Hammy's Ramblings

ANNA GRACE YOUNG'S book has come out! It's called I Hate Myself And I Want To Die. It's available from the publishers now; from Barnes and Noble and Amazon next week.

I've found a website that shows the stroke-order of Chinese characters. The one we see here says mouse, rat or rodent.

Japanese writing link.


Prescription Heroin in the UK: an addict's success story. (Erin O'Mara, editor of Black Poppy magazine.) Annie read this: the first heroin script she mentions came from the Chelsea and Westminster where they had the 210mg limit.

With British heroin having a supposed 40% average purity, that would be about half a gram a day: the very bare minimum I was ever able to get away with when I really had a habit.

(I've still got a habit now; a methadone habit!)

Last night I slept "only" 10 hours; I remember thinking, as I realized Iceland have terminated their £1.50 sweet chili chicken pizzas (grrr!) "that's good" only to find myself dozing to oblivion in front of Midsomer Murders, crawling to bed and sleeping flat out from 4:30 to 11:30pm, making 15 hours in the last 24, which is not at all good.

Last time I started sleeping a lot less I went a bit manic. That was about 2 weeks ago. I scored 17 on the Young Mania Rating Scale, using it very conservatively a fortnight after the fact. Really I should probably have scored more. Example: uproarious laughter gives you a 3 or a 4, depending on whether it is or is not "appropriate" (how am I meant to know that?) but I only scored myself a 2, because my mood was definitely higher than the bassline. In fact if I hadn't done so much laughing I think I'd probably not have noticed the other "symptoms" and would have considered myself an insomniac not a maniac. I still find it very odd that there can be a supposed "mental illness" where you're TOO happy and TOO excited. (And TOO IRRITABLE: that's the downside.) ... I have just pondered whether or not my laughter was appropriate and at the peak it was not. I ended up walking the streets at 2 or 3 in the morning laughing my head off for no particular reason. And feeling uncomfortably paranoid whenever anybody passed me by. I never noticed them till they were right there which made me jump out of my skin.

I did some pondering on "what situation am I meant to be in? I don't know" because I'm meant to have schizoaffective disorder and yet I've gone mostly sane. Well I think I'm sane. I know I still have experiences that are considered symptoms eg I woke up only yesterday with words surrounding me in the air, which is the lightest version I know of "hearing voices". But none of this really bothers me. But the upshot is even if I prove to the doctors and the world that I'm sane and "normal" I cannot wriggle out of a diagnosis of bipolar I disorder, because I had one full-blown manic episode. That alone is enough to saddle me with a lifelong diagnosis of bipolar, whether or not I ever go full-on manic ever again. (I wouldn't mind being a bit manic though.) Then there's the uncomfortable fact that whether or not I would be miserable enough to get granted access to a Victorian lunatic asylum, I most definitely do get depressed quite a lot and have been depressed to a greater or lesser extent for years and years. Even my Mum said to me "I know why you took heroin: it's because the antidepressants didn't work".

This is Emil Kraepelin's description of "delusional mania". I was never delusional, apart from when I became convinced people were coming round to kidnap me (it was then that I decided to walk to France). I didn't walk anywhere but thought if I posted online that I'd gone outside that would be enough to put the fearsome kidnappers off! Though I was only raving mad for about 5 days, the mania took weeks and weeks to wear off. And I still get low grade hallucinations.

His surroundings appear to the
patient to be changed ; he sees St Augustine, Joseph with the
shepherd's crook, the angel Gabriel, apostles, the Kaiser,
spirits, God, the Virgin Mary. Statues salute him by
nodding ; the moon falls down from the sky ; the trumpets
of the day of judgment are sounding. He hears the voice of
Jesus, speaks with God and the poor souls, is called by God
dear son. There are voices in his ears ; the creaking of the
floor, the sound of the bells take on the form of words. The
patient has telepathic connection with an aristocratic fiancee,
feels the electric current in the walls, feels himself
hypnotized ; transference of thought takes place.

This is "delirious mania", where you go at the very peak of the attack. It becomes very hard to make sense. People complained about how difficult I was to understand, seemingly unaware THEY were talking more crap than I ever did!

Their linguistic
utterances alternate between inarticulate sounds, praying,
abusing, entreating, stammering, disconnected talk, in which
clang-associations, senseless rhyming, diversion by external
impressions, persistence of individual phrases, are recognised.
Other patients only display a slight restlessness, whisper
flights of ideas to themselves, when addressed look up
astonished and without comprehension, obey simple requests,
give irrelevant answers, smile, weep, cling to people, suddenly
begin to sing a song or scream. A female patient called
out abruptly,

"I am justice ; do not touch me ; I am
omniscient ; away from me !"

Waxy flexibihty, echolalia,
or echopraxis can be demonstrated frequently.

These extracts are from Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia by Emil Kraepelin. It's by far the best book on bipolar disorder and recurrent depression I've ever come across. The modern resources tend to use one another as references, so they all write the same thing, referring back constantly to the DSM IV diagnostic criteria which never were meant to be a description of the condition, merely a device by which all psychiatrists might diagnose the same conditions in the same patients. Grrr.

How paradoxical that a book last published in 1921 should bring to life the experience of bipolar mood swings so very much more vividly than anything written since!

Extraordinary Distractibility of Attention certainly
plays an essential part in defective perception. The
patients gradually lose the capacity for the choice and
arrangement of impressions ; each striking sense-stimulus
obtrudes itself on them with a certain force, so that they
usually attend to it at once. Accordingly, if their attention
can for the most part be quickly attracted by the exhibition
of objects or by the calling out of words, yet it digresses
again with uncommon case to any fresh stimulus. The
picture of their surroundings and of events remains, therefore,
for them more disconnected and more incomplete than it
would be, if it suffered merely from encroachment on the
process of perception.

The outside world appears slowed down while the thought process speeds up. So that life becomes a series of disconnected impressions, like a mixed-up slide show.

I want to take drug addiction and write a text as groundbreaking as Emil Kraepelin's. That's quite a high ambition. I don't know how successful I'll be; but I will try...

I've just discovered a celebratory methadone bottle. One I forgot to drink. Which explains why I felt so ILL yesterday: dur! Well I drank it about 20 hours too late and I feel perfect now. The sweats have gone.

If I can stomach it, I'm thinking of posting something on the benefits of prescription heroin for addicts. I won't go on, but will clear up a few myths here and now:

1. if you give addicts heroin they'll just use more and more of it, not less and less not true. providing the dose is high enough, you don't WANT more once you've had a certain amount ~ If this were true then methadone users would want more and more, people on opiate bachache tablets would take them more and more and cancer patients couldn't be trusted with their own morphine (which they are: they take it home in a massive bottle of linctus)

2. people on a prescription heroin programme will just go on and on using street heroin on top and you won't be able to test for this (because it's all heroin). Pharmaceutical heroin comes in freeze-dried ampoules containing 100% pure diamorphine hydrochloride; street heroin always contains other opium alkaloids: thebaine, codeine, narcotine etc. Testing for these will reveal whether somebody has used "on top" of their script. In official trials conducted in the UK just under 80% of patients managed to stop using ANY drugs on top of their script ~ not just heroin

3. prescription heroin will just get "diverted" to the illicit market. This happend in the 1960s, when a small number of private drs prescribed heroin over-liberally to anybody claiming to be an addict. Most schemes today insist that the empty ampoules are handed back to the clinic, thus limiting the chances of "diversion".

OK those are the 3 main points covered. If only I'd been given a script that WORKED FOR ME I might have cleaned myself up years ago. Until very recently I just couldn't handle the depressed mood methadone left me in. I was a raging needle freak, so drinking a bottle of gloop just didn't satisfy me. I only managed to stick to methadone for weeks on end because I was in a manic state of elevated mood and thought heroin would bring this down. In fact I can only tolerate methadone now because something seems to have changed in me. I still feel depressed, but heroin seems not to make the difference it once did...

... I don't believe prescribed heroin would be a solution for everyone, I just believe it should be an option for everyone. Subutex is an amazing drug ~ far more appropriate for most people intent on detoxing. As I said I WOULD have wanted prescription diamorphine, if only it had been available. Now I'm more intent on getting myself CLEAN. I find taking methadone very depressing because on methadone I'm dirtier than I am on heroin! (Methadone is more toxic than heroin by a long way.) If anything has changed for me, it's probably more that heroin has stopped working than methadone has started working. When I stuck to methadone for weeks on end I was in no way more "together" than I'd been on heroin ~ probably a lot less so. My clothes were dirty and I couldn't face the procedure of washing them because I was hallucinating in the laundrette. I ate the same food for days on end and just did not engage with life the way you're seemingly supposed miraculously to do as soon as you stick to your methadone. I've heard that when you do clean up off opiates the feelings you've damped down leap up vividly. My ex said she used to watch nature programmes and cry. She was a lot less whimsical over furry animals than I. Lots of people at NA say in the first year off heroin you feel shit. The rehab I emailed told me the methadone I'm on may well be acting as a mood stabilizer. So the best result I can expect from going Clean would be a really Elevated Mood. I feel I've been depressed enough On Opiates (even though I was using them as antidepressants) so I'm hoping going clean might kick some life into me.

My big project while I'm still on methadone has to be to write this book about drug addiction. Strangely my motivation has changed from making loads of money (I probably won't make anything) to Explaining Myself. It's not what I did I want to tell the world, it's WHY. Now that might be helpful.

Is this post really badly written. Probably. Am I gonna post it? Definitely.

HAMMY GOES FISHING
I just love the way he can't resist nibbling his fishing rod, the furry swine!



THE WORLD'S GONE MAD
This has been on my random blog for some time. Listen closely to what Peter is saying. He makes about as much sense as YOU all did when I was supposedly "mad"!!!
Anna said this is what some of my comments sounded like at the time. You wonder why I have the troubles I do? My mind somehow got really addled! I don't know how, but it most certainly did....

Chez Valium Marilyn

WE DID some shit where she was turning her house over TV burglar stylee trying to find this post office card for her and temazepam for me. At first I thought she was shamming the temazepam one but she did come up with a whole load of empty temazepam 20 strips which we had to check carefully in case she'd done a me and left one in there, but nothing

why the hell did I think I needed temazepam? I don't NEED to sleep. That's a human weakness, sleep. The more you sleep the lower you get. Also sleep repairs the body so the less you sleep the quicker you die and turn into a Proper Human Being ie an energy discarnate being. Which is what I want to be anyway I hate having a body. Why do you think I liked ketamine so much? Puts you out of body (out of mind for that matter) best drug ever for those interested in hanging off the edge of the universe not even knowing you are "a person" with "a name" and "a life"... it feels awful weird when you come back and realize you're you and who you are. That's the ketamine trip: WAY superior to acid where you have to deal with a million and one buzz killers like people you don't want to deal with, keys, money, going home etc. On ketamine you're lying on the floor in the dark in the recovery position and whether anybody else is there or not is immaterial as you're tripping right into outer space alone. FAR FAR FAR better than LSD ever could be.

How did I get on to ketamine? O yeah because it makes you forget your name which I do when I'm out of it. Or did last week the week before when people were talking about me and I kept going "who?" they were in the front seat I was in the back thankfully I kept my big mouth shut and didn't say "who?!" aloud. Or "are we going to a rave?" which i kept thinking all the time as I felt like I was off my tits on E. Hadn't taken anything, just a yummy manic thing going on as it is now.

Well I told Mar how to get her replacement PO card, complete with phone number 08457 22 33 44 wow I actually remember something. My mind has become dangerously seive-like lately I barely seem to recall anything of any technical nature at all. E.g. what people's names are. I don't know why as it's not like I'm senile is it. Or drunk. Or on drugs. Or in drug withdrawal. Just to spell it out to anyone STILL convinced I'm on drugs. I'M NOT ON DRUGS I only take methadone (prescribed) and the odd sleeper (not always prescribed). And no I don't take 8 at once at 3 in the afternoon. That's Valium Marilyn's style, not mine. And she complains that benzos make her depressed. No wonder. A benzo "high" is you FIGHTING AGAINST the effects of these fuckers which push you down, so you're struggling against them, otherwise you'd conk out unconscious. Not much of a high is it?

She gave me a whole load of food and £1.30 which is enough for the cherry flavour mandy cyder I drink now: 4.5% alcohol in half litre tins. It has to be flavoured like soft drinks to destroy the alcohol association otherwise it's going to be harder to stop altogether. Plus you can water flavoured stuff up with more soft drinks which is what I'll have to do in the very end.

I hope she does actually sort her card out. She thinks someone else has it complete with pin number and is terrified this bastard will take out all her money at 00:30 hours when it clears. (I know the exact time because I used to call my dealer at 00:31!)

I was on such a buzz when I left all the good things are happening now. Things sound weird, I have 2 voices in my head both me speaking out of sync, Valium Marilyn was talking in my head all the way down the road. My mood is peaking and my head racing like the clappers. This means I'm in a REALLY good mood now. No wonder I couldn't sleep. My crappy body might have wanted to but my mind needs no sleep whatsoever.

Walking home felt so good. Now I've drunk that cherry rubbish and it's brought me down. Alcohol is a depressant as they lie. Yes it is associated with depression but heroin is a CNS depressant too and that's ANTIdepressant in its action. The misery of heroin addiction might be exacerbated by heroin's mood-flattening effects too. I never felt much of a buzz off life when I was on heroin until the later years when I suddenly realized a few times that I was buzzing so much (on a coke-type high and this after I'd not had crack) I couldn't stop talking rubbish to my hamsters. I know I must have been buzzing now, because I kept talking to them when they were dead. Not that I thought they were alive, I mean the crap I used to say to them about being "furry and small" and "really tiny" with "poppy eyes" etc etc etc was totally ingrained in my head and I just wanted to say furry furry furry furry furry furry furry actually "furry swine" was my favourite one then I said that in German and it apparently means "furry bastard" and nearly caused an International Incident on my Deutscher Blog.

Well I can't explain my cuckoo clock life. I'm just really glad to be like this it's SO FAR BETTER than boring old normality I just cannot explain. Why do you think I keep saying I don't want to sleep? Because it will depress me and I've been depressed for years (so hopefully I'll be high for years now to make up for it!) and because a psychiatrist's idea of normality appears to be lying miserable in a bath of cold water feeling like shit but judged to be OK because you can still blink and breathe. It was psychiatrists who said methadone was a suitable treatment for heroin addiction so I don't trust them at all. Giving methadone to a heroin addict is like convincing a normal human being to take those science fiction food pills they always thought we'd pop in the 21st century. One tablet a day fulfills all your nutritional and calorific requirements. Tastes of nothing and leaves a growlingly empty stomach but you're not lacking energy. Well that's what methadone is to heroin. A very poor substitute. And the reason why we have such full prisons. Even the addicts think it "should" work and they "should" do better, not realizing they're treating an addiction to substance A with substance B and oral methadone has nothing to do with "NHS" and everything to do with puritanical governments who think addicts deserve misery. No other condition, medical or psychiatric is treated with one drug only (when literally any of scores of opiates or opioids could be used in substitution.) Imagine you're freezing cold and someone says to you here I've a raincoat it's 100% waterproof, try this. And it's paper thin. And you say "but it's not raining, it's freezing cold" and true you are slightly less exposed but it's nothing on the floor length fur jobbie you're used to. So they say OK try another layer and you're double waterproofed but it rides up at the sleeves and leaves your legs exposed. But it's a coat. And a fur coat is a coat. But they're not the same. Neither are heroin and methadone. It's unacceptable to be miserable and craving on a treatment that supposedly cures drug addiction. (Methadone has a success rate of 4% frankly I think that's an exaggeration I cannot believe it's that high. I've never known a single person I know stick to methadone without constantly using on top and I've never even heard of anyone I know reducing off it to nothing and staying off drugs. Ever.) They used to give out injectable methadone which would at least leave you miserable with needle marks and given you the buzz of injecting something. But injectable methadone is many times more dangerous than diamorphine so why not give the real thing? See: an utterly fucked up policy. I don't want injectable diamorphine for myself, but everyone else needs that or pharmaceutical smoking base or morphine tablets (which will make you feel like you've had heroin without the initial buzz of taking it) these 3 will do what electric cigarettes, patches and nicotine gum do for smokers. Replaces something tarry and dirty with the pure stuff. As it is, they're replacing a Rolls Royce with a rusty bicycle and wondering why people just will not ride in the rain.

REALITY CHECK: GIVE ADDICTS HEROIN.

OK I'm off. Sorry not to tell you anything gynacological. If you want to talk about any shit you like, just leave a comment. I'm open to anything today.

I don't know what this says by the way. Just ignore it if it's rubbish. If I edit I'll never post anything at all.

Anna Grace You Naughty Girl!

I WROTE SOME BABBLESOME CRAP at 3:30am that even I couldn't understand so I'm leaving it.

My friend Anna Grace "untruthed" about relapsing back on to heroin. That is she said she DID relapse when she DIDN'T.

Somehow I wasn't too surprised and I do believe she's telling the truth now.

I believe her for these reasons:

1. I know Anna pretty well and she glorifies opiates a lot, yet doesn't use them. I know that if she was using over the last 2 years or so it was very light because heroin (or Dilaudid* which she also loves) take your life over completely and that would have shown.

Her reason, she said, for not using was that it upset her parents too much and she's living in their home. I said "if you truly wanted to use heroin, you'd just go out and do it whatever your parents thought".

When I wanted gear, I never gave anybody else's opinion a second thought. Or my own shame for that matter. When I wanted it I went out and got it immediately. Anna didn't do that, which tells me she isn't into it as much as she thinks she is.

2. Anna does have mental health problems very similar to mine but she's no weirdo and it would be very strange to say "I said I was on heroin but I'm actually not I just thought it would make me seem more interesting" and that not to be true.

The "heroin makes me more interesting bit" seems to be the crux of her problem. When she was on heroin, despite the misery and pain and being lost in it all, it probably gave her an Identity (that of the Junkie) and a purpose. It might be a purpose most people can live without ~ a desperate need to get funds, get heroin, get high, get more funds, get more heroin, use again... and so on. But you're always busy and never bored. I think Anna looked back to this time and romanticized it and though she gave up the drug she couldn't give up the fantasy.

She's booked into a Dual Diagnosis Rehab in about 2 weeks where for once she will get mental health treatment and addiction therapy at the same time. Anna is already on Suboxone (glorified Subutex) so she's done the nasty bit in switching on to that stuff (it puts you into withdrawal). Buprenorphine reduction is a walk in the park compared to a rapid methadone taper so she really should not find the detox hard.

Anna's mood issue is currently depression that just does not go away despite mood stabilizer, antipsychotic and antidepressants. I keep telling her that her meds aren't working the way they ought to and I hope this clinic will recognize this and tweak or better still switch them to something better.

She's on nightly sleep meds which I'm sure she'll be allowed to stay on for the sake of her mental stability. The "going 100% clean" thing isn't done in Dual Diagnosis where most patients are expected to be on medication long term if not life-long.

Dual Diagnosis means mental health problems as well as drug addiction. In practical terms this is usually severe depression, bipolar, schizo-affective or schizophrenia. With these conditions you do not play around with medications, so she'll get a much easier ride than she would in a straight rehab where you still find the rather dated attitude that using any psychiatric medication is the same as using heroin and crack when this patently is not true.

The rehabs I've been in were all "regular" ones where the street drug users prevail. There's lots of prison talk, lots of crime talk, everyone's full of front and "we're all in the same boat" (except we weren't: it was me getting the extra meds and endless counselling sessions, nobody else seemed to have a breakdown every time they detoxed...) This isn't the type of place you necessarily want to be if you have mental illness so she's definitely doing the right thing going to a specialist unit.

Good luck Anna!


*Dilaudid is hydromorphone. Diamorphine (pharmaceutical heroin) is banned in America (to back up the American government's fictitious and politically motivated claim that heroin "has no medical use") so hydromorphone, another semisynthetic opiate, is used in its place. Dilaudid is known in America as "hospital heroin". In British hospitals actual heroin is used when a powerful painkiller is required. Heroin is very occasionally prescribed to addicts here, but prescription is so rare you have practically no chance of getting a heroin script, hence the widespread heartache and misery of oral methadone which leaves addicts craving heroin all the time and using on top every single day they can afford it and feeling they have to bullshit the methadone clinic that they're doing really well when all the addicts I knew were doing terribly. For years I told them I was using on top "nearly every day" so when diamorphine therapy did come in I'd be first in line. Then I got a bitch worker who basically put me under blackmail and duress (literally) so I just lied and said I used twice a week. I might use twice a week on Mars, but not in London. Now I use zero times a week because I hate heroin. I'm turning back into my old self from the mid-90s. Someone who actually enjoyed being clean. Wow.

Just another Anic Monday

ANIC SHAMANIC. NO PANIC. NOT MANIC.

I slept for hours and hours till 3am then answered Buggalugz'z commment. Buggalugz has hammies. Robohammies, like I used to until they died and went into a cardboard box.

I slept for hours and hours got up 10:41 can't tell how many hours as kept waking up when it was dark, raving in my sleep, waking up again, feeling like I was on an adventure holiday, acheing all over wondering if I'd fallen off a horse, gone skiiing where did I get all these aches and pains? What have I been doing. Oh yeah I'm "ill" people who are "sick" lie in bed so that's what I did lay in my huge hammynest.

Then I got up fully engergized so energized I couldn't keep still at the pharmacy, had to walk half a mile and come back because Methadone Bird was being slow slow. Where did I go? Alcohol shop. Then I went home. Washed me. O yeah that was before the methadone. I did the hot moving bowl of water by the door thing. Space by the door. Slow slow careful wash of entire body head to toes. I know it's not as good as showering but there is no bath and a bath gets you clean when you lie there an hour and towel down all that skin comes off. Never happens in a shower. Showers make me so bright red from all the scrubbing then it hurts. Prefer a bath, me. So I washed, did that, then DOWN THE NEEDLE EXCHANGE with one black sack full of crapparse tiny sinbins and another bag with a tower-block shaped yellow one. No-one paying attention. One pharmacist talking crap about grams and drams someone else taking a shelf apart. Spare me. I left them at the till and vanished. So done that. Needles gone. Wahay!!!

I saw Valium Marilyn as she's intent upon obtaining Valium, I said I only wanted zopiclone. I am prescribed zopiclone. Zopiclone makes me sleep. I don't WANT to abuse drugs, why the hell should i?

I felt better today than any other day. Finally I am at a level. Although my head WAS bingbongtingtonging I was able to play with it and not get sucked into it, the way it does when foot is on the accelerator: instead of wind in the hair it's into a sound-vortex. Ultra-intense. Now I'm flying high and clear. Way better than before. My body is sore but I don't care for a body.

I gotta clean something up for someone else. Doing it in my own time, not out of time. Wednesday is a big day. Wednesday I'm going away to a psycho doctor and a psycho headshrinking thing. That's my big day. Tomorrow is Clean Day.

And I'm fine. I don't want to come down down down I will only frown frown frown and be a total waste of space. Waste of time. Why don't the government kill addicts and mentally ill people? They could save a fortune in taxes? I'd vote for myself to be killed. Never mind generalizations, I'm talking about me here. I'd vote for that. Would have voted for it over methadone, any day of the week. Less EXTENDED TORMENT involved. Ah! But they want us alive and suffering, so we do ourselves. That's probably it. I'm glad the Tories are in, at least I can call them Tory Bastards, even though I HATE LABOUR MORE and would NEVER IN A ZILLION YEARS VOTE LIBDEM. I hate all politicians. I'm the archetypal floating voter. Too central. Love saying "Tory BASTARDS" not voting. If forced to I vote green (who I loathe, when I look at their jealous, sour policies whether or not they're out for saving the planets they hate people who want to be Rich and Behind High Walls (only point I can see of being rich: cut yourself off from the world). So that's my views on politics. Be rich. Pay low taxes. Give money to charity. Choose your own charity and do not be taxed. And have an NHS that is the national health service, free for all.

{If I were actually tied down and forced to vote I'd give 3 Xs before I voted green, green is a v distant "if I absolutely have to" choice politicians deserve... lots of things I won't mention here... They SHOULD INSTITUTE THE UNIVERSAL PRESCRIPITON OF INJECTABLE DIAMORPHINE TO ADDICTS for one thing...}

That's it bye!!

Music comes later.

Illustrated: tiny furry robo (roborovski) hammy; tired yawning tiger; psychedelic psycho-tiger ~ this one forgot its methadone and the pharmacy's pretending to be closed. Note the missing bottom right tooth.

Dreaming of a China White Christmas

***THIS is a bit of a mixed-bag.***
It starts with facts regarding World Heroin Production and how Britain relies on Afghanistan to provide our 30 tonnes+ annual heroin consumption and how arranging alternative supply-lines is easier said than done.

I then launch into a pro-Heroin-Assisted-Treatment, antimethadone critique of British prescribing practice to addicts one of (my favourite subjects to rant on).
I then apply the barely-existent treatment options mentioned to my own life and ask what else could I do, apart from what I'm already doing now...

IF ANYBODY HAS BETTER FACTS, NEWER IDEAS, FINE LINKS OR ANYTHING HELPFUL OR CRITICAL, DON'T HOLD BACK. PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT. BE AS DETAILED AS YOU LIKE. ALL OPINIONS ARE WELCOME.

MANY THANKS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO YOU ALL XXX

IN ANSWER to some of the drought comments I got, I've dug out some facts regarding world heroin and opium cultivation and consumption. You'll notice from the information up top that Europe consumes more than four times as much heroin as North America.

Several commenters have wondered why Colombia, upon which the Eastern United States rely almost exclusively for their supply, doesn't ship their lovely #4 white heroin to the drought-ridden UK I can give you an answer.

Of course it is quite possible that Colombian heroin might find its way here in small amounts. But Colombia produces only 5-10 tonnes of heroin per year, enough to suffice for America's Eastern seaboard, but nowhere near enough to satisfy the UK's pre-drought consumption of 30-35 tonnes of heroin per year. 35 tonnes would be the entire annual production of Burma. (Burma produced 345 tonnes opium in 2009, equivalent to just under 35 tonnes of China White heroin.)

Alternative sources of supply to the UK could easily take two years or more to arrange. Last week I was talking to a retired dealer to used to serve my local area when it was the norm for addicts to score from other addicts. This person knows a lot about how the heroin trade actually works. I was told categorically that the time lapse between harvest in Afghanistan and heroin bags on Britain's streets is at least a year to eighteen months.

The government know they could smash the heroin trade by prescribing pharmaceutical heroin to addicts. Switzerland is the only country to have implemented diamorphine therapy as a first-line treatment. Now Switzerland, once notorious for its "needle parks" and a centrepoint for drug tourism, has some of the lowest rates of heroin use in Europe.

Pharmaceutical heroin is widely used in the UK as pain relief. Many family doctors carry diamorphine amps in their medical bags. But contrary to certain reports, diamorphine is prescribed only rarely to addicts in the UK. Estimates state that only 400-800 addicts receive diamorphine therapy in this country. The latest experimental scheme, RIOTT, trialled injectable diamorphine against injectable methadone and oral methadone. Not surprisingly the success rate of oral methadone was dire. Injectable methadone did better. Injectable diamorphine did best of all, with an 80% reduction in illicit drug use among those prescribed this treatment.

It is easy to test for illicit opiates against pharmaceutical grade heroin, so cheating is not possible. Any use of street heroin on top of a diamorphine prescription is easily flagged up by a simple urine test.

Different countries have implemented diamorphine prescription in different ways. In Switzerland, the Diaphin diamorphine is premixed to a strength of 100mg/1ml, handed to the patient in a syringe and injected in the presence of a trained nurse. A similar system was trialled in Holland. In the UK, patients are eventually allowed to take home their diamorphine prescription (usually in 100mg and 30mg dry amps). They can then fit the prescribed drug into their lives as most convenient (e.g. directly before or after food, at bedtime, immediately on waking and so on: the times addicts most like to use). They can also mix the hit to the strength and dilution that suits them best.

Presciption-wise, the Netherlands have been the most forward-thinking, issuing not only injectable heroin hydrochloride to needle-wielding addicts, but pharmaceutical-grade smokeable heroin base to addicts who chased their dose from tinfoil. Caffeine was added to the white heroin base to make it run more easily over the foil.

Another treatment used in the Netherlands yet barely heard of elsewhere is an oral therapy that has been shown to help addicts with a needle-fixation (like I had/have). Detxtromoramide (better known as Palfium) was issued to addicts in Holland who were receiving oral methadone doses, but proved unable to give up injecting street heroin on top. Palfium syrup (or noninjectable pills) work quickly and effectively by mouth. Knocking back a dose has a similar effect to slamming back alcohol. Within minutes a "hit" is felt. A degree of willingness plus a prescription for Palfium could help thousands of addicts in Britain and elsewhere to make that final step of stopping using on top of methadone. If only our governments were a little more open-minded years and years of suffering could be brought to an end within months.

Of course the Government will not listen. The "experts" who have trawled medical papers, compared clinical trials and yet may never have popped an opiate in their lives, much less lived through years of addiction... these get a full hearing. While the true experts, the addicts on the street, who can vouch first hand how ineffectual at quashing drug-cravings oral methadone actually is ~ are dismissed as whingeing, deceptive junkies who'd say anything to get a free high.

Well drug addiction IS (among many other things) about getting high. Take an addict's high from them, and they'll use something else that WILL give that missing high. This "high" gets addicts out of the door and to appointments. It gets them to eat, to sleep. The high helps them engage with their children, spend quality time and play games they might not ordinarily want to play. So get out of your head the idea of selfish pleasure-seeking. The opiate high is what addicts need to function. Without that high you have a methadone-state. No physical withdrawal (provided the dose is right) but no energy, no enthusiasm either. A mood that's flat at best, severely depressed at worst. It's methadone's extreme unsuitability as a long-term treatment that leads addicts to the typical on-methadone pattern of behaviour where they give up raising heroin-money and reduce heroin sharply, yet in no way give it up. This is the best that methadone does. At its worst it merely exacerbates physical dependency. The addict drinks it, because they're forced to under legal duress, having been caught too many times shoplifting (or whatever). And they carry on precisely as before: piping, piping, piping crack (and methadone does nothing for crack addiction), drinking, popping downers and still using heroin ~ perhaps slightly less.

I've seen pensioners ~ on methadone for years ~ for whom Money Day is the highlight of the week. The Dealer comes round and hands out bags of magic B* that really does work, and does make them OK for the one or two days of the week they can afford it. The rest of the week they live a morose half-life. Heroin days are the only days anything gets done. A life on methadone is no life. I cannot see myself ever being OK on methadone, hence my reliance on temazepam and drink to be OK. On methadone alone I have all the symptoms of depression: excessive sleep, low mood, lack of interest in anything much, low self-esteem, fatigue, slowed thought process and a generalized misery unrelated to any particular issue or event.

The sooner I can get off this syrupy rubbish the better. My experience with antidepressants has been disastrous. My last reaction to mirtazapine was so extreme ~ involving not sleeping for days on end, pinging about everywhere for a week all disinhibited so people assumed I was drunk and on crack when it was just this antidepressant... then I crashed BADLY and got so low I felt my life was over. On one of my lowest days I scored heroin, not because I wanted it but only because I didn't know what else to do. I opened it and stared at it forlornly for hours, not wanting it, not wanting not to take it either. When I did eventually take it, heroin was no help.

This is why I feel I need psychiatric help. I'm not claiming to suffer any more than any other addict. All addicts suffer. I have a sense that something is going on with me that is undiagnosed and untreated. When I'm asked to name my problem on Government forms I don't know what to put any more. No psychiatrist is ever going to be my saviour, I know that. But I would appreciate the insight of someone who recognizes a constellation of experience and might say to me "this is the issue, this is what you can do about it".

So for me, it's no drugs. That's my prescribed therapy. No drugs, no drink. I'm not exactly flourishing on the no drink. Life hurts me too much not to be in a haze, so I don't know how I'm going to do it.

My current plan is to physically tidy myself and my house up. Then I'll pull the plug on alcohol and all these pills. And if life is so very unbearable that I just want to die, I'm going in the nuthouse. That's the only place left for me to go.

I'm fine today because I've had an extra special Xmas methadone dose, an extra special Xmas temazepam dose and a half-bottle of Caramel Baileys. So I'm in a pleasant fog of indifference. Without this pharmaceutical mist, I don't know how I will survive. But I'm determined to do it, no matter how much it hurts. I don't even care about losing my sanity. When I lost it three weeks ago it wasn't as frightening as you'd imagine. Your terror of insanity is the terror of a sane person. I was insane and hence not scared. When I first began to hear voices I found them hilariously funny. In fact I spent most of my time in the manic whirlwind laughing, singing and writing crap online. You can make the best of any situation. And that's what I've endeavoured to do my entire life through. Turn sour old lemons into refreshing lemonade. To make the best of a bad lot.

One day I hope to look back on this extended period of time-wasting and see no more than a bad memory from a past life. A life that's barely worth remembering, except as a cautionary tale for others. For if I can turn into a raving smackhead, literally anybody can. Heroin does not respect so-called boundaries of class or race, intelligence or social background. I'm by no means posh, but I did not come from a deprived housing estate. None of my friends or neighbours or family ever used heroin. I came to heroin through a mixture of fascination with a fair measure of death-wish thrown in. I came to it late (only got addicted at 28). But once it did get me, I knew I was well and truly got. Hook, line and sinker, it had me. No escape. And no way out. Heroin was the only thing that made life worthwhile. The only thing that made life made sense.

Every day without heroin or my substitution drink and pills on top of methadone is a day out in the cold, where life is fractured and senseless. And it hurts. I know I've said this before. I'm writing not to convince you of anything, but to convince myself that I can Do It. There is no Easy Way, I know that. If anybody has an Answer they think might help, I'd love to hear it. As things stand I'm plodding on as planned. And I will not be shaken or moved. I'll keep on trudging no matter how tired I get. I know life isn't meant to be fun. Life is a struggle. At least by struggling I'll know I'm Living.

My one Dream is that one day I might wake up somewhere sunny and safe and realize at last that I'm now a thousand miles away from where I used to be. That I finally have broken free. And that I'm never ever going back There. Where I never belonged, but nearly drowned.

I want Freedom.


*B is short for Brown. "Brown Sugar" base heroin from Afghanistan and other countries in the so-called Golden Crescent
**Re the UN's 2007 Opium Cultivation table, bear in mind that judging opium production per hectare without specialist knowledge can be deceptive. Specialists say Afghanistan's richer soil and superior irrigation infrastructure produce per-hectare opium yields more than double those of Burma ...


PS: I'm on Gabbly now (from about 5pm London time; that is about 9am Pacific, midday Eastern, 6pm Central European and about 3am most of Australia). Gabbly is my live chat box, towards the top of the sidebar, between the Double UO Globe symbol and the rotating molecule. Every new visitor here sets off a doorbell chime. Anyone who's up for a chat say Hi. If you don't get a response keep Dmmmm-Dmmm-Dmmming that thing and WAKE ME UP!




HM the Queen's Xmas Message 2010

The Queen's speech comes on BBC1 and ITV (the 2 major channels) at 3pm Xmas day.


This year she talks about the King James ("Authorized") translation of the Bible which is now four centuries old.


Plus the benefits of sport.


The Queen's Speech isn't exactly the most exciting broadcast of the year, but I, among millions of others, watch it, as much for the novelty of the Queen talking to me as anything else ...



It's 02:27 and I've just woken up having dreamed I was posting. See I'm in a chair with the computer in front of me, dreaming about posting and commenting on my blog. Got blogs on the brain, me!

Baileys and Heroin

I AM GOING up Morrisons for Baileys or Baileys substitute. I know I am not supposed to be drinking but I tried the one litre cyder. It's all gone. I tried eating, it makes me feel sick. Not literally food-nausea, more I don't want to eat it so it's like forcefeeding. I slept from 8pm till 1am last night. Thought I was doing really well on no sleep.

First thing I went to the chemist. Gulgged a bit of (methadone) juice. I have more to glug. I'm thinking of glugging it now as I'm so down.

I entertained the thought of heroin for nearly 5 minutes today. But it never made me happy. Also I don't even know where there's any good stuff. Totally off the circuit. As far as I know the drought is almost as bad as it was before.

Most of today I was asleep. From about 10 till 4:30. Complete exhaustion. I don't know what to do. My friend is feeling really crap. We are holding hands across the Atlantic. She is on Suboxone and not enjoying it. Subutex (also buprenorphine) made me feel really "clean". Very much wide awake all day. Sense of smell about ten times more acute. Which probably all sounds good but not everybody is ready for that. On methadone I feel "normal" drugs-wise.

Methadone never intoxicates me. Taken at night it can help you sleep, but it's not like a sleeping pill, that, taken too early, would make you feel drowsy. It's not in the slightest bit a "state-sponsored high" as Anne Widdecombe MP wanted to believe. Addicts hate methadone because it DOESN'T make you high at all. Most say it leaves them flat and empty. For the vast majority of hardened addicts, unless they're ready to be clean, methadone doesn't work. They use and use and use on top, invariably. The reaction I had, if methadone played any part, was extremely unusual (never met anyone else who experienced that).

Now I don't know whether to go supermarket or not. Re O'Grady's/Carolans/Morrisons Own Baileys substitute it's more the sugary gakkiness putting me off than the alcohol. Akh. I think I'm going. I hope those big drug dealers importing lorry loads get really broke. Between them, they cannot even orchestrate a reliable supply from Afghanistan to the street. Far as I know, there's still a drought. I hope some supply chain from Burma and Colombia starts up. I would never in a million years have gone near #3 Afghan Brown Sugar (heroin base) if the proper #4 China White (heroin hydrochloride salts) had been available. Makes me angry to this day just to consider the matter. All that nasty vitamin C and citric acid I banged into my veins. No wonder they're gone. I'm telling myself I'm only using China White from now on, but that felt no different from good brown. So I wouldn't bother. Been there. Had enough to last a lifetime.

I'm not interested in heroin-assisted treatment for myself, but I think it should be dished out liberally to others. Contrary to what you might assume, people on HAT take a level dose, which means they are highly unlikely to overdose unless they have liver disease (which affects drug metabolism) or have been drinking or using sedatives heavily on top. All these can be easily tested for at a clinic, as can street heroin, which has a totally different signature from pharmaceutical heroin (narcotine, codeine other stuff is in street heroin). Numerous trials (e.g. RIOTT, link below) rating injectable diamorphine's efficacy against injectable and oral methadone have shown it more than twice as effective as methadone syrup and a lot more effective than injectable methadone amps.
ADDICTS HATE METHADONE.

Here's the Heroin Therapy link: http://www.actiononaddiction.org.uk/news_and_campaigns/news/187_supervised-administration-of-injectable-medical-heroin-leads-to-larger-reductions-in-street-heroin-use-than-injectable-or-oral-methadone-riott-trial

Illustrated: lovely gakky Baileys; about 20mg British 1mg/1ml green methadone; Swiss Diaphin pharmaceutical grade injectable diamorphine 100mg/1ml. It's mixed up with water a day or two in advance and must be used quickly, otherwise wet diamorphine degrades into 6-monoacetylmorphine (hence the legendary heroin "dry amps" given to a v select bunch of gear-heads in this country)

DIDO: HERE WITH ME
This tune has been going round my brainbox. I had no idea what it was called until just now:~