Ill in an ill city

I WAS FEELING TERRIBLY ILL TODAY. I couldn't sleep until well past 6:30am. Woke in terror just after 7, thinking I'd overslept and eeked out my sleep until 9:45. Then I flew up the road, drank my methadone, which frankly doesn't seem to be holding me as I get up feeling like a block of ice every morning and got the bus to the drug clinic. I was dressed in full winter coat and my pajamas (which are a pair of jogging bottoms and a crusty old jumper). No way was I going in a shower the way I felt. I crawled up the road to the clinic with chills, nausea and fatigue. Of course as soon as I started talking my head was going quickly yet again and I was in an "elevated mood" (I'm starting to get sick of that phrase, but it's better than being depressed, hey). It's now 1814 hrs and part of me could sleep now but I don't want to sleep. Considering I didn't get a lot more than 2 hours last night I feel pretty good.

I called in on Valium Marilyn on the way back and was instantly struck with terrible wind. I ran to the toilet. Bullets of constipation came firing out, followed by a slithering serpent of diarrhoea that got sloppier and sloppier until eventually it was like melted chocolate ice cream spraying out of my arse. It got all over the round-the toilet rug, all down my leg. Then I tried to flush the toilet and it blocked nearly spilling my diarrhoea water all over the floor. Valium Marilyn said "aww don't worry about it we all get the shits sometimes" but it was like a scene from a Ben Stiller film. You know where the rodent prevents him flushing the loo or whatever it does.

Tomorrow I'm hitting my dr for sleeping pills. I desperately need some zopiclone 7.5mgs. They are the only sleeping pill I find truly effective ~ equivalent to over 40mg temazepam. Temazepam just makes me watch late night TV feeling relaxed and rubbery. Zopiclone actually makes me drop off just like natural sleep. Within an hour I'm usually out for the count. Even when severely manic I got to sleep within 2 hours of a single pill. I did only sleep 2.5 hours a night but would have stayed awake for days on end without it. That stuff about your body "getting the sleep it needs" is a damn lie. Yes it might be true as regards MILD insomnia, which isn't worth worrying about. But if you're sleeping less than a quarter of your normal ration with no end in sight it just hypes you up more and more and more and causes severe irritation. Actually I have FOUR separate issues for my GP, so I'd better write them down.

Duta my drugs worker laughed aloud when I ranted on about my farts but she said the chills and malaise were probably down to alcohol withdrawal. I haven't drunk anything since Saturday morning latest. Possibly Friday afternoon. (I don't want to know when my last drink was: frankly I don't care). It's true gastrointestinal distress, nausea and diarrhoea, sweating and malaise are symptoms of alcohol withdrawal but I thought you usually got the shakes and I haven't had any shakes... So I don't know. Also I feel worse today than any other day. Yet I'm not craving drink at all. Does this make any sense to anyone out there? Could it be drink withdrawal? I have been drinking fairly heavily for about ten years. Though the consumption was little above the government's recommended limit in the end, I did used to drink three litres of white cyder a day for a long while. At one point my consumption exceeded a bottle of Scotch a day ~ when converted into spirits. That's when I realized I had to stop. I literally could not remember what I had done for days on end. Tiny scraps of memory remained, like a blowtorched photo album.

RIOT NEWS: London's police cells are all FULL. There have been disturbances North, South, East, West and Central. Imagine riots in every borough of New York City, including Manhattan and that's how widespread this trouble has been. Most of it is mass looting but homes and businesses have been burned out. Many attempted carjackings have been reported. I've seen no rioters who looked North European or Asian but you're not allowed to state this obvious fact. Tonight the Met police promise 16,000 officers on the streets ~ most being busssed in from other forces. Though those other forces may soon be needing their personnel as there are copycat events in Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool...

The government promise rioters and looters will "face the consequences of their actions". This probably means 50 hours community service each! Construct a mass pillory I say and let the populace get their own revenge with rotten eggs and dogshit!

I'm focusing my attention on learning to speak Chinese. Astonishingly my accent is pretty good ~ considering how different it is from English. I had it blaring through the telly at top volume last night ~ between Amy Winehouse and Yentl ~ and replicated vowels, consonants and tones pretty faithfully. Wow.

Wish me luck at the doctor's tomorrow. If it's not a lack of alcohol I have some weird disease... whatever could it be??

By the way, the BBC are calling the riots "the worst in British history"... ooer!

A CHILD IS BORN
a beautiful song... the visuals are from The Little Mermaid ~ no connexion with the song, which comes from the album Color Me Barbra



This is stuff I keyed in last night:~~~~~~~

ps that Classical Barbra cover (Japanese version) says in katakana: Kurashikaru Baabura ~ that's the nearest the Japanese language comes to it! And her name in Japanese is Baabura Sutoraisando! (the syllables are run very quickly together so it sounds more like Baabra Storaisando. You learn something new every day doncha know!

0352 hrs I cannot sleep. Haven't tried. I feel too hyper. I just did an online entertainment test "are you manic?"; it's supposedly a clinical evaluation. I scored 15 "you are severely manic, see a doctor immediately!" I'm not "severely" anything I'm just a bit manic that's all. Severely manic is when the stairs talk to you as you run down them and nobody can follow what you're saying. That's severe. I'm mild. Bloody internet drs. Get a life!!

RIOT ALERT: the civil unrest has spread to Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol. London is burning North, South, East, West and Central. Nothing like this has ever happened here before. Previous riots were confined to small areas: Brixon (where I used to go clubbing; it also happens to be a notorious centre for hard drugs, which I wasn't into at that time) and Broadwater Farm (very dodgy housing estate where I nearly died ODing on heroin (I was in hospital for 2 or 3 days afterwards). I've been back once since then and it makes my blood run cold...)

Here's some Chinese:
妈骂麻马吗 （ma1 ma4 ma2 ma3 ma) "is mother scolding the hempen horse?"
you just say ma ma ma ma ma ma that is ma with a high tone, ma with a falling tone, ma with a high rising tone, ma with a dipping tone, then ma with no tone ~ it's a kind of Chinese pun. Note every single ma except ma3 (which means "hemp") is written with the horse radical 马. A woman and a horse 妈 means mother (ie sounds like horse, means woman); two mouths over a horse 骂 means "to scold" and a mouth next to a horse 吗 means it's the ma particle, which just means "innit"! See: Chinese is easy. Easier than French or German BY A LONG WAY. And none of that irritating "English with spelling mistakes" phenomenon of European languages. No grammatical info that can only be expressed in tabular form (I loathe that). No verb endings. No plurals as such. The Mandarin accent sounds most peculiar (much more foreign than the Cantonese most people know from Chinese restaurants) with retroflex r (like the American r) and even a retroflex shhh sound. Retroflex means you turn your tongue backwards to pronounce it. I'm getting the accent pretty good now. Having practised via the DVD player and TV at top volume. My housemates already think I'm crazy so I'd rather be thought of as crazy and industrious than plain nuts. Wouldn't you??!?

Watch the birdie....

I NEARLY BOUGHT A TINY BIRDIE this afternoon. It was the only one left in the shop, apart from a cockatoo who kept inclining her head and whisping, "oh hello!" This poor tiny little blighter, who resembled an anorexic robin was fluttering to and fro between two tiny perches looking distressed. He looked in dire need of taming. I asked the man what it was and was told a golden finch or a redfinch. I can't recall which. But it was a boy bird, who would sing beautifully. The man only wanted £35 for him and they had a cage for £12 that would have suited him perfectly. I SO wanted this feathery little teletubby to brighten up my abode with a dawn chorus all of my own. I walked off to the clinic fantasizing about possessing this bird and telling myself how perfect my life would suddenly be if only I had this feathery entertainer in my house ~ the way compulsive shoppers have justified bizarre and/or useless purchases since time immemorial. Next to the petshop was a sweetshop with a bouncyball dispenser. 50p got me an ultra-bouncy spongey model. As I meandered down the street bouncing away I pondered my lot and suddenly realized my sudden bird obsession £35 + £12 cage + sundry seed sticks, spare perches et al... was all the doing of my MOOD SWING. That I really need to exercise more care and attention in these matters. And so I didn't buy and went to my new mental health clinic, and quizzed them on my new appointment. Then I went to my Stabilization Seminar.


Group therapy was FAR more entertaining than envisaged. The moderator had an attitude problem. So much so that somebody knocking patiently at the door for five minutes was studiedly ignored as clients' increasingly fractious demands as to why this person was not allowed in pinged about the room like a hoarde of escaped roborovskis. Eventually a sweating blushig cockney girl blustered in. One man was reprimanded three times for reading The Sun newspaper; two blokes wearing electronic tags were reprimanded for conversing about their crack dealer. An Irish tramp kept fallig asleep and was repeatedly told to wake up. Then blushing cockney girl took to crunching a packet of crisps at top volume.

I did say "don't knock it till you've tried it" and I'm so glad I didn't knock it. I've made friends with a South African alcoholic. I'm looking for the next meeting early next week.

Back down town I paid the opticians another £70 for glasses that darken in the sun. When I was into contact lenses I had the most enormous collection of sunshades that all got broken or stolen or left behind when I moved. So I thought I deserved at least ONE pair. The lazy old shop are taking THREE WEEKS to put a simple pair of specks together. I'm not happy about that. But they're paid for so all I have to do is be irritated every time the sun comes out between now and July 27th.

I'll soon be wandering the streets probably looking like an escaped paedophile. (Perverts wear brown tints don't they?)

Well I've got to go it's 4am. I bought some Valium in town and it knocked me out. I needed knocking out; I was wide awake ALL last night feeling hyper-diaper. I don't know whether it was post depression rebound or a touch of the manics. Long as I don't buy any terrified fluttering caged birds in that state, I don't mind...!

Everybody says I look unrecognizably well. Giving up heroin and eating cherries probably has a lot to do with it ....

And how was YOUR day..??!


I was talking about who doesn't have the best voice in pop (not Mariah Carey, certainly not Beyonce) THIS is the best:~

Fireworks

This is a picture inside my manic brain.







I'm feeling a little manic as we speak. I love the spectacular energy. The razzle-dazzle. The excitement.




My life is like a work of art.

I am a work of art.

I love living like this.

Here you see the meaning of life ~ which is but a dream... Truly wondrous, astonishing, a neverending phantasmagoria of amazingness...

I hope life is beautiful to you, too...

Sun is shining.... expensive new optical wear required...!

YOU KNOW if I deleted everything that might embarrass me at some time afterwards, I'd barely have any blog left.

What was all this crap about me being pushed into lying in front of a train by the bitchy Buta? Ridiculous!

I was in a right tizzy earlier. Then I spoke to somebody else from the clinic, who calmed me down.

Now my mood has switched and I've been feeling slightly manic all afternoon. And it definitely is mania (or hypomania, to be precise). I feel like I've drunk an enormous amount of black coffee and it's kicked in all at once. Or I've taken a tiny dose of speed and it's there, perking me up all the time like a hamster's perky ears... I'm also having mood swings. One minute I'm high, next I have an unaccountable sinking feeling. Then I'm hyper. Then I want to cry. Exactly what happened before when the mood went UP!

I'm quite happy being UP. It's FAR better than being down. I was reflecting on how this is supposed to be a mental illness and thinking what a crazy place is this world we live in. I hope I stay up like this. I think I deserve it. I've been depressed for far too long. I also want some Transitions or Reactions lenses for my glasses. I didn't want photochromic lenses in my only pair of glasses, as they always darken when you go outside, no matter what the weather and I'd only want that in summertime. So I'm saving another £69 to get the trendy frames everyone says suits me in Reactions brown. To be frank, I prefer grey-black to brown, but my frames are bronze so grey would look like a mistake at the factory. What do YOU think?

I was going to get contact lenses (mostly so I could wear sunglasses) but I'm too old for contacts these days...

Ukh you know what, I wish that Buta woman hadn't put pressure on me the way she did. I'm now fantasizing about going into rehab. And to do that I need the rehab seminar. See this is what happens when you cajole and coerce against people's will. They wont' even do what they WANT to do, because you're forcing the point. I would have thought Buta, being a mental health nurse, would understand that aspect of human nature. But then again, she does seem a bit stupid, so who knows....



20:30 hrs The News of the World, Britain's most salacious tabloid is to go out of production as of next Sunday. The 168 year old publication, which sold 5 million copies in its heyday had become mired in a giant phone hacking scandal. Royals, celebrities and even murder victims' families' mobile phones were hacked into resulting in a scandal so great that the newspaper lost nearly all their advertisers ...

Off... off and away!!!

I HAVE BEEN looking into doing a methadone taper and how steep can I make the taper with any chance of longterm success. The gist of the research seems to say you can reduce in 10% or 10mg steps (whichever is the smaller) in increments lasting one week to ten days. Because scripts are one or two weekly I would opt for weekly steps. Ideally I'd just reduce down by one milligram a day: I can't see that I should feel anything at all reducing like that. You certainly wouldn't feel anything reducing heroin by that amount, but methadone is different, which is why I rant and rage about it being "more addictive" it IS. Which is plain ridiculous and plainly true. My own whingeing and complaining annoys me so much I just want this reduction got on with as fast as possible, so the Whining Junkie Persona can be left in the trashcan of the past, where it belongs.

I'm on over 100mg of methadone a day, by the way so I have to think of the reduction in three phases. Phase One: taking the dose down to anywhere between 90 and 60mg. 70 or 80mg used to be the ordinary highest dose an NHS methadone clinic would allow in days gone by and prescribing practices seem to be reverting back, with people who once were on relatively generous doses complaining the clinic won't reinstate them.

Oral methadone is said to have an equivalence to IV diamorphine of anything from 4 to 1 to 1 to 1. 4-1 meaning that 150mg methadone would cover a habit of 600mg diamorphine ie about a gram and a half of street heroin as it used to be at 40% purity (about a year ago). Since the Great Heroin Drought in this country heroin is only a fraction of its old potency, making methadone very much easier to stomach for me. It holds me way, way better than it ever used to.

Once I get down to Stage 2, which will be hopefully not much more than 60mg, I'll push for them to reduce it at 5mg a week until I'm down to about 30mg.

From 30mg methadone you can in theory transfer over to Subutex or Suboxone (same difference, from what I've heard). I would like to go on Subutex but I'm scared of the upheaval it involves. You have to go days without methadone until you're in pretty florid withdrawal, then switch over to this stuff that made me feel hyper, shrivelled my sleep down to a maximum 4 hours for days on end. Even when it started coming back I was only sleeping 6 hours. I felt so high on days 2 and 3 of Subutex I barely noticed the withdrawals. Looking back I had quite a few symptoms of hypomania during this time. I don't mind being hypomanic but my moods and sleep are so incredibly sensitive to withdrawal it would seem unwise to rock the boat unnecessarily.

From much below 20mg if I stayed on methadone I'd want absolute control of how swiftly and by how much I reduced and if the clinic won't accommodate me, from here on I would just score methadone myself and drink it to suit my own timetable. I don't trust drug clinics. The new one I'm at offered to transfer me to Subutex from over 100mg methadone. Which all sounds very nice but would probably put me in a mental hospital. They don't care. So when I have to, I'm looking after myself. The ONLY reason I'm sticking with an official clinic during the cutdown, apart from the will to save money, is so that if I ever DO end up in a nuthouse I'll get my methadone automatically without having to go through "titration" (chemical torture when they won't give you enough for days on end).

When I'm near 1mg I'm just diluting the stuff in a huge bottle of water and supping it all through the day. I would cut down to zero over several days ending up on microscopic doses so tiny they couldn't possibly be doing anything (why not?)... then finally at some point many months from now... I SHOULD BE CLEAN!!!

BTW I have to be heroin-free for anything bar the very beginning of my taper to be worthwhile. So I count myself off the gear as of now. My methadone dose goes down 10mg as of the middle of next week.

********



Ha! Becha all thought I was going to post exclusively about Anna (again). I have little to say about her. Except that I put her book up here because if she wants attention HERE IT IS. She says she faked her suicide because she wanted to end her blog. The post by a "friend" does echo this:

Anna wanted me to say Good Bye to everyone who reads this blog. She's sorry she couldn't keep it up.

I'm not at all convinced she properly thought out what she was doing or going to do.

On 4 June she mentioned an Hispanic guy named Jose staying at her parents' house. On 14 June 2 news reports appeared about a Jose Machiote, who was in possession of drug paraphernalia, being arrested for armed robbery at a corner shop. Which does chime with Anna's post on 24 June:

That homeless guy I had staying with me ended up sticking up a store and getting caught.

~Fox 11
~Green Bay Press Gazette

So that seems to be true. But...

I really wish she hadn't lied like she did...

...o well.

I feel depressed enough and stressed out enough (about coming off this methadone (and moving house)) as it is. I keep waking up in the middle of the night in horror. My head kind of resonates with stray words in an odd sort of way. The way I wouldn't be surprised if I'd smoked a spliff and it did that, only I don't smoke spliffs at all. And I'm pretty fed up with methadone clinic staff for having lectured me that all my problems would evaporate if only I gave up drugs and they plainly haven't and didn't when I was just on methadone. (My depression was constantly blamed on crack. They no longer lay my moods at alcohol's door, as the amount I drink is so tiny now.) I want off drugs because I'm fed up of them, not because I believe life will be any better. What I want to do most of all is just up and away and get out of the country, which I cannot do on methadone. So that's my goal...

Tired

I'M AWAKE. The computer's on. I suppose I'd better find something to post.

I went down the methadone clinic today. My worker smiled wryly (though still somewhat annoyingly, it has to be said) when I asked after injectable methadone. I don't see why I shouldn't get an injectable script. It might permanently stop me using street drugs ever again. Especially if it's injectable diamorphine.

But anyway. I was still a bit manic this morning. And this afternoon. But it's all worn off now and I feel run down and tired and just want to go to bed. It's one minute past nine.

Anna Grace is having an affair! She says she found a Latin Lover on suboxone who doesn't know she's heavily back on heroin.

I haven't used any gear at all. I spent my money on bouncey balls and pizzas. VERY annoyingly I didn't get a sparkly one (bouncy ball that is, not pizza). I'm thinking of going down a toy shop where I can take my pick instead of having to brace msyelf to the irregular machinations of a ball dispenser. Does anybody know where you actually buy bouncy balls? I mean the big sort a German Shepherd dog would want to catch and bite with its nose. About 2"/5cm diameter. Not the really tiny pathetic sort you keep losing. I was thinking Hamleys on Regent Street. They of all places ought to do a spectacular selection of sparkly and/or transparent ones.

I just saw a telly prog by Andrew Marr about megacities of the world. Curiously London with ot even ten million population was included. The official population of London is said to be seven million. It wouldn't surprise me if that figure isn't a good million out. Definitely under-out, not over-out. There's a new building going up called The Shard. It's the tallest building in Europe. Just over a thousand feet tall, but a shameful 87 stories. Why on earth can't we compete with some vigour against the inferior foreign competition and truly show 'em who's boss in the tall building stakes. No new skyscraper ought to be allowed up unless it marks a new world record in height. And that's that. Also there should be a law stating that all street lights must be different colours. So that London shimmers like a rainbow and looks really cool to visitors flying in. I would totally abolish planning laws and ensure all areas of town are mixed business/residential/retail. No huge areas of midnight ghost town. And I'd allow anyone anywhere to set up a market stall. So London would be a towering multicoloured wonderland of unending tapas stalls and trains. I would also allow railways to run along the streets. Not trams or street cars but proper full-length trains.

The police are on television, committing travesty once more. They've just seized heroin. Probably the sergeant will be getting high this evening (they do after all point out that all seizures are incinerated. Yes on a sheet of ripped off tinfoil with a fag lighter underneath.)

By the way I was talking to someone down the methadone clinic this afternoon and she said two people she knew went paranoid psychotic at the beginning of last year's Great Heroin Drought. Nobody else of course went manic-depressive like I did. Why do I always have to be the odd one out? O yeah and the gear they were using looked just like the gear I had. There were 2 dodgy gears I had. One type was brown and cooked up cloudy, the colour of orange juice, and left globs of sticky tarry black stuff floating on top, which I fished out prior to injecting. This stuff was heavily sedating. The heroin came on first, then another sedative crept up on you over about ten minutes or so, suddenly making you extremely drowsy. Days spent on this were all but wiped from my memory. The other dodgy stuff was almost white (very pale) and cooked up the colour of weak piss (clear). It also cooked up with no citric and though it did seem to include an opiate I'm not convinced there was any heroin in there at all. Judging by the way it felt, this stuff contained precisely the same downer as the orange juice gear and this is the stuff she was complaining about. She also happens to live very near Bouncy Ball Corner 2, where I bought this stuff.

What am I doing whittering away about heroin again. Why on earth did I end up taking that gunk? I used to really love heroin, but I'm not at all sure it's ever going to be as cheap or as strong in London as it once was. I think the Heroin Honeymoon is well and truly over and I'm not sure I'm interested in being married to opiates for life.

Ho-hum. That's that. Gotta go. I'm knackered.

Sleepy Maniac

UKH. MY SLEEP IS ALL OVER THE PLACE. At 8pm I started feeling tired. I realized that, having got up at 1am, it was actually time to sleep. So I slept for one hour. Then I woke up and felt too excited to sleep again until it was light outside. I got to sleep finally at some time around 6, 7 or 8 in the morning. I kept waking up. Then I slept all day and missed my clinic appointment. I didn't have bus fare on me, so would have had to walk all the way down. I wasn't up for this, so I just skipped it. Now I've got to go in tomorrow and do penance in the waiting room.

I slept 6 or 7 or 8 hours and got up some time after 4. I seemed to spend most of the day half awake and smoking. Anyway I realized what I've been doing, instead of spending about 16 hours awake like a normal person, then sleeping 8 and going to bed and getting up at the same time each day, what I've been doing is staying awake longer than 24 hours ~ past the time I last got up ~ staying up staying up somewhere between 30 hours and a day and a half. Then I'm sleeping an average amount of sleep ~ somewhere between 7 and 9 hours. So I think I've slept OK. But I haven't. The spaces between periods of sleep have grown huge.

I wasn't in a good mood today. I still feel kind of hyped up but irritable and tired. The bouncy ball shop was SHUT when I skulked round there with my 50p. I avoided heroin and bought 3 zopiclone sleeping pills instead. These cost me £5. Ripoffsville; but I was desperate for them. I've popped one already. I'd rather sleep now and get up in the early hours. There's a slim chance I might sleep right through but I dunno. Every time I try and sleep I feel like an over-excited child I just cannot wind down. I'm definitely not full-on manic; when I am everything looks bright and luminous and incredibly textured, I feel even more excited (as if I'm on drugs) and when I close my eyes my head is lit up vividly from the inside ~ it's literally like watching a particularly luminous cine film of the most spectacular dream-imagery in the style of Michael Jackson's Leave Me Alone video. So I'm not manic, just a bit hyped up. And I have been hyped up for days. I'm not complaining by the way. Sleep deprivation and agitation aside, it's a million times better than being depressed.

For some stupid reason, instead of buying proper food I went and bought a highly indulgent chocolate cake complete with buttercream filling and heaps of milk, plain and white chocolate shavings on top. And I also think I'm getting crouton poisoning from too much cup-a-soup.

I lost my second worst bouncy ball under a car last night. I was lying on the street with a stick trying to poke it out. Thank God the police didn't drive down the road, I'd have been a gonner!

I really want to speak Japanese (again). I'm so glad I decided my language books are the only ones I'm going to keep. No novels. No crap. I've so many books to get rid of it's unreal. Anyway I have two kanji character dictionaries. One teach yourself Japanese which is falling apart. I don't know whether to buy another copy or switch brands. I need a book and CD compendium. I've got Teach Yourself Mandarin Chinese which I also want to learn, but the pronunciatio's VERY difficult (for me) ~ far harder than Thai ~ and though I do want to learn Chinese, I want to learn Japanese more. In my opinion no person can call himself a citizen of the world without speaking French, Spanish and Chinese fluently. Out of those 3 I only know French of a terrible standard. But good enough to go to Morocco and speak practically no English. African French is way easier to follow than French French.

Enough of this: o yeah German. I've got a real bug to speak perfect German (yet again). When I was at school my teacher used to lend me ancient 1970s copies of Stern magazine, which is like a cross between Time and Newsweek magazines and the best of the Sunday papers rolled into one. O man I vividly recall leafing through longing so badly to understand what was in that magazine. Finally, after doing a year of German at university, dropping out, picking it up again about 18 years later by ploughing through the original text of Christiane F (the true story of a child prostitute and heroin addict ~ which yet again, stemmed from an original report guess where? In Stern magazine! It's also a cult film in the history of heroin cinema, you can watch it here.)

Yeah so that's about that. I hope this isn't too swirly I'm not in the mood for reading back the crap I've written tonight. The Apprentice is on and I must ping and gobble more cake.

Sweet dreams y'all!!!


If you wonder why I rave on about how I love being manic, take a look at this. It's the exact manner of thing that I see when, during a particularly exalted excited episode, I shut my eyes ....

MICHAEL JACKSON: LEAVE ME ALONE

No bouncing, loadsa sleep.

IT'S NOW NEARLY 3 in the morning. I slept properly for the first time in days on end. I spent all day fast asleep and got up at 1am. I couldn't sleep whenever it was before I went to bed. Every time I read something (especially written by me) I howled with laughter. Then laughed some more.

My "school report" (below) by the way, comes from a Victorian mental asylum. I just altered the words patient for pupil, hospital for school and physician for teacher and so on. The hilarious stuff is exactly as it was penned by Emil Kraepelin, the author.

So I didn't buy any bouncy balls yesterday. When the urge to bounce hit me full on it was still 5am.

O man I ended up on the streets yesterday didn't I. Running round in circles, bouncing bouncy balls and laughing hysterically. Every time I laughed I felt higher and higher. Then I laughed a bit more. I drank a can of cyder but only for the taste. People sometimes think I'm drunk when I'm like that, but alcohol has never made me behave the way an Elevated Mood might do. I felt Elevated and Paranoid last night. I'm still not depressed, so it's all good. I keep hearing words in my ears when I'm laughing. They make me laugh even more. I know that's probably not good but ~ well who gives a shyte.

I'm watching that film The Good Girl with Jennifer Anniston, Jake Gyllenhaal and the baked potato faced man who plays one of the porno stars in Boogie Nights. My favourite character in The Good Girl is Cheryl the PA system operator at Retail Rodeo superstore who declares: a special offer on drain cleaner, isle 3. "Ladies, shove something clean and new up your filthy pipes and turn it around," o how I laughed and laughed at that one.

Anna Grace is in a giant piss with me I'm sure. Her book is like food at a really posh restaurant. Very good but just not enough of it. Now she hates me for being frank with her. Or she's out of her head on Colombian heroin. Or she's gone too depressed to read or write. Or a million other things. But my head tells me it's GOT to be all about me me MEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Not a lot else to talk about as I've only been awake for 3 hours or so. I've so far watched the Good Girl twice only today. Twice yesterday though I was too busy laughing at random things to follow it. And I've run out of cup a soups. The chicke and vegetable ones with croutons. O come back to me you crunchy croutons. I could go out and buy ONE packet for £1.29 from my local shop. Or 2 yummy packets for £1.50 when Morrisons opens tomorrow morning. O decisions decisions. Fuck it, I'll get the one NOW. Instant gratification. That's me.

Talking of which: no heroin!

Only had a £10 bag the other day when I was hanging round that bouncy ball shop. The bouncy ball shop is one minute from Heroin Corner you see. Actually what am I saying, there are two bouncy ball shops at two heroin corners. See bouncy balls and heroin must have some connection... what could it be?

Well I'll leave YOU to ponder that one as I can't be bothered. Night night all you boring night sleepers. See ya later. And good afternoon to everyone in Australia.

While Blogger Was Down....

THIS is what I tapped out sometime yesterday....

BLOGGER’S DOWN so I’m tapping this into Word.

I spent the £20 that could have gone on gear on a Royle Family DVD box set. “Princess Anne: the Divorce Years” is particularly good. Nah, I’m just kidding. The Royle Family, as all Brits will know, is a sitcom about four people who sit around watching telly, smoking cigarettes and eating chocolate biscuits. You get series 1, 2 and 3, three Xmas specials and a documentary all about the making of. That’s every second of the Royle Family ever broadcast. Now there’s a complete 30-film Carry On box set. The Carry On films, for those of you on foreign shores, are ancient British comedies full of very repetitive innuendo. Carry on Doctor, Carry on Nurse and Carry on Camping are the three all-time classics. Last night Carry On At Your Convenience, set in a lavatory factory, was on BBC2.

Well my mood was on an even keel pretty much all day. I had terrible trouble sleeping on Wednesday night. Suddenly, as I was pinging around Morrisons I started feeling hyper. Stayed hyped up all day. Like an idiot I went and bought gear, as I posted. But that’s the last gear I bought. It was really weak and did nothing to chillax me. Not that I really wanted calming down. By two In the morning I was in a really psychedelic mood. Loud psychedelic trance was banging out. I even did a spot of cleaning.

Suddenly I realized it was light outside and I hadn’t been to bed. I got to bed by sometime after six, but the glaring light kept me awake. So I hid under the covers and still got no sleep. It took me something like five hours to actually start sleeping properly. Then I got up after three.

Nearly all my depression has evaporated though I can never be sure how long it’s gone for. Today I felt totally normal until this evening when I suddenly got dog tired. I was watching the Royle family and chain smoking and didn’t want to go to bed too early (I want a sleep cycle back). I’ve had trouble sleeping for some days. I wake up again and again and again in the night.

It’s currently 3:10am. I did go to bed over an hour ago but my head was too full of random thoughts pipping and popping in all directions. Sometimes it can be really entertaining listening to them all, but I’ve been feeling a bit ill. Full of fluctuating energy. Sudden whooshes of energy. Sudden exhaustion. It just means I’m having mood swings, but sometimes I really don’t feel well.

I’m feeling a lot calmer than last night so maybe I’ll be able to get some shut-eye if I have a lie-down around four.

I hope this stuff isn’t too boring. If I actually had a private diary I’d write all this here. I know my sleep-cycles probably aren’t a source of fascination to the world, but I’m supposed to be keeping a mood diary, so I keep it in my blog for ease of access. Least I know where my bloody blog is. A journal in book-form I’d mislay all over the place. I hope the mood stays up and doesn’t fall down yet again. I was starting to feel desperate enough to submit to the dreaded Mood Stabilizers. I’m going to have to tell this doctor of mine about all this depression I’ve just gone through. I’ve had depression for most of my adult life. Not always full-blown extreme depression; maybe unhappiness is a better term for it. But whatever it is, it’s become a way of being and I’m fed up of it.

I decided a few days ago to focus myself on more positive things. Which was well nigh impossible when I was back on heroin and just wanted to curl up and die. Now I’m in my right mind it’s up to me to seek out some new interests. Can’t think up much apart from my Valerie book. Valerie has lifted me from the depths of despair on several occasions. She’s the only person who can make me laugh when I’m in depression. Apart from Anna Grace in Wisconsin.

Anna had an appointment at the methadone clinic on Thursday and I don’t know whether she went, thanks to Blogger being down. Anna got herself totally clean. Came off Suboxone. Then relapsed back on heroin and some of those strong pain pills American junkies jack up: oxycodone and Dilaudid (hydromorphone). Anna has a real thing about Dilaudid, it seems to be her favourite drug. I’ve never tried pain pills. Over here the only opiate commonly available to addicts is heroin. And if you’re in treatment, methadone and Suboxone.

I hope Anna manages to get herself on an even keel soon. She purloined an entire month’s supply of her Dad’s oxys and replaced them with aspirin. Apparently he hasn’t noticed. And she blew all her money on gear. She’s been depressed for as long as I remember, with the odd hyper phase chucked in. She doesn’t ever seem to be truly happy. Who does that remind you of?

Well I’m ploughing on with Project Life. Don’t know how the hell I’m going to do it. Has something to do with repeatedly putting one foot in front of the other, from what I know. My house is still a tip. My housing manager person (at least I think that’s who she is: the Stern Council Lady) tells me just to chuck out a couple of black bags full a week. I’m aiming at one bag a day, if not two.

As for other plans, there’s nowt but a gaping hole. I got so badly disoriented by all the crap that’s gone on since the end of last year, what with psychiatrists and methadone and all, I don’t even know what I want any more. I wasn’t living in the same world everybody else seems to live in. I went into a parallel universe. Now I’m relatively OK it’s time to decide what I am doing.

I was going to write a little book called Little Trotter Donkey Goes Away With The Fairies. About a little horse who accidentally grazes on some magic mushrooms, swirls into a psychedelic vortex and meets some gnomes, trolls, imps, sprites and fawns. I’m not sure WH Smiths will want to put that in their children’s section but hey…

A Mixed Up Day

I WENT INTO ONE in the supermarket this afternoon. My nasty low mood mixed itself into something far funkier. Among the luxury bakery products, I was chuckling away to myself; then by the time I'd reached the fresh veg isle, I had to restrain myself from weeping all over the chilled raddishes. Gradually the depression faded out, and I'm still OK now. Gattina said I should relabel my blog "diary of a rollercoaster". That's how I feel. Alive again. With depression out the window. I just hope I can sustain this into tomorrow.

I bumped into a drunken Irishman I used to know. Last time I met him it was first thing Monday morning. He was vomiting into the gutter. My skin was crawling and I was trying to keep it together to just get home and prong the **** into me to feel OK again. A case of desperation shared being a desperation doubled. Today, he made me laugh and laugh. We debated the trials and traumas of crack-ho girlfriends. I described the grossness of "stirring the porridge". We high-fived over that one.

He was bemoaning the loss of his ex-girlfriend of fifteen years, who'd suddenly run off without warning with a random black man. I told him how surprised I was, as they'd made such a good couple. I didn't tell him that, stoned off her head on gear, his ex girlfriend looked like one of Jim Henson's Muppets. He told me I was looking really well because I'm rosy cheeked and have put weight on. I couldn't actually return the compliment because he was all over the place on drink and Valium and his teeth were in a dreadful state. He said he'd been off drugs for six months. "'Cept when someone like you brings round an Arfur..." (that's a half a sixteenth; about 0.875g) of crack. Except he couldn't consider crack without drink and Valium and a good dose of brown, "coz it puts your head all over the place".

Well I let myself down yet again. Yes, heroin. Yes again. Yes I'm bored. Bored and disappointed and wondering why why why why why? Again. Dealer gave me two £15 bags for £20. He'd kept me waiting for quite some time. I'd been so entertained I'd barely noticed.

I feel like such an idiot for using gear. Half of me wanted to lie here, evade the matter or post up something irrelevant and distracting. I feel like a weakling and a hypocrite for having given in to a momentary craving when I was feeling fine anyway. The gear has barely altered my mood. It didn't need altering. I was fine already. I won't ever accept excuses from myself for using heroin: but today I'm absolutely stumped as to why I did it. This is yet another day longer in active addiction. Active addiction is misery to look back on. It's ruined my life. I want out. Despite what I've done, I still want out.

The stark reality of Rehab is staring me in the face ~ yet again. Unless I can kick in this habit, the habit of injecting street heroin when I have ample methadone to cover myself. I can't see any other choice. Unless I can pull myself together there's no choice I can conceive of.

I just hope I can say this is the last of this depression. It's been dogging me now for weeks. Using heroin on top of it only made me more miserable. Chemistry aside: being a drug addict is a miseralbe life. All I want now is to leave it behind. It's gonna take all my strength to do it.

2 TOP TUNES:

let's goa way
laughing Buddha: tapu



exalted!
hardtechno anthem

My Experience With Bipolar Schizoaffective Disorder: Mental Situation Explained

LOOKING BACK OVER MY LAST FEW POSTS, how miserable was I?! Misery and suicidal ideation left, right and centre. Yes I have been very unhappy of late. I basically feel ill all the time. And yet I don't feel I'm depressed. I feel like nothing is wrong with me, that I'm a time-waster, a malingerer and a fraud and I don't deserve help. Yet looking at my life I'm in desperate need of something. Most people would call it "help". But how can I accept it?

I question why on earth I ran to a doctor in my "elevated mood" of yore.

But that isn't true. I didn't run to any doctor while manic. What happened was I went manic-depressed ~ BOTH in the same week. The walls started talking to me LOUD. I had the most severely mislaid lost weekend of my life. My sense of hearing suddenly went ten times more acute than normal. It was like living in a house without walls. Everything anyone said or did in any room I heard full-on, like the bizarrest radio play. Everybody on the street. My next door neighbours even. I heard conversations, chatter, sex and a sawing noise like somebody constantly going at a piece of wood. When cars rushed down the street they whooshed echoing into a cyberdelic vortex of sound. And I was hallucinating auditorily vividly. At one point I heard voices speaking Spanish and Chinese. At another it was as if somebody had strewn fifty or so radios all on different channels spewing music, spouting speech all babbling and jangling at once. My mood zoomed and soared and I saw visual spectaculars: the northern lights in full colour in my own living room. This is the most floridly psychotic I have ever been. Although I'd woken up feeling so dire I lay on the floor for four hours before eventually mustering energy to get out of bed, have a cursory shower and heave myself up the road to collect methadone.



I couldn't sleep all weekend. Neither could I eat. I remember drinking tomato soup straight from the tin, cold. Something that looked like a cross between fur and grass was growing out of the top. I knew it wasn't actually there, but that didn't help it go away.

Up and down, twisting in and out my moods dipped and soared. I was cycling in what psychiatrists call a type of mixed bipolar state. And I wasn't on drugs. I was NOT on drugs, this is how my brain reacted to "normality". This is what kept me using for so many years. Untoward mental symptoms, only now they'd gone truly spectacular.

The next few days I felt not only down but injured. I curled up in a chair by day seeing visions of myself in prison, full of guilt, imprisoned for the rest of my life. I didn't want to die: my life was over already.

One day I was perfectly blank. Another day I was depressed. Some friends came round wanting to score. I was totally averse to drugs by this time. They used my dealer and I partook nothing. But I got into their car and experienced a rush like suddenly coming up on Ecstasy full-on. I couldn't stop babbling.The more stressed I got ~ and I got very stressed indeed ~ the higher my mood soared. Nothing this intense had ever happened to me before.

I knew that first weekend that something had gone drastically wrong. I phoned my Mum who was already shocked, having seen me bombed out of my head on dodgy benzoated heroin. She had phoned my druggieworker in horror so they had a dialogue going. I told my Mum to tell my Worker I had been hearing voices. The worker called me on Monday morning. I got a psychiatrist's appointment that Thursday. Seeing a psychiatrist is always stressful. I was particularly stressed. On the ride down a black girl was very obviously talking about me and insulting me repeatedly. I was very angry and kept my hands to myself though I felt like throwing her downstairs. I paced back and forth in the medical building, knowing it would hype me up but destroy anxiety. By the time the doctor saw me I was more hyper than I realized. If you want to see the state I was in watch the video on my sidebar "manic episode: Trisch goes nuts" ~ I was in that type of state. A markedly elevated mood, racing thoughts, rapid speech. Knowing the doctor wanted to know what happened, how much, how long, how intense, what it felt like, how I felt, I told him all this in one uninterrupted stream of consciousness. He only asked three questions in the entire session. To my ranting banging "you can't say I'm manic; I've only been like this six days and the diagnostic criteria say seven" he replied "what do you know about schizophrenia?" I answered "it's not caused by a mood and it's a psychosis"... At home his question came back to haunt me and I wondered whether I did have schizophrenia. And I cried.

I stayed off heroin, went down into a depression. Went back on heroin for a week. Wasn't impressed. Back to methadone. My mood was still cycling. One Sunday I was depressed, hearing voices and wandering aimlessly on the streets, too unhappy to enter my own front door. I went home, slept and woke up the next day in a markedly elevated mood. I remember queueing for my money in the post office. By the till they have shiny bags covered in rainbow holograms. One had acid-smiley faces. I was transfixed by the bright colours and depth of texture. I felt wonderful and sensual, the way I used to on Ecstasy. Though I would never in a million years have dropped an E in order to appreciate goods in the post office!

I'm not sure I slept that night. Next morning my hearing had gone hyper-acute again. A man turned up on our garden path jabbering into a mobile phone about having moved my bed around. I lay there thinking WHAT??! All day, I felt irritable, angry. As I was about to leave for NA I heard two voices. In one ear "nervous breakdown"; in the other "schizophrenia". Schizophrenia again. This put me on a real downer. I stomped down the road, caught the bus and endured loud conversations about my background, my reputation, my school records from other passengers. At this time I was getting well meaning but off-beam comments telling me to go to NA or AA every single day. I don't think anyone realized what I was actually going through. One person even said "I used to hear voices too on my way to meetings" this same person criticized me for sitting in a meeting for five minutes then upping and leaving. Maybe their mental condition was markedly different from mine. But hallucinating floridly and poor attentionspan tend to go hand in hand. We were cooped together in this meeting. Everyone smelled of periods and semen. I thought the man next to me was going to pick my pocket. The man giving the chair kept staring at me. And the meeting was so packed there was a chair in the way of the door. I couldn't stuck this out for nearly 20 minutes and eventually left, causing marked disturbance. But I didn't care. I just needed fresh air.

I didn't sleep at all that night. My mood soared higher and higher. My house was a mess and I was supposed to be cleaning it but I couldn't focus myself enough to clean anything. There used to be a dual-diagnosis meeting I always referred to as Nutter Club. It took place once a week. Naomi, the lady who runs it is expert at dealing with people with severe mental health issues. Most people there seemed to be bipolar. A couple of schizophrenics turned up, but they say far less. Naomi had met me and we'd spoken in depth a few times over the previous couple of years. She knew that I believed I had something bipolar going on. Not necessarily bipolar disorder. But I was definitely on the so-called "bipolar spectrum" as it's very trendily known nowadays.



I remember her saying one time between the florid stage of my condition and my actually getting a diagnosis "you know and I know that it's not drug-related but you've got to stay away from everything so the doctor knows that too". This particular comment came back to haunt me. On the one hand I didn't want to be thought of as a druggie timewaster, going nuts because I'd used too much. On the other I was terrified of the term "bipolar disorder" I didn't want the label slapped across my forehead. I didn't even consider that it could have been something else, something worse...

I was in such a state this day I went to the nutter club. I had been dancing about my kitchen in a state of disarray. My clothes were dirty, my hair unwashed; I was thoroughly unkempt. I had great difficulty getting myself and my keys and my Oyster card (for the bus) and a little bit of money and my phone all in my pockets with my brain flying all over the place at several thousand miles per hour, on no sleep (which I didn't really need, though it felt strange to someone used to sleeping sixteen hours or more a day in my depressions...) I arrived at the nutter club thinking my mood was fairly normal, that I was just a bit hyped up. In a group with three other nutters I was unable to contain myself from laughing hysterically. People tried to talk and I kept stopping them saying WHAT??! They might as well have been talking backwards: gibberish. Naomi said "look I think you need to be seen by a doctor" so the meeting closed early and she took me to the mental hospital which was just down the road. I kept asking "do I have to speak as slowly as possible and not wave my arms about?" (ie not act manic) she said "oh no they're so full you don't have to worry about being sectioned" (involuntarily committed). The only thing that could have got me sectioned, as I understand it, would be direct, focused threats of violence or active suicidal behaviour with a specific plan. I was seeing this doctor because I had known for years that something was wrong, that I'd had bipolar symptoms and nobody listened. Nobody took me seriously. i got the distinct impression they thought I was lying. Trying to make myself seem more interesting.

In the mental reception my mood soared higher than ever before. Naomi introduced me to a colleague who looked just like a woman off the television. I peed in a cup and sure enough: no speed, no crack, no cannabis. Nothing except heroin METHADONE and benzos, both of which are downers, not uppers. The benzos were from my attempt a week earlier to give up alcohol for once and for all. But I never managed it.

Naomi and TV Girl said goodbye and I was left with a depressed middle aged man and a depressed black girl who kept phoning someone and screaming her boring personal problems down the phone.

Meanwhile my head was going more manic than it had ever gone before. I went through double doors to a corridor where the walls and doors and ceiling were echoing with scores of conversations. My head went from racing into complete overdrive. The words in my head broke off. So that "I'm going too fast" might stop with "going", the "-ing" broke off: ing-ing-ing-ing-in-in-in-INININININ" whooshing round with spectacular speed.I was losing my mind and the only way I could keep a grip was by yelling these syllables as my head disintegrated into random noise.

I calmed myself down by running through the alphabet out loud ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO.... over and over again. Pacing back and forth avoiding the bad letters. A is for acid, that's bad. B is for brown ~ heroin. That's bad. C is like the sea. It's brilliant in the sun; it's calm. That's good. I flew through them quickly and the black girl was staring at me. I didn't care. And I knew the nurses wouldn't be observing me.

Eventually I saw a kindly man who introduced himself as a psychiatric social worker. He pointed out, very patiently, that we had 45 minutes to take my entire psychiatric history. This was quite some challenge. When was I first depressed? In childhood. In my teens. It first became a major problem at university. Suicide? Yes twice. This got me raging about tetracyclic antidepressants. I took 8 pills and a bottle of vodka. Then I thought "fuck it" and downed a bottle of sixty heavy strength lofepramine. I puked them up almost straight away. The coating was still on the pills in the vomit which was everywhere. All over the floor. On my clothing. Down my hair.

If only I'd gone for Prothiaden/dothiepin I might be dead now. Merely touching on this subject sent me crazy with pent up anger, self-hatred, frustration and rage. I had to enumerate every upsetting, depressing experience. Being yelled at on railway station platforms by people who thought I was going to jump. Being waved at BY THE DRIVER of a high speed train. I've mentioned this before but it gets me to this day. How did he see me? How did he know at close to one hundred miles per hour that I, acting as normally as anybody in such a situation could, wanted to kill myself under a train?

When my depression reached one of its all-time lows I had a persistent idea that the train would hit me and I wouldn't really die. I'd just lie on the trackside in the cold, in the rain, in agony forever, trains rushing past and nobody ever healing me.

Having to dredge through this psychiatric history in the highly impressionable manic state was traumatic beyond words. Now that I FINALLY have a psychiatrist and proper notes and a diagnosis etc etc etc I should never ever have to go through this again. If I ever had to do it in an emergency situation I think I would walk out rather than seek treatment. It's just not worth recalling all that. People seem to assume that I dwell on my past. But I don't. I only dwell as I write. Then I'm in another zone.

Mild thought echo: age 23. Mild antidepressant-induced hypomania: age 23. Natural hypomania: age 27. First heard voices: early 30s.

A long, slow, slide downwards.

The psychiatrist looked stunningly beautiful. Her legs were shiny. The lights outside looked amazing. She asked more questions; this time about the present: how fast was I? How high? How irritated? How many voices? What did they say? How little sleep? She prescribed zopiclone 7.5mg ~ the best sleeping pill I've ever tried.

I walked for two hours then took the bus home. This night I slept for all of five hours. I hadn't slept this long in days. Next day I was even more euphoric. I felt grandiose and grand. I was out of this world. The world was left behind. I hate this world in both phases of my "illness" I never want to be in it.

The mania intensified until I felt like a tiger roaring. I swaggered up and down the streets. When people crossed me, as they often did, it was sufficient merely to glare at them. They seemed to spring backwards. People seemed to make way, clear paths, back off. Yes they looked terrified, but that was a new thing and it felt fantastic. A confirmation of my higher power.

I was obsessed by energy and power. My willingness to drop drugs turned into an aversion for drugs of all kinds. Taking crack or E or speed was the saddest thing you could do. By this time I'd gone higher than I'd ever been on any drug. The drugs seemed a pale imitation of reality. I tried heroin towards the end of the mania and it did little except make me sleepy and racy at the same time.

Over the weeks my mood went through a roughly seven day cycle. Seven days flying high; seven days lower. Sometimes hypomanic, sometimes vaguely depressed. Then up again. I thought this would never end.

My first few days of mania were by far the most intense. My psychiatrist prescribed the antipsychotic risperidone. As I came down gradually over the weeks it began to eat away at me that I didn't even know the name of this very obvious mental condition. I thought it was bipolar. I could see that I was high sometimes; low at other times. Surely that was bipolar disorder? No. The S-word returned to haunt me. SCHIZOAFFECTIVE. That's what my doctor, a consultant psychiatrist, thinks I am. Meaning I matched the full diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia and mania simultaneously. He said my psychosis was more florid than most manic psychosis. I think he also recognized my longstanding issues of self-care. People have long been deceived because I'm articulate, that because I'm able to talk and to touch type that it somehow follows that my house will be in order, my life will be in order that all will be perfect. it's not perfect; it's a mess. During the worst of my illness I couldn't even handle money. I just lost it. Keeping track of my housekeys was a major hassle.

Most people who go manic feel sociable and sexy. I felt neither. I was just as reclusive manic as depressed. I tried to use my hyperosity and energy to clear up my scruffy house, but I couldn't stick with it. Unsociability and avolition are key characteristics of schizophrenia. If you can be manic and still have these things going on they're extremely deep seated. Realizing this has done nothing to help my recent depression. I know I can't choose my illness from a psychiatric Chinese takeaway menu. Though I cried because I had schizophrenia, there are still a thousand physical illnesses I'd less rather have. By itself schizophrenia isn't necessarily a horrible condition. It makes me feel dissociated, unreal, bizarre and poetic. Occasionally I feel paranoid, but nearly always in public places. When I'm on my own I'm OK. It's a big reason why I keep myself to myself. Other people only bring me down.

I've been feeling depressed for several weeks now; it's not the worst depression in the world but it will not shift. It won't go away. It's eroding my self-esteem, making me feel worthless and guilty. Making me want to be dead. I've spent years in this state, so it's like Welcome Home.

This is the state that kept me using heroin for so long. I used every day I could afford to last week. Which puts me into desperation. Addicted and stuck, not coping, back on heroin a drug that I gave up for weeks on end during mania... back in the morass. I can't cope. I don't want to go on. I really can't cope, I'm not coping at all. I'm thoroughly dirty, living in a mess that the council send a sterm lady once a month to complain about. I'm waiting to be housed in a mental health hostel because my coping skills are so bad. I'm 39 years old yet life is reelling backwards. I've done the exact opposite of scrounging. None of the help that was meant to be out there for me came until I had a full-blown psychotic break. I know of people who have faked schizophrenia and psychosis to get housed, to get sick benefit and DLA and they make me so angry because even getting to my appointments feels like a major stress, yet these people are acting, they're quite capable. That's why I feel like I should be dead, I'm only a drain on society. If they cut off my money I couldn't work because there's no job you can do at your own pace. No job that accommodates someone who sleeps more than sixteen hours and NEEDS that sleep, every single day when the depression intensifies. I'd have to keep myself clean and tidy and get there on time. I can't handle looking people in the eye. I deceive people on the phone because I modulate my voice, but I can't do face to face when Im sick.

The jobs I'd most like to do are writer of novels which I'd be able to do even when quite sick. Even when I can't focus to follow a book by another person, I'm able to write ~ as you see from my blog. I don't believe I'm the greatest but I do have a uniqueness and that's what I'd aim to harness.

In more down-to-earth jobs painter-decorator is one I'd like to do. Many years ago I had an intuition that whatever career I went for, it'd have to be low stress. This coincides with all the advice I've read about schizoaffective disorder. Stress makes my condition very much worse. In mania I literally feel something like an accelerator, foot to the floor and a WHOOOSH!! In a normal mood, which I'm hardly ever in, I get horrible anxiety. And I still can have psychotic experiences when I'm in a normal mood. This is how my condition differs from bipolar disorder, where the psychosis occurs only at the polar extremes of mood. In depression everything feels like too much and I can't take it on.

Anna Grace and I have a lot in common. Anna has several years' history of intravenous opiate abuse. Tar heroin, white heroin and Dilaudid (prescription hydromorphone) being her favourite drugs. Her mental diagnosis is bipolar disorder but she's like me. Nearly always noticably up or down. Hardly ever "normal".



Most people with bipolar have episodes, which last weeks. But they end and the mood between episodes is neither low nor high: it's totally normal. But Anna and I are always depressed and when we're not depressed we're manic or at least hyper. We've both had psychosis. Neither of us function very well off opiates. Only problem is, Anna lives 3851 miles away in Green Bay, Wisconsin. We would like to live together in New York City, but short of a massive lottery win, whats going to make that happen?

Anna is my cyberwife. She's cheating on me with some guy called Jess who does bootycalls, as she calls them. Of course this isn't unfaithfulness, there can be no chastity or commitment over 3851 miles' distance. Still, if I meet Jess in a manic episode I will punch his lights out.

Now you've read some of the story of my mental health. I'm not always sure I'm ill. When guilt gets me bad I can feel like I deserve unhappiness. When I really get severely depressed, which is rare for me, I believe I'm in spiritual crisis rather than depression as such. In the lowest of the lows life is over; there is no life. My highs took me higher than drugs. A feeling of connectedness, of spirituality as my thoughts exploded in starbursts. Impervious to weariness, my body seemed to be turning from physical flesh into spirit. That's what I wanted most of all: to be out of this world. As I say, I hate this world at all times. I don't want to be in it, I want to be out of it. It's the only way of coping I know of.

MANIC EPISODE: "TRISCH GOES NUTS"
Knowing she was going to spend all day cooped up in a car, she was letting off steam before a road trip... The comments at Youtube contain a lot of doubters but this is the only film I've seen captures true manic behaviour:~


FUN WITH BIRDS ON THE BEACH
... and here's the sane Trisch with some very entertaining birds



PS: I've found a new blog by Jane, the mother of a freshly detoxed addict who's troubled by anxiety, depression and insomnia. He's opiate-clean but in a very vulnerable situation. Check out her blog and give Jane some moral support: http://janeinsearchofsanity.blogspot.com.

Corned Beef Wind-up

3:39AM I HAVE JUST had major hassles from a tin of corned beef. Stupid key drizzled itself less than halfway round one single side out of four before derailing, leaving me with an unopenable tin. My tinopener simply will not cut the bastard thing open. So I was reduced to dipping a pair of scissors into this tin's metalic smile and annoying myself with pitifullly small morsels.

I just wrote another post but it's too annoying for words.

I'm alive! I'm alive again! Depression has melted into the darkness for now at least and my mind is pinging alive like a kitchen running with naughty mice.

I had 3 cups of black coffee a few hours ago and a tin of cyder. I only got the cyder to try and calm myself down. I was pacing everywhere trying to remember what I was doing...

... I was actually collecting clothes to wash in the sink. Well they're marinading nicely in washingup liquid now.

Gone With The Wind is on again. I can't believe I ever thought that was an awful film. It's because it was voted best movie of all time in several polls that put me off it. As was Citizen Kane (where Citizen Kane is #1 Gone with the Wind is #2 and vice versa). And Citizen Kane is incontrovertably boring.

Gone with the Wind was a huge bestseller, the Harry Potter of its time. It sold at least 7 million in hardback in the United States alone, which was good for that time. So there was much talk about who would star in the movie and something akin to a talent competition was put in operation. I kept wondering why they didn't cast Elizabeth Taylor as Scarlett, but she was only 7 or 8 at the time. Eventually an unknown actress from England, Vivienne Leigh, was chosen. I like her spirit. And I love the way she shoots that robbing buffoon on the stairs. I especially like her catchphrase "I'll think about that tomorrow"..! What a way to live life. Not necessarily a good way, but what a way.

When I first saw Rhett I thought "what a smarmy man" but I like his attitude. He is accepting of all people, all things. He even keeps up his good humour in a "horse jail" stable where he is confined prior to his hanging. (He never gets hanged.)

O what am I talking about y'all have probably seen the film more times than I have.

Why do they barely ever put classic films on TV? Are they really so expensive to run?

Well I've got to go. I don't know if I'll be sleeing tonight. I didn't sleep last night either, but I slept all day. Maybe I should stay up till tomorrow night.

I haven't touched any heroin at all since Friday afternoon and I don't intend to touch it again.

Drink: I'd like to give up completely but I tend to cling to it as something to brighten me up when I'm down, something to calm me down when I'm up. I noticed the dr didn't sound at all surprised when I mentioned these effects to him. And he never told me to stop drinking. He wanted me to stop so that alcohol could be ruled out of the diagnostic equation. Well I got diagnosed didn't I. It wasn't exactly the one I would have picked myself, but life isn't a Chinese takeaway menu.

If I could pick any mental illness to have the only one I'd go near would be "constant euphoric unipolar hypomania". That's the only one anyone with half a brain would go near either.

Mania makes me too distractable and unfocused, not to mention highly irritable (as well as euphoric). It's the euphoria I love, the so-called Elevated Mood. Psychosis can be entertaining (lots of hallucinations) but I only say that because it happens anyway and you have to make the best of a bad lot. Depression is vile. What else is there... anxiety? Beyond the pale. I don't really get any other mental disorders so that's it.

What gets me is when I have to do ordinary things yet I feel like I'm on an E and a trip. No way in a million years would I drop acid and ecstasy and then attend some kind of group therapy session like the nutter club. Last time this chic opposite me was banging on about her depression and I just couldn't handle it. I had to leave. This caused some commotion but I ran outside and smoked three cigarettes while fleeing up the high road. Then I nearly had a panic attack in Sainsbury's. There's only so much you can push yourself. I didn't feel like going anyway and I pushed myself too far that day.

And I don't touch acid or ecstasy by the way. I once did, but that was more than a decade ago (ecstasy) and nearly twenty years ago (most of the acid). People seem to get confused by my drug allusions, what I'm often trying to say is I FEEL drugged, not that I AM drugged. You'll know when I am drugged because I'll be talking about having used heroin that day. And you'll know that by reading into my past more than my future. Heroin has no place in my future.

I just wish I could give up drinking that nasty alcohol. I know it's doing me no good even though the consumption is LOW. So low it's practically within the British government's stingy health guidelines.

I just know that alcohol doesn't fit in with the pious health food lifestyle I need to adopt. Good thing I actually LIKE lentil stew isn't it!!

Well I'll leave it there, (as I say at NA). I have clothes to wash and Gone With The Wind to watch. Yet again...


PS I'm not feeling like I'm on an E or a trip now. I only mention that because I did feel that way not long ago and it wasn't condusive to doing things outside the home...


Illustrated: corned beef mayhem; Scarlett O'Hara; white cyder; LSD, yes a "trip" is this tiny. In my day, two of these could blow your head off!

BLACKOUT CREW: BAD BOY (NOT ENOUGH DONK)
This tune is a bit rude, but I like the techno donkdonkdonk bit.
I think it would be better just music, no words...



GOA TRANCE
in Goa, Hilltop nr Vagator/Anjuna





06:21 I just went out, got another tin of corned beef (different make) opened it successfully and ate half (hurrah!) That's all I can manage. A small bowl of curry and rice and half a tin of corned beef. No appetite. I'm going to try and get 2 hours sleep then go to bed at the proper time tomorrow night. It's light already. Wish me luck

Sundry Talk

THIS IS the molecule of the designer drug "meow" (also stupidly called mephedrone) 4-methylmethcathinone. I tried it once. Somebody gave me a free sample and expected me to ask for more. I didn't. He said it had no comedown, which is true, it didn't have any comedown effect on mood (which is basically chemical depression; very similar to the down I get naturally). This stuff was like Ecstasy with cocaine on top. Except the cocaine lasted about three hours instead of half an hour. Just reading the wikipedia mephedrone article made my nose hurt in "euphoric" recall. (As NA call it.)

I know two people who died after taking mephedrone. The first one (who triggered the second suicide) was floridly psychotic from taking the stuff. He had a borderline personality disorder and he took mephedrone and became psychotic. She took it increasingly after his death. Then mephedrone was made illegal and she wouldn't have known where to get it on the black market (because it's taken by clubbers, not heroin addicts ~ two totally divergent scenes). At the end of the day you're just paying to be "moderately manic" when you take stuff like that. Though I'm distantly tempted to induce the state (because it did feel really really nice being manic). If I truly wanted to go "high" I could just stop taking my risperidone. Which I don't want to do. There's no guarantee I'd go up and I feel weird enough as it is ON antipsychotic; without it I know Id be hearing voices etc etc.

Warning: 3 mental paragraphs follow, so skip it if you're tired of mad-talk:~

Eg today I was tired, so I retreated to a park bench where I drank cherry flavoured Latvian cyder named Fizzzz (I love cherry Fizz!) during the course of this decampment I saw the concrete path before me turn into a grey river. If my feet hadn't been on the concrete, so I knew it was not liquid I might have gone into one on this bench, believing I was stranded in a boat in water. I never used to see the path turn into water before I was "mentally ill". It was heroin that kept me sane. How ironic is that. Heroin blocked mood cycles (though it kept me depressed) I barely got manic on heroin. I got manic enough to be horrified at the wikipedia article on "racing thoughts" in bipolar disorder. It was a portrait of my experience when I used to go off on one in my house, long before I got called "schizoaffective". Bipolar symptoms a couple of years ago, and I wasn't on crack.

So I'm tired today; I never seemed to get enough sleep. I'm sleeping OK. I'm not under sleeping nor over (well, not much over) but my sleep is all over the place. I sleep at night then I don't sleep at night. Then I sleep by day and at night. Then I feel tired then I feel weird. Then I do feel depressed. Then I just feel flat. Then I feel odd again. It's all like the "depression" I had for years on end, only punctuated by little blips of hyped up high (kind of bipolar). The only full mania I've had was recently. It cycled constantly back and forth between higher and lower levels of mania and mania and a sour mood then back to mania. I got very very high on this mania. Higher than I've ever been low. I started going higher than I have even heard described and I knew what bipolar did. I've read An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison. I know you see Death and blood goes everywhere! I didn't see death I just turned into a roaring noise. See this is what happens when I go mad. Now I have something to be frightened of, because I lost my sanity to a Noise. All thought turned into this nosie and I was yelling and screaming enough that I can see everyone in my house now thinks I'm not just a junkie but a nutter-junkie too. See, if I think about this I'm scared and not scared. This clanging thing happened intensely every day and in the end instead of backing off from it I went through it and stood on top of the cyclone and that meant a feeling of standing on top of the universe.

I saw that Trisch Goes Nuts video the other day and was horrified to read underneath that I thought she was "just a bit manic" ("moderately manic" was the wording). When I actually was hyper I thought that video was so hilarious, that's why it's up there. But bloody hell if that's moderate then what is severe? I know I went severe I just don't like to think of what I looked like.

I am watching some Japanese children on TV. One just found her school bag in the wreckage of her tsunami-flattened house. She said (defiantly, I thought, or bravely): "but I like living by the sea" and I thought "that's my girl".

Speaking of the news: what the hell are we doing in Libya. Is it just so we can have cheap petrol (that's gasoline to you Americans)..? I'm sure it has far more to do with that than protecting Arabs' liberties. The liberty protection is just the excuse. They did nothing when Mugabe went totally nuts in Zimbabwe, did they? And what's the difference between Zimbabwe and Libya? More elephants, less oil!

Now I must go I hope this isn't too much of a mess. I am washing clothes in the sink then going to sleep. I'm exhausted.

Illustrated: meow-molecule; a funky blue walled bathroom. I want walls this colour and will have them soon...

Swirl

I HAVE FOUND A NEW BLOG! SACRED INSANITY, "My story of addiction, loss, suicide, bipolar depression, abuse, love, hope, and life, not necessarily in that order." It's here: http://mysacredinsanity.blogspot.com

I feel weird it's past midnight and I've had a manic flash. I could really do with a fan so I can feel the wind in my hair as I rush. I want to go swimming while manic. That's my new ambition. To go manic swimming.

O I'm not going to go on about how I am y'all have heard it before and it'll bore y'all to hear it again. Suffice it to say my head is going a bit fast I feel good but kind of uncomfortable in that I'm MEANT TO BE GOING TO BED IN A SECOND and I don't think I'm gonna sleep. My body always knows it's late and that I ought to sleep. It lulls despite the mania and picks up noticably in the mid morning. Lulls towards evening picks up a bit at night if I don't sleep then on. If I do sleep I sleep very few hours, this includes on sleeping pills.

My head is lit up with imagery again I see golden ants circling in formation a perfectly sawn off treestump. Freshly sawn. If I tried, I could count the rings but my eyes are open. Oh it's gone. I now see curtains in a theatre with abstract lights shone on.

I am going out for a walk. Wish me luck. Here's stuff I keyed in earlier:~~

And here's another blog: Clean & Crazy http://surrendertowin.blogspot.com

Hey I've just found a write up of my personality. My personality now...
It's here, bulletpointed: http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/schizoaffective-disorder-10088.html

Jobs you can do with schizoaffective disorder: links

http://www.suite101.com/content/getting-a-job-with-schizoaffective-disorder-a352938

0021 ps music sounds SUBLIME! TRY LISTENING TO THIS:~~~~~~~
Barber's adagio for strings, Ferry Corsten trance version (William Orbit)





ISN'T IT ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, TRANSCENDENT, SUBLIME?

Just gabblling (as per usual)

0220 WELL I WASN'T HALF RAMBLING on earlier. I was going into one because Deshane who is a mental health type personnage is coming to my house tomorrow (actually today, this afternoon) and I know I'm not feeling "right" so all that confusion with vivid references to mental disorderedness is me stewing because I'm stressed out.

I don't know whether to go to bed tonight or not I feel a bit "high" as doctors call it. (I don't really call it high but in the nuthouse the nurses used to say "we think you're getting a bit high" as an excuse to give a pissed off person with bipolar disorder who was JUST A BIT ANNOYED AND JUSTIFIABLY SO just as an excuse to wrestle him to the floor and slam a needle full of haloperidol in his arse.

I'm allergic to Haloperidol if they gave me that I really would get upset and sue. No kidding. I was in such a state on FIVE milligrams I got carted into hospital in an ambulance for not being able to walk any more. It was that serious, no kidding. If they DARED give me that I would take every measure of legal action, including assault charges because I know they will try and play mind games with me in there and I know I will probably end up in the nuthouse sooner or later. I don't feel like I'm coping that well and I get tired of looking after myself the way YOU would be tired of looking after a young toddler who keeps turning on the oven and leaving taps on etc. I don't do those things but that's the point it's what I DON'T do that causes problems. I don't do anything unless it's absolutely essential so this is my issue with "self-care" as they call it. Just being able to tell you doesn't make things any easier, any better or any different. Ill-informed and ill-trained people hav been taken in by my impression of normality for so long now I'm not about to start acting "ill" to be taken seriously they can either believe me or not I'm not putting any effort into any kind of mental health "performance".

You have to bear in mind I'm diagnosed with thee most complicated serious mental disorder there is with the widest range of symptoms of possibly ANY mental disorder so being happy can mean I'm actually manic, being quiet could mean I'm depressed or withdrawn, being normal might mean I'm plummetting in mood and just happen to me "euthymic" (in a normal mood) during the snapshot of time for which they see me. I'm getting tired of myself like I say and if anybody does make the offer again I will take them up and go in the nuthouse. I almost regret not going in when I was asked before but they would have medicated me away to nothing. British hospitals seem to be heavier on meds than American ones. You hear stories of physical restraints etc in America they are VERY seldom used here and only when absolutely necessary and only as a last resort. The first resort is medication, always medication and I don't want to be on heavy meds. I don't really want a mood stabilizer. He gave risperidone, I think, to establish whether I had a schizo-thing going on with my affective stuff. I think that was his reasoning.

I decoded what he said in Psychotic Appointment Number One when I was saying I didn't fit into diagnostic criteria and he himself said "what do you know about schizophrenia?" which did my head in so much I cried. Just thinking I had schizophrenia made me cry which is very unusual for me I wouldn't usually cry over something like that but I did over that one. Anyway he also asked whether I'd been OK for any length of time in the past 6 months. 6 months is the diagnostic time you need to have been ill to qualify for schizophrenia (or schizoaffective). I didn't realize what he was getting at and naively said "no I haven't been OK? What you mean all day? No." Bear in mind I had dealers ringing ME asking where I was! Not the other way round.

I'd lost it so bad I couldn't even score without a big load of stress. Literally everything in life stressed me so I avoided literally any engagement with reality outside going to get methadone, going shopping for essentials and going to horrible but essential appointments for methadone.

I have had problems that I now realize are this illness for a good five years straight. Severe problems coping with day to day life which both I and my drug workers just thought was can't be bothereds. But every single time I tried (and I did try) to snap out, to do a new thing, it just fell flat, didn't work, led to more distress, disappointment, dysphoria. And I was depressed enough already. That's why they started believing I had a personality disorder. I had a mental disorder I was self-medicating pretty successfully. Heroin really did work as a mood-stabilizer and antipsychotic. It was particularly good at levelling out my mood. I remember when I first got addicted, realizing there were no more hills and valleys just a flat line. But that flat line wasn't entirely flat it inclined downwards and I did go into the pits, just more slowly and I stayed down there a long, long time.

So this is more of me spouting on about mental shit I know. Think of it as unedited autobiography. I want my family to have stuff Ive written in case I die. Then they can assemble it into something publishable and hopefully get tons of cash from my death. That's what I'm hoping. A dead junkie makes a junkie's life story SO much more saleable. Hey imagine if someone made a film of my life?! I want Brad Pitt to play me.

OK I'm off now. I might even sleep ~ woo! Take care y'all...