurse tutting and muttering over my collapsing vessels. If I have bad memories to look back on, I reason, I won't have anything to set me off. Also you tend to glorify the past as you come off drugs and only remember the good days. In spates. Then you remember how bad it really was and are glad you never gave in during those episodes of glorification.

I'm watching a drama about multiple murderers Fred and Rosemary West called Appropriate Adult. The appropriate adult is someone they keep in with a suspect during interviews to ensure procedure is adhered to and that the suspect understands what's going on. Apparently they weren't sure whether or not Fred West was retarded!

The appropriate adult's partner got so excited by press camping round their house (the British press being especially voracious) that he went and caught Bipolar Mania, buying a new car, television and hifi equipment and ending up in a mental hospital. Now the appropriate adult has been sacked... end of part one.

I laughed at the beginning of that drama when they cracked a joke about the buried au pair not "having three legs" (ie 3 thigh bones of at least 2 people were found buried in close proximity). Then he talks about ripping a baby from a murdered woman's womb. And I wanted to be sick. The Wests apparently tortured these young women to death and what they did was vile.

Anyway back to cigarettes and now I have to give up smoking. And I wish my methadone clinic would reduce my dose I hate being on over 100mg.

Take care everyone.


Today's main illustrations are from the Aussie drama, Prisoner Cell Block H. If you want to see Fred and Rosemary West click the links I put up

Countdown to Nothing

I AM COUNTING EACH AND EVERY CIGARETTE I smoke in preparation to cut that number down down down... then out. To Zero. I am thinking of going on Nicotine Replacement Therapy when I've got down to five a day. I have no idea how many I currently smoke as I roll my own. I have had six so far today. It's 1:30. I have been up since about 9 or 9:30 which means 6 in 4 hours. Which is not that good.

I take back everything I have said about giving up fags being easy. I only said that in exasperation at cigarette smoking being compared to heroin. Interestingly only in smoking cessation clinics. Not heroin cessation clinics. Because smoking a fag is nothing like hitting up some "pukka B".

An addict cycled past me, saying he is running for a dealer I know and his gear is "old school". Ie good. I'm over heroin now. Like I said I've only used once a week, and looking back it's the change in routine on a Sunday that prompts me to do it. (I've only ever used on a Sunday for weeks now. When I have used extra it was on Monday. Because Sunday sparked me off to do it.)

With that nasty nauseating blood test fresh in my mind, I'm determined to hold on to a negative image of needles and keep myself reverse-fixated that way. I'm so over heroin. Yes the methadone is helping a LOT. Never thought I'd say that, but anything that makes heroin feel not worthwhile has to be good.

And here endeth my thoughts for today. Happy thoughts! (Wow.)

Autumnal

THERE WERE 2 UNEXPECTED EFFECTS of becoming opiate dependent (I noticed).

1. I barely ever catch cold and

2. I hardly feel the seasons of the year any more

Autumn is the only season I still feel. I feel it now, and I feel weird. In an indistinct kind of way.

I feel vaguely excited, yet vaguely depressed. At the same time.

Also I'm craving heroin in a distant way. I haven't taken any since Sunday when I didn't feel it anyhow. I only crave heroin by association. And I associate feeling autumnal with doing gear. I'm reminding myself that it's only been about 12 years, or a couple more, depending how you count, since I went ON gear. So I've done many autumns without it. I also went down the SOAS bookshop for Japanese dictionaries a year or two ago, so I could associate that with autumn too. I'm very much into associations. I need a Chinese dictionary as well. Mrs Li has finished teaching me to tell time. I'm on Unit 5 now. I still can't do the accent at all, but I'm doing OK at writing.

I nearly was sick yesterday having that blood test, it was awful. I felt so nauseated. She kept asking me if I was alright. How a junkie could be so afraid of needles. I couldn't tell you which one she used; I didn't dare look.

I spent £5 on one pen and 100 sheets of holepunched blank paper to write my book on. Yes I'm doing it the old fashioned way as my computer is down and I write better in Real Ink. It makes me focus on High Quality.

Now I've got to go before this internet cafe terminates me.


Illustrated: a Charles Dickens manuscript

PS my blood samples were tiny drizzles compared to yesterday's illustration. My vein was so collapsed she thought it wouldn't hold out...

Blood Test Day

A SURLY NURSE took my blood this morning. First thing she said, upon examining my right arm, was "this may take some time; you've used all this up". She then examined my left and was in a vein first stab. "It's so slow it may well coagulate before it's all finished," she said. The draining took so long my hand was going numb.

When I saw the tiny test tubes, each with only a trickle inside it, I wanted to heave. I dashed outside for a cigarette then had a Cadbury's Creme Egg in consolation. I'm eating Chinese takeaway tonight as my reward for undergoing that ordeal. Last Chinese had undercooked chicken, so I'm going to the one I really like that closes early. The lady writes out Chinese characters on the ordering slips especially for me.

Valium Marilyn has lent me The British National Formulary "the book of life" she calls it. Every prescription drug is in there with full details. Of course I had a good read of the diamorphine page.

Following this mornings pukesomeness I'm put off gear for good. Yes I did relapse yet AGAIN on Sunday but use is down now to ONCE PER WEEK. This is the best I've ever done except those 10 weeks or more when I used nothing at all. I was drinking still during that period. I now have just under a pint of white cyder and tropical fruit juice in the fridge. Reserved from last night when I simply could not get anything more down me. I had to do a 12 hour fast so I stacked up as much nutrition inside me as I could possibly manage.

I'm going to have to ping. I hope you all had a decent weekend. And bank holiday weekend for those of you in the UK. The Notting Hill Carnival was "quiet" this year. Surely a contradiction in terms. The Notting Hill Carnival once made me the second illest I have ever been in my life. A physical, spiritual and mental breakdown all at once. It was like a fuse had blown in my head and I was sweating bottles and bottles of white wine (that's what it looked like) onto my sheets. This was before the heavy drugs episode so heavy sweats weren't the usual me at all.

I don't eat that much Takeaway, Baino. Usually once a month these days. Twice in a week is unusual and basically my way of Bribing myself into that Blood Test Clinic.

You know I nearly ended up in Nuclear Medicine by mistake. I felt so sorry for the people crowding into oncology. I might have a supposedly serious illness but it's psychiatric. I'd rather be mentally ill than physically any day. I was offended by EastEnders last night calling bipolar (in so many words) a terrible condition passed down by bad blood. I'm the only nutcase in my family so explain that one. There is a small amount of ordinary depression, some gambling and some drinking on ONE side of my family but I'm the biggest junkie nutter by far. Explain that you geneticists!!

Well I've gotta go. Make it a good one!

Punished for Nothing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Terbinafine Hydrochloride

FINALLY I BOUGHT the right stuff for my rotting feet: Lamasil (terbinafine hydrochloride 1%). There was a 4g tube for £9 called Lamasil Once ~ as the name suggests just one application is required; then I realized Lamasil normal gives you 15g of 1% cream for £6.69 and even though daily application is required for a week, you're getting nearly four times as much medication for less money. So I went with that one. I had been putting Canesten (clotrimazole) on my feet. Strangely with no positive results. As Canesten is indeed an antifungal, but it's meant for ladies with yeast overgrowth "below stairs". I found my tube in a carrier bag full of sparkly body creams, pregnancy tests and essential oils... When I was buying live yogurt Valium Marilyn mentioned she used to put it on her do-dah from time to time; so I said, "don't the black cherries, raspberries and fruits of the forest come drizzling out during the course of the day? And what if you get a giant strawberry up there? You might die of toxic shock!" Marilyn, Dear Reader, was particularly Valium'd that day and didn't realize I was joking. So anyway my feet shouldn't be smelling like a dead toad this time next week.

I went to NA and shared exactly how much drugs I'm on. I didn't want to put this here because it doesn't sound pretty, but I've found myself using heroin just once per week. I'm not proud of this and do not understand why I insist on taking something I cannot even FEEL. But I do, or rather I have. I tend to use the past tense with heroin as between doses I have effectively given up, never intending to use that crap ever again ~ and am therefore psychologically clean. Next weekend (because it's always at weekends) I intend to just stay home and reason to myself that I feel exactly the same as when heroin's in my system. Ie perfectly normal, sober and straight. I feel next to nothing even as it IVs in ~ that's if I ever manage to get a vein, which is a near-miracle now. If I cannot feel that rubbish I might as well not be taking it. But you try telling a raving addict like me something like that. Once the bug to score has bitten me, nothing puts me off. Oh well, if I have it in me I might feel a LITTLE bit better, I reason. And can reason my way into hell. That's why I'm going to NA every day now. I think THAT might keep me clean.

They don't even seem to mind hearing that I had a "nervous breakdown". I don't go into immense detail but I do label myself a "manic depressive". The term "bipolar" disagrees with me. Or I disagree with it. My philosophy is as quoted in yesterday's post; my "illness" ~ unlike any physical illness like a collapsed pancreas ~ IS who I am. So if I sound like I'm defining myself through sickness you're right. Because the condition ~ which is a better and more accurate word than "sickness", which implies all is bad ~ confers energy, power and perception. As well as messing up my life.

I'm more and more inspired to write my intellectual story. I'm plotting in my head. This is FICTION we're talking about. I'm not up for writing memoirs about myself. There are enough people writing about heroin addiction and even more people writing about mental health issues. I want to write about something else. I have a gift for characterization which would be wasted if I confined myself to fact. Fiction gives me the chance to soar.

I think the most positive thing blogging has brought me has been the experience of writing for an audience. Rather than keeping journals in the dark, what I say is heard and remarked on. This has given me confidence to express myself. I know my writing is prosaic compared to some other bloggers and I do not spend all day agonizing over what word goes where (as you can probably tell). You'll notice that the really well written blogs tend to contain weekly posts and not daily ones. That's because nobody has the time to post five hundred words of highly polished prose daily. With me you get the rainbow-glinting mountain stream of my consciousness. That's on a good day. On a bad day it's the swirling polluted urban river in an over-industrialized former communist city! When I write fiction I really take care to polish what I write. I go in for a lot of onomatapoeia, assonance and alliteration when I write for children. This brings the prose alive without the need for over-arcane vocabulary. I have to write for the inner child in us all, rather than a specific kid. I don't actually know any children I can write for. I'm dead set on writing children's books because I feel I can make a contribution to that field. A lot of adult writing is over-garnished with sex, violence and generalized worldliness; and I'm weary of this world. I'd rather write for a more innocent time. I don't care if I'm called twee for doing this. My story will probably NOT feature lesbian single parents, children's homes or divorce. I had a hunt around WH Smiths ~ Britain's biggest bookseller ~ and realized my ideas are unique. And that's inspired me to go on. I don't want to be a me too, somebody writing in the style of another, more established author. I want to be the first ME. If my writing can be half as unique as I am, I'll blow the competition out of the water! The field is wide open and just asking to be shaken up by a New Voice. And I have such a lot to say. I'm plotting my book (a full-length children's novel) as we speak... Full length for children means 20,000 to 35,000 words. It's for 8-12 year olds. The type of book that would be illustrated every few pages by someone like Quentin Blake (if only!) My Mother assumed I had in mind a picture book. No! Children do read novels. I used to. Anyway this is all I have to say on my project. The great thing about novel writing is that the talking and the doing are one and the same. You tell your tale to the page. Which means revealing almost nothing about it to anyone. If they wanna know my story, they can read it!

Righty-ho it's five to eleven and I'm off. Take care y'all....

Illustrated: Lamasil (terbinafine 1%); Jogobella fruits of the forest ~ my favourite live yogurt at 79p for 500g; lithium; NOT the kind of book I'm writing...

SOMEONE THAT I USED TO LOVE



ALL I ASK OF YOU
live studio session



PS THIS is why I am so into German. Look at the GDP of $9.5 billion compared to $6.7 billion for Spanish with all those hundreds of millions of speakers...

Skip paragraph One

Ignore paragraph one in italics if you're fed up of my anti-methadone rants; the post starts in paragraph two:~~~~~~~~~

I WENT TO NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS last night. There was a very manic atmosphere in there. People flying on being clean! I went and told someone my methadone dose and he repeated it out loud several times. I'm not proud of being on over 100mg. In fact I'm ashamed of it. Methadone is the devil's drug. If I won the lottery I'd get a proper morphine sulphate (pills) script. You can't inject the pills by the way; they're deliberately formulated to be sustained release. I've never injected pain pills (oxycodone, hydromorphone (Dilaudid) or morphine in my life. Why bother when street heroin was cheaper and stronger ~ which it was until late last year. Now it's not worth bothering with. I've dabbled twice since officially giving up and the result was so disappointing I didn't even feel like I'd used. Just dirtied myself up test wise and yet stayed effectively clean. Worst of both worlds, in a sense. If I couldn't get morphine pills on prescription I'd go back on street heroin in preference to methadone. That says a LOT about methadone. I'd rather reduce down myself to £1 a day then come off using Subutex. You CAN'T switch from 110mg methadone to Subutex because methadone is such an evil drug. The withdrawals are worse. It's more addictive. Methadone has nothing to recommend it. I can't believe my living mediocrity as a methadone addict. It's too depressing for words.

I washed my clothes today and was hypomanic in the launderette. At first I thought I'd had a drink because I felt drunk. Then I realized I'd drunk nothing and was just in a "mood". My moods have been lunging and plunging all day. I got a new Where To Find and go to my second favourite NA meeting tomorrow night. I have to get there early; I'm fed up of missing the chair ~ that is a recovering addict's life story, the best part of the meeting. I couldn't stay long when I went last time; I was really too manic to sit still. Not to mention too paranoid. This was the meeting where the overwhelming smell of bodily fluids assaulted me so forcefully I fled to the street last time I was there. That was in January, when I was psychotic.

I'm not psychotic any more, so I'm looking forward to staying the entire length of the meeting. Over an hour. Wow!

I told everyone I'd given up drinking and that I felt ill enough to suspect my chemist had been watering my methadoses. I was either in withdrawal or simply sideswiped by an opportunistic infection that synchronized with my giving up drinking. It wasn't hypochondriac; I never realized any connection between no drink and farting like a whizzing balloon until the nurse at the methadone clinic pointed this out, saying I "shouldn't have stopped so abruptly". Well thanks for telling me AFTER the event. All they do is hack away telling you you drink far too much, even though I'd cut down from a peak of 30 units a day to 4 units a day (30 units a day was me bingeing when there was no heroin to buy in the Great Drought of last autumn...) Well I'm really glad not to be poisoned with alcohol any more. I loathed alcohol in my youth. How on earth I ended up drinking the crap I'll never know. Glance along the booze shelves in a supermarket and it all looks really attractive, but that's champagne, Advocaat, Dooleys, Baileys, liquers of all complexions (especially bright blue ones)... and what do people drink? Beer, beer and boring beer. I was always a red wine drinker. Yes I am middle class to my core. I only went on to cheap white cyder when I was already a heroin addict and so permanently short of cash. I only ever started drinking as Dutch courage for begging up change. I only continued drinking because it potentiated heroin. Heroin was my drug of choice. It all revolved round heroin. I only used coke as a "sparkle in my spoon" ~ again to jazz up the heroin. Coke in heroin was like sugar in tea. And like sugar ~ on its own it was pretty gruesome. Valium was taken as a cheap alternative to heroin, when I did take it. Only later did I take it more regularly and that was as an antianxiety/antimanic agent. Sleepers I took strictly to SLEEP. Not to hang off a lamppost on the high road, gurgling inarticulately not noticing the astonished looks of shoppers ~ at 4pm. No, benzos aside ~ and my benzo-popping was no more drug abuse than taking aspirin for a headache is drug "abuse" ~ my drugs all revolved around Heroin, the central point of it all. Some addicts say they were somehow addicts before they ever took drugs. Well I wasn't! I was an addict because I was idiot enough to try heroin. Anyone who persists with heroin becomes a heroin addict. So my addiction says nothing about me but that I was fool enough to kick it off by trying the shit.

In other words just from wondering whether the wedding is on or off ~ a person can develop a COUGH!!

Another highly intellectual song from Babs:
ADELAIDE'S LAMENT



I took your advice earlier and am steeling myself for applying to work in this charity shop by my house. I have NO REFERENCES except the possibility that Deshane could referee for me. I couldn't ask the druggieservice. That would be obscene, having a methadone clinic vouch for me. For one thing if it were a proper service it would be a Heroin Treatment Service, for another thing telling your employer you're a raving methadone-head isn't a good idea. Even if that employer is a volunteer position with old ladies and half missing cruet sets, dinner services with a plate missing, pink stillettos and Ray Charles albums on vinyl peppered with Barbara Taylor Bradford paperbacks...

Right I'm off. Hope you all had a constructive day.

I'm DETERMINED TO SPEAK FLUENT CHINESE IF IT KILLS ME AND IT FEELS LIKE IT IS KILLING ME NOW. I can't say much more than 请坐！"do sit down" and 谢谢你！"thank you". When I finish that one I've only seven languages to go to fulfill my decalinguistic goal... (and my Mum thinks I have no ambitions in life!!)

I love this, where she bellows
why am I FALLING APART??!?
I KNOW HIM SO WELL



http://psychcentral.com/lib/2006/the-two-types-of-bipolar-disorder/all/1/
"True, a chemical storm is raging in the brain, but the analogy to the one taking place in the diabetic’s pancreas is totally misleading. Unlike diabetes and other physical diseases, bipolar defines who we are, from the way we perceive colors and listen to music to how we taste our food. We don’t have bipolar. We are bipolar, for both better and worse."

In which Gledwood reveals a true Treasury of Secrets ha ha ha!

I CAN'T SLEEP. I was so fucked up earlier from not sleeping or eating properly (I'm in an "elevated mood" so sleep quite frankly is a waste of time. I never worry about sleeping at the best of times.
Years of insomnia have taught me if you cannot sleep DO NOT LIE IN BED. EVER. GET UP AND PLAY LOUD MUSIC; WATCH DVDs DO SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE. It is ATROCIOUS sleep hygeine to lie in bed awake not sleeping or shagging all the doctors say this anyway if you're properly tired you can sleep sitting up. I never go to bed until I'm nodding off in my chair first. All day I have craved sleep then I walk about and WHOOSH! up goes the mood. I had such an energy surge in the library earlier I had to restrain myself from sprinting back and forth in reference and throwing books up in the air I really went hyper. Pinky won't talk to me any more because I want to die her hair bright blue. Hey you know that really perceptive and insightful amazing post I slapped up on Thursday (wrote it bang like that ~ no editing ~ in a fit of inspiration. I was going to go shopping for food with my second last tenner then I saw Yentl the DVD for £7 in HMV so I got that and ate chips instead. That film has the best score of any musical. Barbra Streisand has the best voice in the world I watched it twice on top volume, first in English then in German. "Where Is It Written?" and "The Way He Makes Me Feel" are probably the 2 best. And I love the performance of Papa Can You Hear Me by that rough kid, Bart's bully whose dad's in prison. I searched and searched for the Youtube to entertain y'all but it is nowhere to be found. Hey I just realized Barbra Streisand and short hair ~ means I must be bent as a £9 note. I used to love pretending to be gay when I was younger. Gets you all the girls does that one. There ain't nothing more alluring than something you think you can't have. I also used to like pretending to be a virgin but everyone could tell somehow I wasn't. No idea how. Actually how CAN you tell if someone's a virgin? I'm a bit old to be a virgin now I'm nearly 40. I can't really be gay BTW.Reason: no belt with huge buckle or tucked in teeshirt also I don't buy cut flowers or rate Kylie Minogue. I did buy some artificial red blooms in my last manic episode but that was just me bieng fl0ral o yeah my cactus is doing really well since I removed his TOTALLY FLASE TOOTHPICK CACTUS-INJURING FAKE FLOWERS. Loads of new growth and I've only watered him once in 3 months. Hey I was thinking of opening a torture parlour as that makes the most money out of every kind of whorehouse does anyone want to dress up in batman masks and spank high court judges members of parliament and top lawyers for £250 a pop? I fucking do, I could really do with a £500 an hour job (you only get £250 as half goes to the house and I will own the house, or rather dank cellar with plasterless walls resounding with the screams of the freshly whipped bourgeoisie. You don't have to touch the bastard clients just lock them in a cupboard. When I found out you could get paid for locking someone in a cupboard I realized I was barking up the wrong tree with my twee career ambitions I'm doing that instead. Melody Lee from New Mexico does Home Invasion rape and torture fantasies on a hardcore sex line so I'm offering her a British visa to be my best pro. She's so pretty, why she didn't get a job as a supermodel, movie star or pop princess I've no idea. I would if I looked like that. O yeah being as I'm all disinhibited and talking about pervy shit let me drop in a teaser: if I get six INTERESTING comments I'll spill FULL DETAILS about my friend masterbating when the window cleaner came round. Ha ha! True story too! And this was a girl with male eyes upon her most intimate orifices. Wobbling atop a ladder. Imagine that! He didn't have to imagine a thing, he saw everything!!! By theway I HAVE GIVEN UP DRINKING 100% why fucking waste time on alcohol when you feel better than drunk, drink only makes you slow and woozy and i'm on a far better buzz than drudgeful old drink could ever invoke I DON'T NEED DRINK. I can't wait to tell Luta duta Puta Muta the motor Scooter (my druggieowrker) I'm off the drink they ALWAYS assume I'm drunk in that place my last breathometer reading was 0.9 which is a QUARTER of the UK drink drive limit ie practically zilch (considering I'd knocked back 6 units that morning) those clinics are so narrow minded. The dr always thinks I'm hypomanic and Buta always seems to think I'm stoned! There is such a thing as a NATURAL HIGH. I'm milking my elevated mood for all it is worth: meaning CEASING ALL DRUG CONSUMPTOIN FOR GOOD AND NEVER DRINKING AGAIN I dont' need any shitty chemicals any more. Only "drugs" I'm ever taking from now on are benzos and I need them to sleep and if anyone thinks the odd benzo is a sin just you try riding the bipolar wave and not popping pills you'l end up with your head in the oven quicker than me I can promise you. I'm asking my dr for 20 diazepam 10s and 7 zopiclone 7.5s per month PRN as I need them. Think of the injustice. Taking diazzies for anxiety is no more drug abuse than popping aspirin for a headache. Yet I'm scoring mine off a scumbag on the street while other people who PRETEND to need the Vals are fucking selling them on the side that is totally corupt. Now tomorrow I'm getting chicken with babycorn with curry sauce and mix vegetable fry rice the Chinese I go to does mangetout in their fry rice it's gorgeous somehow the dryness of the beans sets of the yumminess of the rice. Would you believe it I found an MSG-free Chinese takeaway last time I was hyper I could not believe the travesty Chinese food without monosodium glutamate is like sugar-free chocolate. Or a gay man without a tucked in teeshirt. Utter beyond the pale vulgarity. Like heroin that's not china white. Dealers who sell brown heroin should get death by 1000 cuts in my humble view whereas china white dealers should get a gold medal. Shit I'm still nurturing that inner drug snob addict aren't I. BTW someone once had a go at me for proclaiming the superiority of H4 (heroin hydrochloride salts) over water-insoluble H3 heroin smoking base that's not snobbery that's called RESPECTING YOUR BODY. H4 dissolves cold in water. In Australia where street purity of China White exceeded 70% at times it's not unknown for addicts with 5 year habits not to move beyond the crooks of their arms, the gear is that good. I lost the crooks (that's my "mainlines" to those of you not into heroin) within 3 months because BROWN HEROIN IS SHIT. It's meant for smoking not injecting and no I don't have a downer on heroin smokers it's envy not derision I wish I could have smoked my gear but once I got on the needle that was me lost to 2 vices: heroin and injecting. You honestly do not know how ASHAMED I am even to have had one conversation with my father about my heroin-injecting proclivities. Honestly the looks on my parents' faces when I told them I was acting like a cat on hot bricks in their house for 3 days straight with no end in sight was because I was detoxing off heroin... fucking hell that was an alltime low. I remember pleading with one family member "not to look so desperate" as my poor brother looked on bewilderedly it was absolutely horrible the worst of the pits. After that I took to begging, trebled my habit overnight (£30 a day minimum up from a mere £10) ~ started mainlining a gram a day because I knew I was a junkie and as far as I knew would die one. yes I had a genuine death wish. Genuine. I know I have exasperated people with suicide talk and no action but trust me if I play suicide again nobody's getting any chance to save me. I'm gone. So I keep myself safe. I will go in the nuthouse before I kill myself. I just cannot understand how being in a good mood can be "illness" how fucking shit does life have to be when you have to check yourself every time you fucking laugh because when I do laugh my head off several times a day for no real reason yes it does mean I'm going manic and I'm a manic-depressive junkie how lower can you go than that. Ha! Actually I'm kinda proud of being lowest of the low like that. Right it's 00:20 hrs I've got to piss off and TRY to get some sleep I'm due up in the morning some "lovely BASTARDLY SHITHEAD WHO BORROWED £25 I REALLY COULD NOT AFFORD TO LEND WHO NEARLY HAD ME EAETING OUT OF BINS I WAS THAT FUCKED BECAUSE OF HIM THIS CUNT IS FINALLY PAYING ME BACK AND I'M RELISHING GOING ABSOLUTELY BALISTIC ON THIS FUCKER TOMORROW MORNING HE HAS HIV WELL I HAD PSYCHOTIC MANIA AND I FUCKING HELPED HIM OUT WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN A MENTAL UNIT I WAS AT MY LOWEST POINT IN 10 YEARS AND I FUCKING DID HIM A MASSIVE FAVOUR A FEW MONTHS AGO AND HE TREATS ME LIKE THIS IN FACT IF HE DOESN'T GROVEL I'M JUST GONNA LAMP THE FUCKER HE DESERVES IT THAT IS ABSOLUTELY DISPICABLE SWINDLING MONEY FROM THE SICK LIKE THAT
well I won't tell you I'll tell him. That "person" won't know what's hit him I'm giving full vent to my fury and I tell you I am seething with rage if I was more nasty I would stab him over this he fucking deserves it taking the piss like that who the fuck does he think I am. A piece of shit that's what. Well tomorow the ROBOROVSKI ROARS HA HA HA!
night night everyone and don't worry i promise to treat my friend with dignity and respect as i blow my top which i will more i think about it more furious i am i will talk all nicey nicey lure the fucker here then give it with both barrels
see that's what people do: mistake kindness for weakness well not me mate. never again

AMY WINEHOUSE: WAKE UP ALONE

Lots of things, including an anti-drug rant

I JUST HAD A GANDER at my new passport photo. The one showing me tanned with nicotine stained hair and an attitude. I look like a Costa del Sol criminal wanted for the importation of 7 metric tonnes of China White heroin (I look way too classy to be involved in the smuggling of dirty old "brown").

By the way I heard a friend of mine has a criminal record for Heroin Importation. You Gossipy Ladies out there: you'd all have been proud of me the way I pumped this individual for information. What type of heroin was it (brown! ukh!!) And how much? (2.9kg) Who paid you and how much (a dealer paid £4000 plus the price of the holiday to Nigeria). How long were you punished in prison for? (2 years 6 months of a 5 year sentence ~ in the UK thank God). How did you feel when customs pulled you with kilos of heroin and freedom glowing joyfully round the corner? (More gutted than words can ever describe. And more terrified.) The ex-smuggler told me I should be a journalist. Never had she been grilled so thoroughly, except by customs when she was being punished for bringing the dodgy contraband over. Oh yeah and how long did you THINK you were going to do in prison? (20 years ~ ie 17.5 years more than she actually did do.)

Every single person I have ever met who claims to have smuggled drugs has been foreign. It is drummed into the British very deeply, being an island race, that drug importation is very heavy shit and only fools ever get involved in the sharp end of that business. And only bastards get involved in the cushty "my kitchen is so high tech it was fitted by NASA" end... "And I've never physically touched heroin in my life. Let alone actually taken the stuff. Even though heroin made me my houses, my cars, my boats, my wife's jewellery and my planes."

I just spent the afternoon round Valium Marilyn's. I weighed myself on her scales and still weigh 194 lbs. That's a weight gain of circa 4lbs. She noticed I was restlessly perky and said don't worry about it. Except when I got a vehement attack of the farts and had to keep going out the room to quack the foul wind to freedom in the confines of Valium Marilyn's hallway.

I asked Deshane about Moving to Posh Park and it's still "on the cards" ~ so I'm told. I can even go and have a poke round the Posh Park house very soon indeed! A meeting between me, my support worker and my housing manager has been arranged. I cannot wait. Means some progress is mighty soon to be achieved.

Why has NONE of you commented on my WONDROUS, AMAZING, FANTABULOUS MUSIC posted yesterday? Ave Maria sung by The Voice of the 20th Century ~ Barbra Streisand. And Barber's Adagio sung by a "celestial" choir as wonders of the universe ~ courtesy of Nasa ~ flash by.... This stuff is amazing. I shall STERNLY REPRIMAND YOU if you FAIL TO COMMENT AGAIN. come ON!

Valium Marilyn kept politely telling me to calm down because I was getting hypomanic in her house. She has bipolar disorder in her family and so knows the signs. I had a healthy 3 hours' sleep last night and was getting cocaine style rushes all the way home. In fact all day I've felt like I was coasting up on Ecstasy or coke. Lovely jubbly. FREEE DRUGS FROM THE MIND ~ WHAT CAN BE BETTER. I wish I could have unipolar not too severe mania. That would be the best mental illness of all. But as it is I have to plunge the depths of reality as well as the stratospheric heights. I'm only glad that I've gone higher on bipolar than I ever went low. That is some consolation to me. I once went so high I was atop the universe, gazing down upon everything. I felt infused with the power of God Almighty. I don't think bipolar disorder is any type of genuine madness; I believe it's a true way of perceiving reality. If you view any type of bipolar mood chart you'll see peaks and valleys and a pitifully narrow band in the middle marked "normality". Now if that's as far as Ordinary Joe's emotions ever go, then give me bipolar any day. I have seen everything, felt everything, experienced the highest exaltation and the most dismal meaninglessness; I have been a worthless, worn-out hunk of human junk and known it and felt it with every fibre of my being. My perceptions, being wider, are truer than Average Joe's. Where's the madness in that? Joe is blinkered into retardation. Not craziness but emotional constipation. I with my bipolar enhancements am effortlessly superior to most other people alive and that is a Simple Truth. Don't worry about it. But feel privileged to read my proclamations. (My tongue is only a bit in my cheek...)

Here's something amazing. Forget the singer, hear the song:
AVE MARIA sung celestially:~



Valium Marilyn got ripped off on a 14 temazepam 20mgs deal when I was there. Not a lot we could do once the *****r had gone, leaving just THREE temazepam 20s and 11 dihydrocodeine 30s. Dihydrocodeines, which we call "DFs" after the old brand name "DF118" are equivalent at 30mg to 3mg methadone and hence worth only about 30p a tablet. Not the £1.70-ish Valium Mal was paying. She kept asking my advice and I said "look he will not refund your money so take whatever reparations he offers, whether you want them or not: take take take". I also left an ansafone message for her. Very polite but very firm too. I had drunk 2 cups of tea on top of my hyper mood and so was well and truly soaring by this point. Caffeine has a cocaine-like effect on my manic self.

Well I have to go and find something else to get really excited about. It's raining. It's pouring. My love life is boring me to tears... after all these years...



Eh, talking of Donna Summer, what post would be complete without thee greatest disco track of all time: I FEEL LOVE!?!





A meeting has to go ahead with my housing manager, Deshane and me and I MOVE MOVE MOVE. Moving on! I so want to LEAVE THE AREA, live somewhere more salubrious. Kiss the drugs goodbye. I don't crave heroin AT ALL now. The last time I used heroin was about 2 or 3 days ago and I did get it straight in a vein on my torso and I did feel it. And it wasn't worth it. And I never want it again. And I will not miss something that nearly destroyed me, nearly killed me, left me without a life worth living, kept me depressed and yet told me it cured my depression, removed what scraps of self-esteem I had left and dropped me to depths where the only rational course of action appeared to be suicide ~ and yet I was too disorganized, depressed and generally mentally destabilized to get it together even to kill myself (and I did genuinely want to die: what I didn't want so much was to actively commit suicide. If I'd have found out I had a terminal illness during this stage no way would I have elected for any treatment bar opiate painkillers.) Heroin nearly destroyed me. I can see that now. For a while I was confused by the fact that heroin is prescribed to some addicts in this country as an experimental or last-resort treatment for severe, entrenched dependency. Knowing this, and WANTING such treatment and knowing that heroin was and is used extensively in British hospitals as the painkiller of choice for terminal illness, trauma and emergency medicine, prevented me ever being able to believe that heroin was "evil".




HERE'S A LITTLE RANT TO ANYBODY CONSIDERING EXPERIMENTING WITH HEROIN OR ANY SIMILAR DRUG:~

Let me tell you something: heroin is evil. It does no good to anyone to abuses it. Take heroin and you lose. Every time. Not everybody loses the same way or to the same degree. But I have never known a case where a person is truly better off for being on heroin. If you do know a person you believe has made heroin addiction somehow "work" I would urge you to look closer and to bear in mind that you don't know somebody's life until you've walked a good mile in their shoes. A mile is a good deal longer than any junkie would ever walk without a pressing reason. Example: a lack of heroin. Because no amount of heroin is ever enough for long enough.

Heroin addicts just want to keep the world at bay. To float in that primordial amniotic wonderland that is called the Opiate High. Junkies aren't afraid of dying: they're afraid of living. The longer you indulge in heroin, the more worthless life seems, and the more frightening, until ~ if you're like me ~ you just can't cope. I know I am an extreme case. Not everybody has the psychopathology I have. But everybody who plays with heroin suffers for it. Heroin is a painkiller. If you make it your life's ambition to escape pain, the laws of nature decree you'll suffer for your folly. My one word of advice to anybody considering experimentation with any kind of strong opiates is just don't. You have survived an entire lifetime up to this point without heroin or oxy or Dilaudid or whatever else is gnawing at your soul before you even took it. Because I know you have mixed feelings and I know you feel confused. The reason is very simple: you know that taking opiates is playing with fire. Somehow you reason you'll get high like every other junkie, yet you won't get burned like every other junkie. It doesn't matter whether or not you use a needle. Opiates get under the skin like you wouldn't believe. Eventually they become your skin, like a luxury coccoon. And life without them becomes not merely unbearable, but unthinkable. You may reason that you'll only use once a week, once a month, once a year, once in a lifetime. Every addict I've met, with the exception of those lost souls who deliberately got addicted, only ever intended to try heroin once. But heroin doesn't work like that. You do not get the full effects until your body is already well on the way to becoming habituated. Then it's already too late. If you want to be happy, want to be free, you must piece together your opiate-free time into one continuous stream of drug-free existence. That's the only way to do it. Take it from someone who didn't do it, who nearly died doing it all wrong, who lost all semblance of a life. So much so that at my lowest points, even the other junkies didn't want to know me. Heroin only kills the lucky few. Chances are you won't die. Chances are you'll live in pain. There is nothing more painful than learning to live without the strongest painkiller in the world.

Heroin? TAKE MY ADVICE AND GIVE IT A MISS.

And if you do have a problem, my advice is contact Narcotics Anonymous. They're not the only way out of addiction, but their programme most definitely does work "if you work it". I advise it because it's run by addicts for addicts, and it's free. Be very very cautious about shelling out money you can't afford to cure an addiction that might only be in it's earliest stages. It took me ten years to go from intending to stop heroin tomorrow to being able to survive on methadone day in day out without constantly using heroin on top. I'm still addicted to methadone. I don't know when I will ever get off the stuff. I'm "dual diagnosis" because I have mood swings of psychotic proportions on top of my drug problem. I can't advise anyone anything except to stay away from hard drugs, from mind-bending drugs... from all drugs. No drug has ever benefited me. I hope someone somewhere reads this someday and hears me. As the old saying goes: if one person stays clean due to what I say, it's all worthwhile... Maybe that would make my mess seem somehow worthwhile. Because I can tell you, it certainly doesn't feel worthwhile from where I'm stuck. Still addicted. Stuck on methadone and hating it.

STAY AWAY FROM DRUGS! STAY FREE!

✰✰✰✰✰✰✰


Nelson Center for Emotional Healing: Did Amy Winehouse die of self-loathing?

Sanity

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

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

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

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

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

I hope y'all are well!


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


HUMATE: LOVE SIMULATION (PAUL VAN DYK LOVE MIX)



DJ TIËSTO: SUBURBAN TRAIN



ASTRAL PROJECTION: AURORA BOREALIS

Just another manic-depressive Monday...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆



three trance classics ...

HYBRID: SYMPHONY 1997



THREE DRIVES: GREECE 2000



INFECTED MUSHROOM: MUSHI MUSHI