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!

To do or Die: thank Q

***THIS POST DESCRIBES MY OWN FEELINGS; I DO NOT AND NEVER WOULD ADVISE ANYONE TO TAKE THEIR OWN LIFE. WEBSITES AND HELPLINES OF SUICIDE ORGANIZATIONS ARE GIVEN AT THE END***

I have focused here on extremes in order to make my point.

I GOT A MESSAGE THIS MORNING from Q, saying why do I talk talk talk about suicide, why don't I just do it? I'm sure Q isn't the only person to think this. So this Q is for you and anyone else who wonders. My answer.

I was long attracted to heroin before I ever got involved in it. The main attraction was that heroin was deadly. The first time I went out of my way to score heroin I was dead-set on overdosing and drowning in the bath. Circumstances conspired against me and my £50 came back. I have never been so disappointed. But I still had a good go with all the drugs I had: sleeping pills and vodka, lots of clothes, bricks, planks and a bath full of water. I was alone over Xmas. This should have worked. When I woke up in a white haze (the side of the bath) I thought I was dead. For a moment I was happy. Then I realized I was wet and cold and miserable.

I did a far better attempt a year before. Also at Xmas. Also in a locked house. With no interfering bastard due back for a good 10 days. I knocked back nearly a bottle of vodka. then 8 pills of 4 different types. My memory from then on went hazy. Suffice it to say, I woke up with vomit everywhere, and pills in the vomit. Scores and scores of pills. Not a single pill lay outside the vomit. Which speaks for itself. I felt sicker than I've ever been. Poisoned to the core.

I was out of it for three days, sleeping off this overdose. Gradually what came back was a moment when I picked up a bottle of 70 or more Lofepramine, a heavy antidepressant. As far as I knew this was fatal in overdose. I knocked the entire lot back. At least 70 pills on top of this vodka and pills cocktail. To my regret I puked nearly all of it up. But not enough not to feel sicker than I ever have done. Heroin sickness in no way compares. This was deathly. I must have taken in more than I knew of this lofepramine. There was no chance of this being seen as any "cry for help" I wanted to die. I didn't have a chance to feel disappointed or anything else. I felt nothing. As I say I didn't fully come round for a good 3 days.

In my drunken idiocy I had also forgotten that lofepramine is a tetracyclic, not a tricyclic antidepressant. Tricyclics are fatal in overdose. No question. You go unconscious, then you start fitting. Then you go into a heart attack. You do not come back. Tetracyclics are a different ballgame. Lofepramine made me feel ill. Iller than I ever have been or would want to be again. But it didn't kill me.

If only that idiot had provided me with heroin a year later I might not be here now.

Q brought up a very good point when he told me I should stop talking about suicide and just do it. Perhaps I should explain a few things about suicide for the uninitiated.

Suicide usually comes in impulses. When I have felt desperate and at the end of the line, these have hit me every few seconds. That is, literally hundreds of times per day. Most people in a suicidal state actually resist these urges, even despite their insistence. As my old counsellor told me, the will to live is the strongest will of all, no matter how bad you feel.

You need to get out of your heads the idea that suicide is just a wimpy way out, an escape from pain. If I hadn't been such a wimp I'd be long dead now. This isn't how it feels when you're in the thick of "suicidal ideation" as they call it. In depression, life feels worthless and meaningless. In severe depression there is not even a glimmer of hope or joy anywhere. In this state it is easy to feel you are doing the world a favour, that everyone would be better without you, that you deserve to die.

Things don't have to go very much further along until you hit an outright delusional state. Yes plain depression ~ not schizophrenia ~ can make you delusional. You can also hallucinate, hear voices or see warped faces in the walls, the carpet, piles of clothing. All these can be symptoms of extreme depression. It's called depression with psychotic features. (We had a friend at uni, who didn't use drugs (not even hash) who got into this condition.) In this state the most far out and bizarre ideas can seem utterly realistic and reasonable. I will not give details. If you know anyone who appears to be depressed and out of touch with reality you need to get them to a psychiatric hospital and quick. In fact if you know anybody who gives the impression that they may be considering a suicidal act you need to seek help fast. Most depressed people find it hard verging on impossible to take even simple decisions. If you think they need hospital treatment you should push for this, and make it clear to the doctors you don't feel able to take responsibility for yourself. That's what mental hospitals are for. To treat people who cannot survive anywhere else.

Using drugs while depressed, especially speed, cocaine or crack can make the state far worse and even precipitate psychosis. If you know anybody in this condition you need to step in as a friend and help. Never assume anybody who's ill enough to hallucinate ~ or who's just staring blankly at a wall, rocking ~ will get help for themself.

Two weeks ago I finally had enough of gear. Crap gear full of rubbish I didn't want and hadn't paid for. I'm not talking "bash" I mean pharmaceutical whackodrugs. I wasn't the only person to lose days at a time in amnesia. But I don't know anybody else who went off like a skyroket, hearing voices, paranoid and hallucinating floridly.

The absolute fruityloops peak of this lasted only 2 days. In 3 days I got 1 hour's sleep. My mind was electrified. When I closed my eyes it was like watching television. Vivid imagery played out behind them. My hearing went louder by a factor of at least 10. Suddenly I could hear everything in every room of my house. People on the street were yelling their personal business. If I so much as cranked a door handle open, the door told me to buy a tangerine (yes I thought this was hilarious, too). At one point it sounded like radios were lying everywhere, left on, babbling, playing music. A confusing jamboree of sound. At another point I couldn't tell whether I was thinking or hearing, I was hallucinating so much. I also had visual hallucinations: spectacular lights, police officers posing as parking meters. Going outside was like stepping outside a full-on rave. Two police cars side by side, blue flashers on, took me to psychedelic seventh heaven.

I took no drugs to get in this state. I STOPPED taking them. I wasn't depressed. I was laughing my head off, singing songs I was so happy, very disinhibited. My mind was racing very quickly and flooded with ideas. Into all of this utter darkness mingled. I was closer to a desperate, impulsive suicide than I ever have been. Every other act I ever did or contemplated would have been a planned event. This was random and quick and dangerous. I speak literally when I say I wasn't very far from a state where I would not have known who or where I was or what I was supposed to be doing. Because I kept in touch with some rational part of myself I knew this, and that freaked me. The experience itself was not inherently scary or nasty. I'd rather feel that way than be in panic or anxiety. What hurt was going mad and knowing it. You'd have to be incredibly naive to hear voices, hear people spitting and swearing at you along the road, all the way up and back, and not realize: this is what happens to crazy people.

To anyone still having a good laugh from all this, I challenge you what would YOU have done in such circumstances? Would you have got there and back and home without being arrested or put in hospital? If you don't believe a psychotic-like episode can happen to you, just try smoking as much crack as you can manage. Best way I know of to bring it on. Point was here, there was no crack. There were no drugs; only a lack of drugs. That is what scared the rational me, the tiny part of sanity that remained through all of this. My head was like an echo chamber for days afterwards. One thought I thought was repeated in my head and bounced back and forth. Some thoughts flew straight in from outside. What was mine or not became confusing. Doing the simplest task: buying something in a shop, using a laundrette, going anywhere in time on time. This was extremely stressful. I only posted on my blog because I find talking and writing easier than anything else. These are the only things I do truly WELL. Anything else computer-related, e.g. signing in, was difficult beyond words.

Well I think I've said all I want to re me and suicide. I've experienced suicidal thoughts for a long, long, time. Provided they aren't acted on, that's all they are, just thoughts. Usually I do not mention them. I am fully aware that to do so can sound childish and petulant and attention-seeking. I posted some of my thoughts as they came more recently because I was in a mess, had no idea what was or was not relevant or real. Through all of this I tried as hard as I could not to cause genuine offence or upset. And yet to be true to myself. This is not an easy situation to negotiate. My blog tells the truth, no matter how nasty, sordid or embarrassing. If I deleted everything that could embarrass me at some time in front of some person almost nothing would remain. In a way I have prostituted my life story, if you want to see it that way. So I might as well go on. It means little to me any more, I'm so used to telling it. At least that way it cannot hurt me.

So that's me. This is my existence. Judge me all you like. But I challenge you to walk a mile in my shoes and still say what you say.

Over and out.

***SUICIDE HELP***
Please anyone from the relevant countries give names/numbers of organizations.
If you or anybody you know is or appears to be contemplating suicide (including dropping hints) GET HELP NOW.
The following organizations and helplines can give advice and put you in touch with mental health services:

UK: Samaritans National Helpline 08457 90 90 90 (low cost from BT landline, may be expensive/not eligable under minutes schemes from mobiles)
Central London: (probably cheaper from a mobile phone or callbox) 020 7734 2800
Eire Samaritans: 1850 60 90 90

Australia: Samarians
Befrienders: helpline08 93 81 5555
Befrienders: youthline 08 93 88 2500
Befrienders: freecall countryline 1800 198 313

Canada: Befrienders 1-888-787-2880
Helpline Vancouver (cheaper from a cellphone) 604-872-3311 (Greater Vancouver)

New Zealand: Samaritans 0800 726 666

USA: National Council for Suicide Prevention 212.677.3009
Befrienders 310 391 1253

NA and more drugs...

LAST NIGHT I went to an NA meeting. Two people I know from outside where in there. One was the crackhead who lived downstairs in the madhouse I was in when I started this blog (as opposed to the crackheads and B-smokers Matran the ratman + Laundretta, prostitute extraordinaire, his girlf. (Matran eventually got busted for crack dealing and got our house raided, which I was NOT pleased about and something told me NOT to mention dealing going on in my own home (even though it was a different locked room). But that was a good 3 or more years ago. And I think Matran got deported back to Jamaica. The last thing I remember about this guy was him turning his room upside down. I stepped outside, found the missing rock on our doorstep and ran upstairs to pipe it myself!

The other guy was on gear and crack. The last time I saw him he was in our (dead) friend Lucky's bathroom, sticking a needle in his neck. He is now 18 months clean.

He said one thing that prompted him to give up was dealing with kids on mountain bikes (all over 18, thank God. We did have a big dealer who was FOURTEEN, about 10 years ago. I remember watching my friend score her crack from him. Couldn't help but notice he was being shadowed by someone much older.


When I scored off this individual, which I didn't really want to do but it was after I'd found and consumed 10.5 grams of heroin (3.5g China White, the rest "brown" ~ I weighed the brown on post office scales, it came in at 7g!) over about 5 weeks and got myself (mildly) addicted. When I scored, I noticed a young black boy of about seven come round the corner and eye me up in an obvious way. The drugs are coming! I thought, and I was right. (It was Shamps, the actual dealer who served me, not this little boy.) At this point I had dabbled in heroin, mostly to be "naughty". Nothing to do with rebelling against my parents, who had a horror of drugs, but against my peers, so many of whom thought they were so cool snorting cocaine. And yet crack, which is basically the most efficient way of delivering coke to the brain (feels indistinguishable from cocaine injection) ~ and even more so heroin were utterly taboo. I was informed several times when I broached the subject (admitting nothing) that they didn't want anything to do with anyone who dabbled in heroin. Much less a heroin addict.


I befriended local street addicts who sold cut-price Travelcards each evening at the local tube stop. These cards got you all over London. A zone 1-4 card cost about £4 at the time and the going touted rate was £2 before 8 or 9pm, £1.50 thereafter and £10 £1! after 10.30 or so.

As I say I got to know these people well and found them surprisingly nonjudgemental and more accepting than any other group I had ever met. If I felt miserable I could talk about my woes without being called a buzz-killer, or being thought of as a loser. Because most of my life up to then I had been unhappy. Note I say most, not all. All these people were heroin addicts. One day, I was standing there shivering, because it was cold and someone I knew thought I must be sick. I had £10 on me and they offered to score for me.

I smoked the heroin off tinfoil, which is called running it, or chasing it, or "booting". If you've no habit, you get high within about 2 mins in this way, and you only need about £2.50 worth of top quality gear to put you into dreamland. London street heroin is ordinarily 20-60% pure. A £10 bag weighed 0.2g or a bit more if you're lucky. So £2.50 worth of B would be about 40mg 30mg diamorphine. The bioavailability of smoking from foil is said to be 60% (as opposed to 100% from injecting). So I was taking in about 24mg 18mg at a time. {My maths!} Considering a heart attack patient is ordinarily given 5mg (diamorphine, not morphine, which is weaker) that £2.50 was going a long way. This is one of the seductive things about heroin. Initially it seems to offer fantastic value, Especially compared to crack. And the high goes on for a good 4 hours. If you're "opiate-naive" you feel different even the next day.

I smoked my heroin alone and in secret. None of my "normal" friends knew anything about what I was doing. I was into heroin to get high. It wasn't an image thing and certainly had nothing to do with being "cool". I had two groups of "normal" friends. One lot liked party drugs, the other didn't. Ironically (or perhaps not) it was the straighter people with whom the friendships ran deepest. It was a long time before I used heroin with other heroin users. I did know a mad French girl who injected prescribed methadone amps and crack ~ £15, £20 worth in one hit. The crack at that time was 70-80% pure, so that's 200-300mg neat cocaine in one dose. No wonder she looked like a rabbit in the headlights afterwards. I smoked my crack with her. Because she didn't smoke, I learned the techniques on my own, myself.


When I eventually asked her to inject me with heroin, she insisted I cook it up myself.

Right from the word go I was scoring my own gear when I wanted it. Which was only occasionally. Heroin dealers expect calls every few days at least. So when I rang back a month or so later, I usually had to explain who I was.

The point to all this is that by the time I found that 10.5g stash ~ lying right on the high street in a shop doorway. I thought it was a bag of sweets! ~ everything was already in place. I was already an adept heroin smoker (though I had to snort the China white, it's heroin hydrochloride and doesn't smoke well). I already had a collection of dealers' numbers. I knew at least 6 or 7 heroin addicts who would score for me if I needed them to ~ not just one. So everything was set up for what happened next to seem rather inevitable.

My only reservation in all of this was that I utterly hated the process of scoring. Didn't like dealers. And was unjaded enough to feel the bad vibes that emanated from most of them.

And then I fell in luurve with a junkie. Who was like my twin. Like Kurt and Courtney were twins. And I fell in love with heroin ~ the only drug strong enough to make me genuinely not care about anything ~ more. And the rest is history.

And now I'm drinking cyder, shlucking down chill-pills on top of methadone (methadone has no buzz). And knowing that I probably will throw away at least £10 on the lousy gear that's been around, because I know who's coming to see me today. And this person always wants to score when he sees me...

It's not as bad as it was. But it certainly ain't over yet...

SONIQUE: FEELS SO GOOD

The bottom drawer: a hamster story

THIS IS A TRUE STORY, that happened about 14 years ago, to my late hamster Hammy.

Hammy was my best golden hamster. He lived in a large cracked old fishtank. He looked like a cartoon character.

He loved running. The standard hamster wheel was far too small for him. So I bought him a special rat wheel with a one-foot diameter. On this he could sprint at full-tilt.

All day long Hammy slept very deeply. When I dared introduce my hand near his nest, he would wake up furious, chattering and gnashing his teeth. Sometimes he even sprang up like a poisonous snake. Then he realized the hand was just mine, and he sniffed at it, and calmed down. Of course he was also hoping for titbits!

Every day at six o'clock he got up, washed his ears, did a wee, ate, drank and then jumped on the rat wheel and ran and ran and ran almost constantly till past six in the morning!

I worked out, he ran at least EIGHT MILES or TWELVE KILOMETRES per night! What a furry athlete!

Sometimes he got off the wheel and ran around it to see where he was!

One evening I let him out to ramble freely about the carpet. He loved this. He was a bit dur though, because when I put his wheel in the corner of the room he ran up to it, jumped on and started trotting again! This particular evening he decided to go exploring behind my bottom drawer. He was having a great time scurrying back there.

When I put him back in his nest, he packed up his bedding in his pouches, then scrabbled against the glass to say, "Let me out!" He ran behind the drawer and began preparing his new bed there.

I put him back in the aquarium, where he packed his pouches so full he looked like a golden football with eyes. "Let me out!" So I set him on back on the carpet and he sprinted to his new nest.

When Hammy's new nest had grown absolutely colossal, I realized, "Oh, he can't live here!" So: back to the fishtank.

He was absolutely furious! He scrabbled and scratched relentlessly at the glass, pouches full, ready to make his new nest even more enormous than it already was. (I'd actually put the nest back on his old bed, but Pandable wasn't too hot on such technicalities.) When he realized he was back in the tank for the evening he sprang on the wheel with great irritation and pinged at top speed for mile after mile. Every now and then he got off and seemed bemused: no drawer, no new nest anywhere to be found. I felt so sorry for him.

I was reminded of a saying:

The best-laid plans of mice and men go askew.

Which comes from a poem by Robbie Burns.

Perhaps Burns should have added, plans of mice and hamsters too!

Tiring Tale! :: Not the Weekend :: Squirrel's Satay

BEFORE I START LET ME ADD HERE :: I know it is not the weekend~!!! My brains have curdled. That is what exhaustion does to me. Remember I was talking about Brain Fog yesterday in "Part 3" ... that's what happens... cannot even remember what day it is... and no I am not stoned!

I SLEPT FOR NEARLY TWELVE HOURS last night from the sheer exhaustion of a. running to and from clinic appointments; b. scrawling out various autobiographical pieces (one for the clinic; the other being daily posted here. Part 4 is due later today) and c. probably cfs traces. I don't know. What I do know is that exhaustion knocked me out cold from midnight until midday today. And I wasn't trying to "lie in". That was my sleep. In one solid chunk. Sleep can be wonderful but it's also a waste of time that you could be doing something better with ...

Still, in my spare moments, I am reading The Godfather by Mario Puzo. The novel is far better than the film. Published in 1969, the book tells with authority the ways and wherewithalls of a great mafia family. Each scene featuring the "Don" he takes apart, explaining through their actions how the characters honour and disrespect one another in ever so subtle ways. From reading this book I now see it is surely the source of many of the mafia cliches and stereotypes that have become standard in television, movies and popular fiction. The ever so reasonable politeness with the undertone of threat. All that stuff. I remember seeing some photos of the LA mafia bosses from the era of Marilyn Monroe and the Hollywood greats. These men looked truly frightening. They had filmed many of the great female movie stars of the day in extremely compromising situations and used the bargaining power this gave them to force these poor women to do any favour they demanded from then on. That particular rumour I do believe. Though with the technology of the day, surely cameras took film, which limited the shooting time. And made a loud whirring noise? I don't know.

Anyhow I digress. I promised to post up my story and will do. As I said, part four is due later. I've had to scribble it down on paper first as typing straight into Blogger is too confusing. There are too many contrary facts to recall and fit in the right places ...

By the way I've submitted my blog to a couple of sites that will publish scathing reviews of it. So once these come out I will entertain everybody by linking to them ...

OK better go; it's 1318 hrs and I've writing to do...

L8Rs

G

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Sorry I've not been in touch with so many of you for so long, as I say I am knackered out, truly. Also I've gone through the past few days comments (procrastinating basically) saying hi to some people... of course I've left loads of other people out... I really ought to get my links properly sorted ... right I've got to run to the pharmacy now, phone the dreaded local council, wait on a freind (it is a friend as well, not a dealer) ... and pen today's fascinating instalment of my drugs hell saga!! haha!

Have a great weekend everyone ....

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What is all this thing about "great weekend" ... see that's where exhaustion gets you... I don't even know what day it is anymore

serious business!

and no i am not stoned!!

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WANNA SEE SOME FANTASTIC SATAY cooking on the Malay griddle? Come to Lone Grey Squirrel's blog ...

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OK: 2351hrs. I'm about to tap in part 4.

MATRAN POPPED THE FRONT DOOR LOCK IN this evening. Came back shouting about toilet paper (I assume that's what boomba-clot means? Boomba=bum. Clot=cloth in his hicksville argot.) Laundretta had done something terribly wrong in his eyes and two minutes later went running outside. Later on she was getting drunk on the stairs and holding her finger to her lips ("don't be heard talking to me"). How can she live with that monster?