No, no, no!

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



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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which might have to be rehab.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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



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


PAUL OAKENFOLD


MICHAEL WOODS
this is the meaning of U4EA

Rock Bottom?

I WOKE UP AROUND 11:30 totally unable to face the day. The Deer Hunter DVD was playing that Spanish Guitar tune "Cavatina" around and around. I felt very sad and numerous miserable thoughts went through my head. About depressed mothers who kill their children. About the dead. I remembered back to yesterday and my commitment to buy more heroin. The last thing I felt was "whoopee". I couldn't face the shower, the post office, or dealing with this bastard drug dealer. Couldn't face today or any other day. I thought about NA and hitting rock bottom. They say you must first hit bottom in order to cast off your dependency on drugs and learn to live again.

(Though there's no "again" about it.)

There is no rock at the bottom. Merely shadows stretching down and down into infinity. Your personal bottom is as low as you can bear to go. Someone, somewhere will always have gone lower. Others will have given up without ever descending half as far as you. Suffering is relative. It's a purely personal thing.

I'm annoyed with Narcotics Anonymous for judging me as high on drugs when I was drug-free and mentally unwell. Even my own family seemed to think I was abusing drugs of some mysterious kind. I've got to the point of not caring what anybody thinks on this, no matter who they are.

My psychiatrist believed me. Naomi, the dual-diagnosis lady believed me. I took drugs tests that proved when I was at my most addled, that I was on METHADONE ONLY. No heroin. No speed or crack. Certainly no hashish and it really puzzled me when someone close to me brought that one up. If they knew me, they'd know me passionate aversion to the Evil Weed. (Why touch heroin if a nasty spliff will mellow you out? I gave up toking years ago because it made me anything except mellow.)

The only nonprescribed drug I took during this period was Librium. Blue and white capsules that looked indistinguishable from Prozac. I felt nothing at all off this stuff, but it's supposed to help you kick drinking. Even that had sunk almost within the British Government's recommended safe consumption limit.

It's up to me to help myself.

There are professionals who can help me, but they can't live my life for me. Narcotics Anonymous have been mooted as an option. But I don't feel understood or accepted by NA as a group. They are a group of laypeople who deal in Recovery. Recovery is when you abstain from drugs, detoxing if necessary. And far from merely not using again, you fill the void with a new passtime: learning to live life on life's terms.

My problem with NA has been their focus on addiction as the cause of all ills. My ills began before I was ever a drug addict. I got addicted to heroin aged 28. Before that I used it so infrequently ~ with weeks at a time between bouts of using. They were bouts because a £20 bag lasted me five afternoons, and I was only smoking it. I used a new introduction to a new dealer every time I scored. The old one wouldn't have remembered me.

Before I became a drug-addict, I'd done years without drugs. Miserable years. My chronic fatigue syndrome years were drug-free: what substance could I tolerate then? I felt worse than ever.

The first couple of years when I did dabble were the most miserable of all; these were my university years, and depression ruined them utterly. I dropped acid while clinically depressed and had bad trips. I tried Ecstasy and felt marvellous. Then I came down from the heavenly high, and felt worse than ever before. Speed at one time seemed an almost-answer. It raised me up to a level where I felt I saw things clearly. Only to drop me down so precipitously I could barely function at all during the aftermath. The evil cannabis was ubiquitous among students, but it brought on acid flashbacks. Yet I craved spliffs, believed I was getting a minor drug problem. Miraculously I cured myself when I took to getting my nicotine hit from ordinary cigarettes that didn't bamboozle the brains. All the joys of smoking without paranoia, fear, confusion, hallucinations.

I still had chronic fatigue syndrome when I took to regular nightclubbing. Psychedelic trance was the music of the day. I hadn't the energy to dance all night, so I spent my nights in superbly-appointed chillout rooms talking rubbish to people from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Botswana, Italy and France. Ecstasy was the only drug that really gave me confidence. I took it in moderation. Most of us did. E doesn't mix with alcohol. Pouring two pints into a one pint pot won't get it any fuller. Once you've gone as high as Ecstasy will take you, you start going sideways, an effect that can be attained more cheaply and less dangerously on fewer pills and a sparkling of magic mushrooms. I was known as somebody who could stay out all night on nothing ~ not even drink. I always had the option of something that would set the night off with a bang, but I didn't always want it.

My mental health was still shaky. I know that Ecstasy damaged it in the late 90s, just as cannabis had in the early 90s. As my psychiatrist said "you and drugs and drink do not mix".

I know I shouldn't take any drugs at all. I don't even "want to" any more. None of the substances from my past are a temptation to me. Ecstasy would be a good case in point. It takes an hour to come on. I never enjoyed taking it anywhere except at a dance party. The peak effects from one moderate dose last about four hours but you're still buzzing slightly the next day. I haven't been out raving in over a decade and thus haven't touched E. There never was a drug I took anytime, anyplace, anywhere... until heroin got its claws into me.

Trust me, my recent use of heroin has been far more out of desperation than indulgence. It started out as what I saw as daring experimentation ~ nearly all of my friends would have disapproved, if only they'd known ~ it turned into a habit so entrenched I could not survive a day without it. They say that methadone gives stability. Some people are so stable on the stuff they can even hold down a full-time job on it. But methadone gave me no such stability. Days on the Mean Green were days spent existing, not living. At some time, at some point along the way, I realized I was merely existing on heroin too. The drug that once had turned life into Christmas every day had turned me into a wreck. Existence was drab beyond words. While heroin was depressing, methadone was suicidally miserable. I no longer have "fun" on heroin. I take it grudgingly. I deplore methadone and only take it as the greater of two evils. But a legal and at least semi-respectable evil. All I can say about methadone is that to a desperate addict, it's better than nothing. And of course, I'd rather be on nothing at all.

If only I'd embraced today's first feelings on the matter, I might have moved just one solitary step forward. Trisha Goddard, the former talkshow hostess, used to talk about embracing your depression. But I don't want to "embrace" anything. I don't just feel miserable, I feel confused. Should I embrace this confusion too? Icebergs clashing in my brains. The want of risperidone pills speaks to me aloud. It doesn't frighten me, but I know my doctor won't be very impressed when he finds out I stopped taking them. Risperidone was prescribed as an antimanic, antipsychotic. It's not an antidepressant. People with bipolar issues aren't generally prescribed antidepressants, which raise the mood. The treatment of choice is generally a mood stabilizer. I've been threatened with these, but I have issues surrounding them. So I don't know what to do.

Depression makes me realize life isn't about fun or enjoyment.

I have work to do. I hate cleaning. No sense of achievement ever came from doing it, at least not in recent times. Yet I decided to clean my house; and to do it for myself. Not for the stern lady who comes round from the council who seems to think the way I live is unacceptable. I'm doing it for me. If I had somebody else to keep my house clean and tidy for, trust me, my home would be spotless. But what's the point doing anything for myself? I've not been able to motivate myself this way in a long, long while. So I'm venturing on to fresh fields with this one.

I have to do what I realized I'd have to when I woke up this morning to a litany of ideas of doom and gloom and destruction. I shall walk away from this. There is no choice. This is what I shall do.

I never intend to embrace my depression. I intend to leave it far behind. It doesn't matter whether or not the whys and wherefores of the matter ever become clear to me. At the moment they seem utterly incomprehensible, so pondering them is an exercise in particular futility. I'm doing what I was taught to do as a very small child when my Dad took me hillwalking. You put one foot in front of the other. No matter what, you keep going. I don't know where I'm going, but I know what I'm going away from. And I'll get there in the end.


STANLEY MYERS: CAVATINA
The Deer Hunter music

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.

Frisbee Day

I TOSSED A PIZZA OUT OF MY WINDOW EARLIER LIKE A FROZEN FRISBEE. It had fucking pork in it and I don't eat pork. It's dirty. So I stormed off down the corner shop for another one. This one was Margherita with red peppers and mushrooms of my own. It's in there now.

WAS IN A REAL STEW about Deshane, the mental health personnage coming to my house. I very naerly walked out and scored heroin instead of doing the meeting. I have never been so wound up over a thing, an actual thing. Not for a long time.

Deshane is VERY perceptive he recognized that the mess I live in is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder turned on his head. How on earth did you realize that? I asked. It took over a year of counselling for me to see that one. He said he has seen it before. But he sounded very surprised when I laughingly described my "symptoms" to him. All my life all my experience is now a "symptom". How horrible is that.

But Deshane says it's healthier to see myself as sick than to pretend Im OK (as I do to the world at large, of course). But I get confused on that issue. I think it's all a conspiracy to make me helpless and in desperation yet undiagnosable. And on meds that don't work. The pills weren't really working last night. My head was lit up and I was hearing voices a bit. I know hearing voices is meant to mean I'm cuckoo but honestly thats the least of my worries. It's the weirder stuff I get troubled by.
I took my 4mg risperidone as prescribed. It doesnt make me feel ill anymore so that's good. Sorry there's nothing good to report. Except I'm taking up swimming (see below).

All the best to everyone

G
xx

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...

Bipolar?

I HAVE just been scanning the internet to find out what on earth is supposed to be wrong with me. What I found out is not very reassuring.

~ It can't be drug-induced psychosis. That is a paranoid-schizophrenia type condition. I do get paranoia but the other stuff I get is way more extreme. I don't have the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia or drug psychosis

~ I thought there was a condition called "substance-induced mood disorder (bipolar)" but there is not. Substance-induced mood disorder is mania, hypomania (mild mania), depression or a mixed state, all of which I've had in the past 2 months. What doesn't seem to happen in substance-induced mood disorder is that the mood switches poles eg from depressed to manic (as mine did about 3 or 4 weeks ago) and if symptoms last more than a month from last drug use it's generally NOT considered substance-induced

~ Drugs can worsen bipolar disorder (a phenomenon known as kindling) but this doesn't mean they necessarily caused it. Bipolar has a strong genetic component. If you have one parent with type 1* bipolar or recurrent depression, you have up to a 40% chance of getting bipolar i disorder [my mother "can tell by the calendar" when she's going to be depressed and it happens every year. Recurrent clinical depression]

~ Heroin flattened out my moods markedly. That was the first change I noticed in my life: no more mood swings. In fact I had practically no depression in the first 2 or 3 years, so to me heroin was a mood-stabilizer, a mood stabilizer that has now been taken away

~ heroin is not generally associated with drug induced mood disorders; the culprits tend to be crack, speed, ecstasy (uppers); cannabis; psychedelics and benzodiazepine withdrawal

~ at least 50% of people with bipolar disorder abuse drugs and even more abuse drink

~ I have had literally every symptom in the diagnostic criteria for both mania and depression in the last 2 months

~ the hallucinations I had were actually more extreme than is normal. Apparently when most bipolars hear voices they just hear murmuring sounds and can't make out the words, or hear their name. This stuff was going on with me years ago in depression. Now it's clear words, sometimes sentences, and one time a half-hour monologue; I also have seen visions that is I can stare at a blank wall and a movie appears (this only happened a couple of times when I was extremely hyper)

~ I don't have all symptoms at all times. Nobody does. It's impossible to hear voices in the most intense mania as my head is full of just a roaring noise and I make a roaring noise, think a roaring noise and am a roaring noise. This is what happens when you go so incredibly fast you can no longer think

~ Naomi at the drugs clinic who is a dual diagnosis professional thinks I'm bipolar

~ I have the same symptoms and experience as everyone at Nutter Club who is bipolar. But not the schizophrenics. Since I've been coming we've only had bipolar and schizophrenia in the room

~ I have had bipolar symptoms going back 15 years; in the beginning they were mild and transitory (first triggered by antidepressants); over time they have grown more extreme. And now look at me

~ I am not diagnosed bipolar. I just have all the symptoms.

~ And if you want my opinion: when I'm high I think it's fantastic and don't care what it's called; when I'm low the idea of actually being a real life manic depressive is equal to having no life at all

Comment if you like but don't call me a hypochondriac. You haven't seen me, you've only read me. Nobody who sees me doubts I have severe mental problems. I was so out of it one time a couple of weeks or so ago that one of my friends, a 50 year old man, cried

And if you believe I'm being negative, just bear in mind that telling myself I'm sick is the one thread of reality I have left when I lose it and I do lose it. If you think I exaggerate my experience do us both a favour and drop reading this blog. I tell it as it is

Yes I still feel hyper now but have barely any psychosis (yes you can be psychotic and know it: read Kay Redfield Jamison's memoir. She's type 1 bipolar and a clinical psychologist. Knowing the terminology didn't save her from utter madness. It saves nobody)

My situation is not as extreme as it was previously. It's 4:20 I'll do 5 mins in bed but if I don't sleep in that time I'm getting back up. And that's it.

I am not saying I'm bipolar. I'm saying I have all the symptoms. There's still a chance I could somehow get off the hook on this drug-induced thing but nothing I've heard seems to back this possibility up. So this is the situation. I still don't know, but I need to know. I'm fed up of not knowing.

One last thing: yes I think too much. That's another symptom of a manic episode. "Flight of ideas" (racing thoughts).

Night all. I'm doing that 5 mins in bed in a sec. I fully intend not to sleep. (Why waste the time?)

PS I've had ONE drink today a White Ace cyder at 3.75 units alcohol (at 10mls alcohol in a unit).

*type 1 bipolar is more severe than type 2, which involves depression (which may be severe) and mild mania. Type 2 never has psychotic features; type 1 involves full mania and 70% of sufferers become psychotic at some time or other. Hearing voices or seeing visions qualifies as psychosis, whether or not you're also "delusional"

For those who are interested, BipolarAbout.com probably has the best info on the condition.

I JUST SPOKE TO MY MUM i rang her yesterday when i was in a really good mood but she was out, now i'm feeling better i went to bed for ten minutes it's not good to sleep during the day i was feeling ILL physically SICK and EXHAUSTED i'm on tea and ProPlus I took 6x50mg caffeine that's no more than 2 Starbucks coffees and it did f-all to me. Personally i think TEA is stronger than pro-plus.

I don't know what's happening. I feel like an idiot for buying endless films endless endless enough to watch constant movies for days on end because it seemed like a good idea at the time and I kept thinking it's only 4x20B (£70) then another £10 then another £10 then I spent all the rent money and bought more thinking well fuck 'em.

What a diseased world we live in where I'm not even allowed to be in a good mood without it being labelled an illness. Fair enough I was a bit aggressive, confrontational and disinhibited to the point of calling Naomi's colleagues "cunts" but that's just the real me coming out. I spent YEARS depressed, just wanting to curl up and die. Now I'm not depressed and they want me to medicate my energy DOWN DOWN DOWN.

I could go on an alcohol bender because they tried that verbal trick on me where they say "alcohol is a depressant so it makes you depressed" which is actually a semantic trick. Does that mean because I'm hyper I can drink like a fish then? Well no. But it means their trickery is exposed as another druggie service con. Like "methadone stabilizes you" yeah pull the other one. That one has bells, whistles and the keys to Buckingham Palace jangling off it.

Methadone stabilizes you! Methadone stabilizes you! So that's why EVERYONE I have ever known on methadone uses HEAVILY on top. They use heroin because that makes you feel OK, methadone makes you feel suicidally depressed, well it did me. Nursey said it must be my "underlying mood". And promptly did nothing whatsoever to remedy this or help me. Nothing at all. Only when it gets so bad I think we're in 2012 and the walls are talking to me only then do they actually accept I was telling them something was wrong and telling the truth. Oh yeah and I waved and yelled at her last time she skulked past me into their little office where they hold their witches' coven, refusing to acknowledge my presence. This is Nice Nursey With Too Many Ideas, not Evil Bitch Nursey. I can't wait till I bump into Evil Bitch I'm going to tell her what I think of her. Naomi thinks I ought to calm down. Naomi's OK and I could see I was winding her up. Maybe I'd better drop this Nutter Club if I'm only causing chaos there. Whole point in going is to express how I feel. Now what I feel is unacceptable because it's too vehemently expressed, too passionate and too TRUE.

I'm off I have a pie to eat.

No I didn't cut up with that bottle. As I said the broken glass was blunt on every side so even when I pressed hard I only got cat-scratches. It means I wasn't meant to cut up. I just thought it might be therapeutic. Like a therapeutic relationship between me and some glass.

Hey I'm down very nearly to the Acceptable Limit drinks wise, that being 28 units per week, 280mls neat alcohol. Wow.

Persecution

O SHIT. TWO OFFICIALS FROM THE COUNCIL came round and refused to enter my lair!

Fair enough it is full of rubbish bags that I'm not sure whether or not I accidentally threw my passport into.

I don't know what I did when why wherefore or what to which whatever this that or another thing. Y'know?

To cut a long story short they asked whether I was on drugs and that one confused me I said what psychiatric drugs or street drugs?

We had this conversation on the street because I loudly said my Lovely Charming Best Freind Wankers Who Share This Building Would only earwig on us.

So random dog walkers listened in instead. About yes I'm on methadone no I'm not on heroin I don't care what they know, I put heroin and methadone on the original application form so it's no secret. O yeah and my drink has gone DOWN to 4.5 to 4.7 units a day which equals 33 units a week tops which is just one can over the government's recommended limit. I've switched to strawberry (4.5% vol) and cherry (4.7% vol) flavour cider, two half litre cans a day. See I did it! Cut my drinking down by a third in one go.

Anyway they put me on a real downer saying I'm getting some Vulnerable Adult person after me for not being able to take care of myself. Me my room and my life are now in equal chaos.

I told them I wasn't sleeping at all. I had all of 5 minutes sleep last night. I went to "bed" (on the floor as per usual) for half an hour but my brain was lit up so I just watched inner television, felt irritated then got up.

I felt physically exhausted and nauseated and that was before those nauseating people made it all worse. They were talking to me like I was a 3 year old.

Everyone treats me like I'm a nutter these days. Even that psychiatrist, who's the best shrink I've ever had, judging on impressions, was visibly shocked the first time he saw me when I was "ill" rather than just self-medicating depression on heroin (the state I was in for over five years).

Anyway I'm not hearing voices AT AlL so I can't be mad.

I'm so tired I really want to sleep. I hate sleeping it reminds me of being ill, it makes me think of dying and sleeping is what I do when I'm depressed. The more I sleep the more I'm likely to be depressed and I've already decided if I do get that label Bxxxxxxr stuck on me I'm putting myself to a quick and violent end.

I feel so sad writing that, like my life is a total waste and I regret ever having been born. It would have been so much better if I'd never been born all I have ever done is hurt and disappiont.

Well I'm going to go now. And probably not sleep. I've had enough I've really had enough I wish I could press a button and disappear.

O yeah that's another good thing about being off heroin. It means if I push a quarter ounce straight into my femoral I should never wake up ever again.


1147 Just smashed a bottle open on my cooker the fucking glass is too blunt even to cut my skin open just rubbishy paper cuts can't even do self harm i've had enough i want to sleep i want to sleep i want to sleep fuck this i want to sleep i want to sleep i'm not hearing voices i am perfectly sane i just need to sleep i have no money i blew every penny on dvds i have an entire armchair full now i want to sleep i want to fucking sleep that is all i want to sleep sleep sleep

Ever Decreasing Circles

16:24 I JUST READ BACK the miserable post below! I was wondering at myself for using such extreme sounding language about wanting to kill one part of myself and the other part taking over...? Now I realize despite having labelled it not at all relevant (hmmm!) ~ that what I read was actually my drug addiction speaking!

In addiction the three year old child rules!

In my madness the adult takes care of the child. The child plays, but the adult remains in charge. This is the case even in severe schizophrenia. I know a couple of schizophrenics; both are delusional. Both are on compulsory once fortnightly depot shots. One goes absolutely loony-tunes fruitloops when he's ill. And I've only seen him "half" ill, and that was ill enough for me. He gets so bad police have to pick him up for his own safety to hospital which he declares is "worse than prison" (how bad was the hospital or how cushy was the prison? That's what I wanna know!).

But even with these two, the parents must be in charge. Otherwise they'd get in far more trouble than they actually do!

This is what's heartbreaking about drug addiction. It's the only mental or medical condition I know of where your Lower Self (for want of a better expression: I don't know what else to call it) where your baser motives rule over you. You find yourself running with a different flow that is exhilarating as it is scary. Suddenly you can do whatever you want. And whatever you want is more-more-more of your drug of choice ~ probably heroin and/or crack. The people I hung around with were heavy IV heroin users. When we had £10s we bought a £10 bag (each). £15 bought £15. £20... £25 (3x£10) £30 (2x15 or one gram) £35 (2x£20) £40 (3x£15) £40 or £45 a "sixteenth" (1.5g) £45 (different dealer) or £50 a true sixteenth (1.75g) and so on. Any amount, in £5 increments was covered by one dealer or another.

Our entire existence revolved around getting money, phoning, waiting, meeting, using using using sleeping, up with a jolt "got to go to work" running to the begging pitch money money money phone bus wait score bus home (home was a disused factory at one time) candles burning: use use use. Sleep.

I had nightmares nearly every night at one point. I woke up laughing or screaming around this time, a lot.

Wake up in a blur. Same old same old still ever-going-round day.

I nearly always had drugs and/or money when I woke (carefully shoved in one sock) because I organized myself well that way. Unlike a crackhead, a heroin addict knows for sure they will need to use the next morning, so they make sure the ways or means are there. The idea of going sick was unconscionable. I hardly ever went sick without knowing a bottle of methadone or a few DFs weren't stashed somewhere and could save me. [I would rather wait for real gear, save the medication for absolute, utter desperation...] As junkies go I was an organized junkie.

So what happened? Over a period of years I lost faith in myself. Lost courage, lost energy, lost the will to go on.

I thought I wanted to die: perhaps I wanted to clean up.

Methadone never really worked for me. A day on methadone was a day of visceral misery punctuated by frequent trips to my chest of drawers for hits from ever-weakening twice-thrice-four times ~ here's a new bit! ~ filters.

It sometimes annoyed me that the drugs clinic appeared not to have the faintest idea what I meant by "craving". I meant "I will pick heroin out of dog shit and use it" I meant "I will inject a crusty old scab if I think an old heroin filter lies in the middle". I did inject my own crusted blood once. Made myself sicker than I've ever been, physically. I got a dirty hit so dirty I could barely walk the next day.

In the end I just got tired. "Sick and tired of being sick and tired" as they say (another NA expression). I don't think NA are my Saviour. I think I am my Saviour. God is my Saviour. NA are a tool, like a screwdriver that tightens a sqealing hinge. Apply your own oil. NA have a purpose, that purpose is to keep Addicts clean. So I use them what they're there to be used for. You don't spend £100 on a train ticket to Glasgow then expect it to fix your leaky roof. Likewise I cannot confide to a roomful of NA members my mental condition. I have a Nutter Club on Thursdays for that. I try and keep my ears open and my expectations reasonable.

So here you have it: me being positive.

I'm sorry about earlier, to anyone who was bemused or pissed off. I was merely letting off steam!

*******

18:28 I just googled someone I knew from uni, found him. It stressed me, made my head go fast-ast-ast-ast-ast like that-at-at-at-at echoing-oing-oing-oing-oing-oing which is not the same as the hearing words echoed, that's hallucination; this is thought smashing fast enough into itself to break into trailing sounds. Those antipsychotics are doing something. They keep me physically calm; I noticed that earlier today. When I'd otherwise be pacing or even dancing they keep my feet literally on the ground. How bizarre. And caffeine doesn't have such an "illegal" effect on TWO cups of tea or coffee, any more..!

*******

ACEN: TRIP TO THE MOON iii
Thanks Lizzy o yeah I remember this. Do you know I'd head of "trip to the moon" but never knew it was this one!




Illustrated: ever decreasing circles sourced from The Games Blog

Personality Transplant?

I AM SECOND GUESSING MYSELF now for being in a good mood. Last time this crap wore off* I felt like I'd been smacked round the head by a truck. This time I'm gently settling down. Although I didn't sleep last night, except 1:30am till 3am. 90 mins. I don't mind not sleeping. 1 sleep is a waste of time anyhow and 2 lack of sleep makes me feel happy. I went out and bought a DVD player today. Argos's cheapest at £19.99 + £2.49 for SCART lead. It works. I got it to play Mandarin Chinese at me, so I remember me tones now.

Then I did my own amateur cooking (haddock parsley sauce on broccoli florets on stuffed mushroom tortelloni). The food was yummy. That's another thing: will I have to inflict Iron Will on self to counteract antipsycho weight gain? Eating is just another addiction. Chained to the body, to the ground. I like feeling like energy, up in the sky. At my highest point I felt like I was flying in outer space looking back down at the tiny earth behind me.

This is the problem I have with NA: my mood. I'm so vehement my talk goes through the room like an electric jolt. Or I cannot focus at all and only catch the chair (the speech at the beginning: somebody's life story). Or a couples of shares (people's reaction to a life story I haven't heard or just their account of their day (which I prefer); if there is a silence then I speak. I'm not shy about sharing, but it annoys me having to edit out what's actually going on (my lovely potty mental condition) and talk about what isn't at all relevant because it barely crosses my head (my drug habit). I only talk in terms of drugs as they are terms of reference I think of in terms of energy, mood and feeling good. I have never felt good not on drugs, bar a very few occasions. Not in my adult life, where I was depressed or ill a lot of the time, or in low-grade depression for more.

Talking about personality I hated the mousy person I was and would gladly have watched him be smacked by an express train over and over again. Loathing. Not even self loathing: that person is someone else. I will kill him. He can die. He is not me. That's how I feel about that one. I hate that person, which is why I decided if I got bipolar disorder I'm doing myself in, there is no point living like that. No point living like me. That's my view, not my mood, not a swaying whim.

Then on the other hand I have More Iron Will and think: if you don't like who you are CHANGE IT. If you don't like your life CHANGE IT. If you don't like drugs DON'T DO THEM. If you want to be OK ~ DO RECOVERY. See I have two opposing characters fighting constantly. The stronger one is so far winning but I hate the weak one with a passion and still want it dead. Yeah I will get rid the nice way by "changing". I'm still mighty pissed off with that person.

I know this is going to look all messed up in the head but I'm posting anyhow. I'm not unhappy today I'm just angry with this person who has messed my life up by being sappy, feeble and pathetic. Forget drug addiction. That's for NA to obsess about. I'm talking my entire life. You wonder why yesterday I said I "had nothing to go back to" ~ well I didn't want to go back to that life-destroyer. A slow destroyer. I don't even want to talk about that person so I'm going now.

Don't worry about me I'm OK I'm not depressed at all, I'm just ANGRY at myself. I have to BE myself but I don't want to be who I was I want to be who I am now and a better version at that!

This is my life goal.


*the crap in question is the mental health thing I'm getting antipsychotics for, not a drug state!


PS re NA it's paranoia that makes it so difficult, people looking at me, sitting right next to me, hemming me in... all that stuff. I know my attention span is lousy. I wouldn't be able to post if I couldn't touch type. At least with posting I have the luxury of stopping and smoking cigarettes. The time of the post is nearly always the time posted, not begun. OK I'm off, take care and don't let me get to you. I don't want to get to anyone, I'm just letting off steam, I'm fed up with myself.

Sunday Noon Entertainment/ Alcohol Report

THIS POST IS REALLY FOR MORE MUSIC (see below). I slept about 10 hours from midnight to 10am. Took 2x2mg Risperidone 1x7.5mg zopiclone; had 2 or 3 drinks (500ml White Stars/White Aces 7.5% vol alcohol). The day before yesterday I drank about 5 of them. Today I'm sticking to 2, or even 1 if I can do it.

2 drinks I can get to quite easy. 1 in the morning; 1 in the afternoon. Going below that has been difficult. I could cut out the morning drink most easily.

The Dual Diagnosis Worker phoned me the other day, post Psych Dr Appointment; we talked about ways of reducing. Everybody says I want to switch drinks as White Cyder is "gutrotting" and "has never seen an apple". It is NOT a romanticized evening Cyder House near Stonehenge beautiful Keats Ode to Autumn type drink. It is liquid Brillo pads, for homeless street drinkers to get pissed-up as quick and as cheap as possible. Mixed with tropical fruit mixed cocktail it's a beautiful budget alcopop. And probably super-bad for my teeth. Which are acid-eroded enough (to quote the toothpaste commercial).

OK so that's me and drink. I don't know my mental state it's probably higher than normal still but high feels good. I only say "high" knowing now what that is and how it reacts and how it feels (not the same as drug high, by any means: feels more "normal" goes off like a Pinnnnng--gggggg-ing Pika at no notice. Is intensely cheered by social situations. Speaks quick. Is highly distractable. Is paranoid more on the lower levels than the high ones, when it is full of grandeur...) so that's me.

I'm OK. I hope I'm staying on topic and being relevant.

Anyway here's music!

FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON: PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Thanks Lizzie



OBIE TRICE: GOT SOME TEETH
Hilarious. I love this "song"; only rap thing I really like



SNEAKER PIMPS Spin Spin Sugar ( Armands Dark Garage Mix )
Thanks Lizzie




ARMIN VAN BUUREN FT. SHARON DEN ADEL - In and Out of Love (Official Music Video)



Illustrated pinging pikas: they live up mountains in North America and Central Asia, look like a bunny rabbit crossed with a hamster. They ping everywhere, and collect bunches of flowers to hoard and eat when the flowers rot down. Russian Dwarf hammies live in disused pika burrows....


13:25 severe hunger pangs; going up Iceland for a Family Steak Pie (proper chunks of steak, no mince) which I eat with mixed veg dumped on top (there's enough carbs in the crust in my view...)

Energy

ENERGY FLASH!

IS this an energy-saving lightbulb of a tune... so SLOW. That's what hacked me off about Opus III last night TOO SLOW i want fast fast faster fast fastererr something faster than me. Which is hard to find as I was going to fast yesterday I was incoherent.

Somebody phoned me right while I was going into one big time. Not upsset. Just ultra hyper high high sky ong ong pingpongtingtong bong bong ongongong between uproariously laughing and doing a noise like a food mixer rourourourouround what what what what what? Who is this who who who? All that. What DO I DO KEEP IT SIMPLE.

That upset someone so much they CRIED WHY WHY CRY GO HI HI HI HELLO HERE NOW WHAT IS ALL THAT FUSS ABOUT

Well that's what happened. I feel like I'm on Magic Speed you know that ADHD stuff that calms people down. Note the LACK OF A FULL DRUG SCREEN* this is making me para that I got spiked somewhichwise. What can I do not to be spiked? Not eat? Not drink. Not ever sleep. Not ever let anyone near me. Not breathe the air as fentanyl gas can flood the air, as was used in the Russian theatre raid. I wished I'd been in there. Fentanyl is an ultra-strong opioid. I'd have got a real nice hit outta that. When I was into drugs.

Now it's just me on ME FREE (hee-hee!!)

[I'm adding this afterwards: re the drugs screen it wasns't "full" in that it "only" tested for Opiates (heroin/morphine/codeine etc), Cocaine (including crack), Amphetamines, Methadone, Benzodiazepines and THC ie Cannabis. Methadone is what I'm on!]

O man this wasn't meant to rhyme it was meant to be all cool and chilled and coherent. I did actually get 3 to 4 hours' sleep on that zopiclone. The minute it started wearing off I was BL-IDDLE-DIDDLE-PING-NG-NGGGGGGGG!!! AWAKE!!!

And raving in my kitchen. Raving mad. Dancing. Eh. At a rave, in my kitchen. At one time I found a knife I started dismantling a cardboard box then chucked it into a corner. "I AM A KNIFE-WIELDING MANIAC!!" that one thing was too much. Being a maniac and wielding a knife. NO!!!!

I'm not into headfucker stuff. Enough is enough. I thought I was OK then my mind started playing games or I started playing games with my mind and we both started racing together very very quick quick

(how can I POSSIBLY be on drugs? no drug ever makes anyone rush that fast. ever. only one to come near it (on me) is Hard Acid. And I do mean a full-on trip, tripping enough to have trouble with your name, to interdimensionalize so you don't know what dimension you're in. In this state the number of thoughts, impressions, illusions and all that can alter so very many times a second it's impossible to follow. SPEED DOES NOT DO THAT. NEITHER DOES COKE. OR CRACK. OR E. So what fucking drug is is?? Except 2 cups of black coffee. Yesterday when I thought I'd had 2 I'd actually only had 1. Cup 2 had gone cold, forgotten about as I pinged all over the place.

everybody thinks i should be in a mental hospital. everybody thinks i am mad. i am quite sane. i'm only going in there if i totally break apart, in which case i will need an ambulance i won't be able to get there myself

or if i'm so very hacked off and/or despairing or tired or just WANT TO GO IN it's not that terrible. it's GOING in i don't want not BEING in BEING in is fine. lots of people don't want to leave. why do you think care in the community is such a disaster? half the people don't get cared for, the other half do, but would rather be in a nuthouse because at least in there if you're going cuckoo there's not the headfuck of trying to have to inter-decide between howevermanylines of illusions and delusions and what is what from this that and some other angle what you should or should not be doing at any given time you can just DO IT. people who annoy each other have space to avoid one another. it is not prison.

there are no locked rooms. there are locks on the ward doors, mainly to prevent people wandering aimlessly outside, not perhaps intending to be there.

people who can organize, decide know what they want and why (and it's not self-harm or suicidal) are free to leave

other people who cannot do these things, they don't and nearly always don't actually want to.

the only locked room i know of is a cool-down room and that's in the ward for people who misbehave (that's basically why they're put there). in a mental hospital misbehaving means being violent to a person (not an object). violence to an object might well get you wrestled down and needled with something yummy like quetiapine or olanzapine or whatever

the last time i saw it i remember it was a patient who rushed across and told the nurse how many mgs of what shot to make up, i'm sure it was

the nurses come from downstairs or upstairs. other wards. they're probably on that duty that day, know they're free to go. the buzzer goes off so out and in they pile.

what was the point of all this? o yeah the entertainment of watching it happen. best time i recall was a bipolar pensioner with "the fbi want me as their number one spy" style paranoia. he was told he was "too high" though doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING re racing about, rushing, kicking anything throwing ~ nothing except irritable if i remember correctly WITH A SPECIFIC MEMBER OF STAFF

it is possible to be psychotic, not by any means ravingly, and justifyably ANNOYED

anyway because of his paranoia this guy who told lots of funny stories about driving very rapidly up the motorway between London and Manchester, never getting punished for being bipolar (ie treated) until his 60-something-th year he said "i want a witness for this" M and I were more than happy to be witnesses.

we were in the smoking room anyhow, not smoking (for a split moment, that's all most nutters do) but eating m&ms I wish we'd had popcorn it would have been highly appropriate

so we had feet up on chairs, probably entertained looks on faces as the highly confrontational male nurses did their confronting

some bastard turned to M and me and said " you two had better go" AARKKHH ~~ kind of any thought of "but we were asked to be witnesses" went as indulging pensioner-paranoia was only an excuse. Entertainment was the reason for being there I think we all knew that. Apart from the paranoia pensioner who was spiked up so intensively he was snoring all afternoon. with a faintly guilty/bored looking nurse having to stand watch.

not because there was any chance he would wake up and do anything remotely "manic"

(despite the one female nurse's first words being "we think you've gone too high" (that ain't high. saw that at the time. know it now. bullshit. be psychotic and/or manic or paranoidly "ideated" as they say and ANGRY and you get this delicious treatment

which is no motivation but an attraction an "it's not that terrible" it's on that list

the "I will be made homeless" list is the opposing one as that basically is what shall happen to me if i ever end up in that nuthouse.

So I'm avoiding it like several plagues.

My reason. Not mine. Druggieworker's reason for my being in an emergency assessment had nothing to do with hospitalization or being sectioned (which means committed) it had everything to do with a trained doctor witnessing who i actually AM that is the point and when the other one said why are you here i said because I am in a mess and I want help and I need a social worker. That is what I need more than a hospital. A person who knows me and knows what absolutely irrelevant forms are informed upon me blah blah blah blah you see this is

this is my coping mechanism.

when something bothers me i smack it right out of my head. successfully.

i also smack stress and negativity (that is negative thoughts, not the feeling) OUT of my head.

i whack them out using no chemical at all. no heroin smack. nothing but the force of my own will gets rid of these things so i do not worry, don't turn anything over and over my head worrying. not my style

(as anxiety leaflet given out by nursey who HADN'T LISTENED WHEN I SAID ITS NOT ANXIETY (which I KNOW I once had it for years I KNOW THAT FEELING it's a gripping of the heart, a trepidation)... I felt IRRITATION which is like sunburn on your arm or any burn. You can stroke it with a feather and it's still IRRITATING and IRRITATION was my response to the world and my reason for avoiding it. And a feeling of overload. NOT anxiety.

and here's a point i can at last follow through 3 paragraphs. anxious thoughts you can SLAP OUT OF YOUR HEAD. irritation is not a thought as such, but a feeling, it's much less cognitive than anxiety

anyway this coping mechanism might also be my disability as something is stopping me engaging. i am disengaged. if i DID engage i couldn't cope. Engaging means engaging with stuff I can't deal with.

Geddit now?

Trying to explain makes it clearer in my head. I've got to know what I'm up against to be able to cure it. Get round it. Bend it. Change it.

See successful self-analysis. And my big "I DON'T NEED COUNSELLING" reason.

Counselling is too much too soon. Not what someone going 3691q3476t51234124097y076799900 miles per hour needs. I have had it before. I resent accounting my life to somebody i know nothing about. I "have" to do it. I don't "have" to do a blog I choose to. I might feel I owe people an explanation or an update because they are my freinds but I don't "have to go" because it'll look bad on some care approach plan form. Y'know?

Hope this hasn't been too rabbitty. I'm leaving it there. I am going to NA tonight but am TRYING to get there on time this time. I never know the exact time. Never know. Just get there. Usually late. I can't do anything on time there's too much in between.

OK I'm off now because my head is going too quick again. Bye!

JOEY BELTRAM: ENERGY FLASH
This 1990 tune was represented to me as "really old". In 1992.



FANTAZIA MAY 1992 "GURN TIME" RAVE FOOTAGE
gurning is pulling "high on stimulants" faces, characteristic especially of ecstasy-type drugs.

note a distinct lack of energy in that crowd. what's wrong with them all?? the less cheesy more abstract ketaminey 2nd tune is way better than the 1st one



DJ SEDUCTION STARLIGHT RAVE
this style of breakbeat + the "bad boy" crap the MC keeps up is the origins of jungle aka drum & base

wow this music is fantastic. breakbeat hardcore almost definitely 1992. it says it dunnit: 21st August 1992

1 min 50 seconds "ride the fucking rush" where the music saying followmewannabewhatever i wannabe THAT is the vibe of my brain insane ha hahahahahaha!! and 7 mins 7 seconds where its bleepy on top of breakbeat that is it that is itititititititit thatsit!!!



Illustration: Castlemorton 1992 huge illegal Spiral Tribe etc rave. Spiral Tribe were very abstract. Chaos Stuff which works better in visuals than music. True chaos visuals are screens of black and white lines or dots and your own mind makes the illusion. Doesn't work quite so well with music in my opinion