Midwinter Feeling

IT IS ICE COLD here in London. The weather forecast said "normal weather for January". It feels a lot colder than normal. I sleep under four layers, I'm so cold. You can see passers by's breath as they go past.

I had a bad reaction to some tea I drank the other day. Four cups over the course of an afternoon was enough to put me on a high then a down. The up and the down turbulently mixed together and I felt very paranoid and weird. I think I'm hypersensitive to caffeine. Two cups of strong tea in the morning seems to be OK. I've had one today to see if I feel any better than on two. I might have to cut out tea and caffeine altogether. It never made me feel "high" until I got a manic "high" last year. But it did used to make me anxious, which made me give it up for a few years, and the anxiety flew away.

I have been feeling mentally wobbly for a while and had a really crap day yesterday. Paranoia and depression with anxiety: but paranoid, depressed and anxious about nothing at all and everything simultaneously.

If I wasn't on antipsychotics I think I'd be having a really bad time.

I was going to talk about tiny tits in the trees but I haven't seen any. Blue tits that is. When we had a birdfeeder when I was a child, our garden seemed to be full of them and great tits, which are slightly bigger.

I hope you all are feeling OK.

I finally get paid tomorrow which is a relief as I got the current non-lot of money early because of the new year. Which means it's gone quicker. I've had to borrow £15 just to survive. I must have spent it carefully as I still had £5 yesterday...

My foot is slowly healing. Maybe the vitamins from the salads help with it..? Who knows. I know that eating salad is meant to be better than not eating it. I know it's not very wintery but it's the only veg I can stomach at the moment (apart from baked beans which allegedly count towards the 5 portions a day recommended by The Government.

And last but not least my methadone has finally gone down to 55mg and is going down to 35mg over the next ten weeks. It's all planned out so no need for doctors' appointments between now and then. I can't wait to get OFF the stuff completely. Really can't wait! If all it's going to do is make me feel "normal" why not feel normal on nothing? I'm taking the last bit slowly though. Don't want to be one of those people who goes running back screaming on to it again. I know a LOT of people are said to do that. I can think of two off the top of my head. Well time's ticking must go... see ya next week.



Illustrated: a blue tit in the snow

No more gunk

MY ABSCESS is going down. The skin has all peeled off and it looks more like a pinkish crater than a very rounded purple hill. Also it's going itchy, always a sign of healing. So the time for the doctor has gone. And as I'm NOT injecting heroin there is no reason for any recurrence.

The knife I used, by the way, had one sharp spike on the end, not two blunt ones like the one illustrated. I just couldn't get a picture of tomatoes any other way.

I'm set to borrow money tomorrow as I'm so broke I'm down to beans on toast every day interspersed with oven chips on their own. I'm really hungry even though I've had FOUR small slices of toast and one ENTIRE can of beans this morning. That must surely add up to 700 calories and the risperidone (antipsychotic) I'm on makes you fat. It does this by altering the way your body processes sugar so you need fewer calories. SO I SHOULDN'T FEEL HUNGRY AT ALL. Bloody pills!

I'm due a small plate of American style curly oven chips soon (not yet broke enough to go for straight English ones) plus I have over two litres of 50p cloudy lemonade (more calories) that I use as a substitute for cyder when not drinking. Ie every day. Hasn't stopped me having the occasional one, but the constant hand-to-mouth cigarettes and alcohol is now reduced to just cigarettes.

Speaking of which. I probably shouldn't have tried to give up smoking while I was reducing a methadone dose. And I have an appointment with the DOCTOR at the clinic tomorrow morning, which I'm dreading so please wish me luck. I have to go else I'll get terminated by this public machine. Be lucky everyone!


Illustrated: curly fries and beans on toast ~ what my diet has been reduced to. But only for the next week....


SOLAR QUEST: ACID AIR RAID
This tune doesn't properly get going till nearly 4 mins into it. It's still good though...

Freezing

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

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

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

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

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

I'VE FOUND a new internet cafe that hopefully lets you publish posts after posting them. The one I had been using before had something ikky about their computers. So, a 20 minute walk later... and I'm here. Just around from crack corner. But I'm feeling strong. I'm truly fed up of all drugs; the last time was "the last time". I am resolved.

There's not a lot to say today. I hadn't had much sleep and had woken up early when I posted the last thing, which is why I was so chirpy. Later that day I came down with a crash-bang of gross proportions. That was the last time I tried drugs to raise my mood and it didn't work, they don't work, I'm fed up with it all so I'm now as clean as you can be on 80mg of methadone.

[I took the drugs after, not before the crash. The good mood was a natural high.]

Next week I have a dr's appointment about getting back to normal consumption. I only have to drink my methadone supervised because I was transferred to a new clinic and they do that with all their "clients". Last appointment I ranted on about how much of a drudge it is trudging to the chemist every day at your lowest point. I always used to drink the juice BEFORE setting out. So I started the day with it working full-on. Hopefully they will hear me on this point. And reduce me down down down again.

Arghkh I feel like a stuck record, there isn't much else to say. My computer is still sick I don't know whether it will ever be OK again or whether I will have to buy a new one. I'm saving as we speak.

I would like to get a hamster. I would like to move house. All these things are supposed to be happening, but they don't. There was supposed to be some meeting with my housing manager this week. I'm not sure whether I was supposed to be there or whether it has been and gone... who knows? I have to dash off now in case I get disconnected.

Good Morning

GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING. Finally I have got on a (public) computer that works because the mad woman who's always hogging it isn't here today. That kebab I had yesterday had way more salad than in the picture by the way. I woke up at 7am-ish so I'm already craving a lie-down. But no! Dishes have to be washed. I have purchased brand new Alpine flavour washing up liquid just for the occasion. Also I am dead set on FINALLY EMPTYING OUT THE COLLECTED ASSORTED RUBBISH MY HOUSE IS FULL OF. I have found out I am a compulsive hoarder of spectacular proportions. Eg I have at least 4 if not 5 televisions. I haven't a clue whether any bar the one I use actually work. I threw out 3 dining chairs earlier in the year. Clutter clutter. Endless pears of jeans with busted pockets. Or huge holes in them. Or too small. Or too big. Or just wrong. Endless clothes with fag burns and holes and motorbike-repair-style oil stains upon them. No! Life is going out of control. And I missed Jeremy Kyle (stuck record talk show host who "resolves" loud lower class people's problems and is 100% likely to criticize anybody who dares not to have a job!) because I was glugging my methadone. I did drink a can of cyder this morning, but my alcohol is less than half the govt's recommended weekly limits, meaning NO DOCTORLY PERSON CAN CRITICIZE ME for the odd drink. I was never into AA type meetings because everybody seems to say "I'd have one drink then I couldn't stop" whereas I always could stop after one. I'd space my drinks throughout the day to achieve a mild but constant intoxication. I never liked the taste of booze. And I never liked feeling drunk and out of control. Ironically it was a feeling of being IN control that hard drugs, specifically heroin, gave me. Confidence. Energy. Antidepressant effect. My problems were over! (So it seeeeeemed, ahem.) Oh cripes I had better ping off now else I'll only get terminated mid-sentence. Take care y'all!


Illustrated: A a hearty breakfast; B Jeremy Kyle (looks just like my brother!!!)

Lamb Shish With All Salad And Garlic Sauce

THAT'S WHAT I had for tea tonight.

I'm OK, not much to tell. The methadone is back on a level dose. That's 80mg more than I want to be on. It is level because I cannot handle hauling myself to that chemist every single day, freezing cold and sweat running down my back, only to have to deal with a long wait in fierce heat when I get in plus a two hour wait for the juice to come on and make me feel OK. By that time I'm so peed off I stay annoyed all day and sleep all afternoon in depression. My friend came in with me to point out this is all down to Supervised Consumption and being forced to take methadone to times suiting someone else's convenience. When I had my methadone at home I nearly always took it in the early hours, so that I got up with the full dose going full-on. I never had any problems with sweats etc. I did my sweating when I was asleep and it wasn't bothering me.

So I've supposedly got a dr's appointment in a week's time to review this situation. Then I want to go back to reducing the dose because I'm not one of these people who seems to want the maximum methadone for the maximum possible time: if I'm not using on top I see no need for flat dosing I want it taken down down down to OFF OFF OFF THAT CRAP FOR GOOD!

The only good news is that I'm getting 2 take home days: Saturday and Sunday. So I get the weekend off the grinding routine that is a life on methadone!

There's no other news really: I'm no longer in a raging mood with the clinic. Just endless irritation now. I got the anger off my chest last appointment. Lots of words like patronizing, coercive and a hindrance. Talk about making something that's difficult already as hard as humanly possible. That's why I'm not interested in rehab. Every steep detox I've tried has had me breaking down and put on extra meds. Both times I was put on extra meds. Extra methadone at City Roads crisis detox centre and antidepressants and tranquillizers at the proper rehab. When I went to proper rehab I cut down my using so tiny that when I left (still unable to tolerate the reduction) my habit was less than half what it had been 2 weeks before I came in.

I hope y'all are OK. Still no computer. Massive troubles posting. Take care everyone.

Hello again

I HAVEN'T BEEN BY because I could not get access to a computer. I have not been feeling well. My methadone is down to 80mg and I feel sick whenever I have to move myself to get to that overheated chemist's shop. Strangely, apart from feeling cold, I feel fine at home. As I say, it's only when I start moving myself that I get a disgusting sweat on that only evaporates a good couple of hours after sipping the noxious gunk I am prescribed. I feel my life is over now I'm no longer taking drugs. OK I do indulge about once a fortnight but I never feel the gear. I've had the odd bit of crack but I don't even like that. So I'm stuck in sobriety and hating it because I'm so unmotivated and down.

I got a letter through because they are turning off the old analogue TV signal in London next April and I'm eligable for a Freesat dish and box, fully installed for just £67 ~ about $100 ~ giving me over 100 channels without any need to subscribe. So I'm thinking of going for it.

Apart from that no news. Just missed doctor's appointments (I felt to ill to go). And poor sleep. Up all night, in bed all day not wanting to get up. Then the dreaded trek to the methadone chemist and having to remove half my clothes in that ridiculously tropical shop. I stink because I have not had a shower in over a week, just half hearted attempts at washing over the sink. I don't want to be dirty but I just feel like a block of ice when I wake up. I need my methadone AT HOME so I can take it IN BED a good couple of hours before I get up. THEN I will be able to stomach showers, changing clothes, washing hair all the things normal people do. All the things addicts on methadone supposedly start doing again but cannot when the methadone is not in their hands. The longer this poisoning goes on the worse things will get. I just want off that noxious rubbish as quickly as possible. There is no earthly reason why I should experience any withdrawal whatsoever. If I reduced a dose of heroin by 5mg per week I wouldn't feel anything at all. So why should I feel the reduction in methadone? I'm fine once I've drunk it and waited the infernal amount of time that rubbish takes to come on (over two hours). But I'm not OK when I wake up in the morning. Unless the clinic give me control over drinking my own dose at home I'm launching a formal complaint and/or simply scoring my own methadone on the street so I can walk to the chemist without hot and cold flashes and flushing half the dose they give me. They probably wouldn't notice if I did that. I don't want to play around with my dosing but I'm getting more and more wound up on this point. I got advised to issue a formal complaint some weeks ago. Everyone else I know gets good treatment apart from me. It's almost as if they were deliberately eroding my mental health. Example: by insisting I go to group therapy which is only compulsory for convicted petty criminals. I went to two groups very reluctantly just so I could say I'd tried it. Then very happily turned my back on that complete waste of time. 90 minutes of patronizing rubbish I have heard a million times before. No thanks.

I'm not in the mood for NA because I don't go anywhere these days. I feel very run down and mentally exhausted. My mother did not seem to like the letter I wrote her explaining my past. She doesn't want to face my point of view. But she did tell some very interesting stories of her own which I'm sure she considers true. Viewpoint, viewpoint. It's all in the viewpoint.

Well I have to dash I'm on a public computer yet again. I will be back sooner if I can get to a computer that actually works, which many in this shop don't. Take care everyone and have a charming weekend...

Thanks Bimbimbie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cigarettes Level

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take care everyone.


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

Countdown to Nothing

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

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

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

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

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

Many A Topic

IN WHICH GLEDWOOD talks on many a topic in a far happier way than yesterday... Then Barbra sings "Memory"...

I DIDN'T GO to the brainwashing meeting. I only rant, interrupt and express my wonderful opinions when I'm manic. Then I come down and can't face the meeting again. So I'm too depressed and paranoid to go. So I stayed in bed all day and got up at 4pm. I wasn't lying there skulking by the way, I was fast asleep and ignoring my phone. I've learned to ignore it's chirps over the few days I've had it. This phone has the loudest ring of any phone I've ever had. But it's a flip phone AND you have to press the button to pick it up. So I miss loads of calls just by fumbling with it. And I'm too stingy to ring anyone back. Or in too much of a bad mood (today).

I have to go down Morrisons to get a 54p 2-litre bottle of cloudy lemonade. It's what I'm drinking these days instead of alcohol. I did have yet another black cherry flavour cyder today. That makes 2 drinks in 2 weeks ~ oooh. Yeah so I had this drink. The cherry flavour was my attempt at switching from strong drink to soft drink. It was meant to be a crossover. Unfortunately I loved the taste so much I think I was addicted to that more than the alcohol. So now I'm on cloudy lemonade. The acidity of the lemons matches the acidity of cyder. So my teeth don't miss out on being rotted through the lack of drink.

I'm really pissed off with Buta my old drugs worker. Buta was the titration nurse. Titration is chemical torture where they "cautiously" give doses far too small and leave you in withdrawal for days on end at the beginning of your script. Methadone takes three days to reach a therapeutic level (meaning that your blood level is twice as high on day three despite no elevation of the dose) ~ this is yet another bad thing about methadone. It takes days to "go in". But it also takes days to come out again. Making it far, far harder to detox from. Now if heroin is notoriously hard to come off, why on earth give heroin addicts methadone which is EVEN HARDER to detox from? Somehow I get the feeling nobody cares at all for drug addicts. Soon as I can I'm going on Subutex. But yet again we have a problem, because methadone is too "sticky" to transfer over from without doing two days methadone-free ~ ie two days climbing the walls. With heroin you just need 18 hours clean. Everybody who has done it says you basically go on heroin for four days and switch off that. The only other option is dihydrocodeine (DFs), which is so weak it must be dosed four-hourly. I've found a source of dihydrocodeine, so I'll get enough pills for four days and use those. Why on earth the clinic won't switch you to dihydrocodeine I have never understood. But it's just more proof that they don't give a damn about their clients. They only care for their own jobs. I already have two copies of the "how to make a complaint" leaflet. The way things are going, that formal complaint will go out sooner rather than later.

So I'm depressed today. I think sleeping has a lot to do with it. As soon as I heard that loss of sleep is a "symptom and a cause of mania" and that excessive sleep counts the same for depression, I have been sleeping as little as I possibly can, so I can be happy. Also sleeping is the biggest waste of time out there. I was hong-donging to Chinese until the early hours. I've learned to tell the time. I do know the numbers, but I hardly know them fluently. And they're not pronounced the way their transliterated. Yī 一 one is pronounced "ee", wǔ 五 five is actually "oo", qī 七 seven is "chi"... Surprisingly I managed to follow Mrs Li telling me the time on CD. I was really shocked. I was so depressed when I listened to it this evening. I must have felt how "normal" people feel, who don't truly believe they'll ever get far, when hearing a person blabbering on a Teach Yourself Foreign CD. Utterly hopeless. I'm only abnormal because I believe in myself, at least as far as picking up blabbery foreign tongues is concerned. Like I said, intelligence doesn't come into language acquisition; perseverence does. Half a BILLION Chinese speak Mandarin as their second language and they learn it through immersion. If immersion isn't possible, persistence will pay.

Anyway they say you learn a language by it being babbled out around you, but I grew up in Welsh Wales and got nowhere with Welsh ~ mainly because the teachers at school had never learned a langauge in their lives; they merely grew up speaking Welsh from the cradle. So we were never told "this is a feminine noun; that is an irregular verb" just "it goes like this". Which is like teaching mechanics without ever naming parts of the car! Teach Yourself Living Welsh (as it was called) explained all this to me and I got an A grade at GCSE. Had I relied on our teacher I doubt I'd have got better than a C. It was always my ambition to join the mother tongue set in Welsh but I never managed it. I was too thick.

The beginnings of my decline set in when I was doing my A Levels at school. These are the exams you take age 18. GCSEs are usually age 16. I did try and concentrate but my language skills were awful. Essays riddled with mistakes. Years of "tuition" and yet I still couldn't remember which words were masculine, feminine or neuter. In English I did OK essays on the "texts" we studied, but it was only poetry I was truly any good at critiquing. Already I was getting depressed in this period. During term time I felt fairly OK; it was during the holidays that it hit me. Every exam I took I got a grade lower than predicted. Then I took a year out. Rather, wasted a year out. Was more depressed then. And when I did finally go to uni, I was very quickly depressed out of my mind. The shrink I ended up seeing asked me constantly whether I was hearing voices. That should give you some idea of the impression I made on people, because I wasn't going into that office trying to create any kind of impression good or bad. What he saw was what everyone saw. I felt so dire when on my own that I ended up sitting in other people's rooms. I had nothing at all to say. My presence was only accepted because as soon as I got into cannabis (which happened very quickly) I brought a lump of hash with me everywhere so everyone got a smoke. That didn't make anybody like me, but they at least tolerated me.

It took twenty years from first seeing a psychiatrist to getting full bipolar symptoms. In the beginning I only got depressions. Then I started over-reacting to antidepressants, so I got called "manic" by somebody with two manic-depressive relatives. Eventually my mood started swinging on its own. Only the depressive swings were vicious. The highs were really nice. But then I went on heroin, which blanketed my mood to a flat-line so I thought my depression was cured. Then I went on methadone. But the methadone days were so intolerably low I continued using heroin for years while being scripted methadone. Eventually mania did break through so voraciously that heroin would no longer stabilize me. (Though I have to say this only began when there was a drought in the heroin supply and so no chance of scoring anyhow.) Ever since I went manic last December my moods have been all over the place. Deshane says I have the so-called "negative symptoms" of schizoaffective. It means I just cannot engage myself with many aspects of life. Yes I can do Chinese obsessively. I can do things obsessively. ButI cannot do many things normally. As a plate-spinner I'd have one plate going better than anyone else. But the other six spinners wouldn't even have plates on. Let alone wobbly ones. So this is how I run, or rather don't run my life. It's still in utter chaos but I won't go on about that. How did I get back on to mental health? Oh yeah because the clinic are trying to damage it by forcing me into abusive coercive brainwashing bullshit groups. Well I'm not going. Bar one next week which comes directly after my appointment I've had it with their punishment group.

Buta did tell me there was a way I could go to rehab for stabilization, not detox. Which means I could cut down my dose down to 70mls in about two weeks. I'd be up for that. In order to do this I would need to do their rehab group. I don't mind the idea of that one. Hopefully it wouldn't be full of people on a prison-swerve. The bog-standard group I was pushed into attending was for people who had been caught shoplifting. They only went under duress, because if they failed to attend more than a couple they'd get chucked in prison. Well they're lucky. I'd rather go to prison than do those groups. But what option do I have? The ways things are going I'm going to end up in the nuthouse anyhow. Guess what that CRAP they were prescribing me was actually CAUSING my anxiety. The anxiety I took street-bought Valium for. (Very infrequently, it has to be said; but one pill dirties up the test for two weeks.) So I'm OFF the pills and paranoid and depressed as a result. ALL I NEED IS A DOCTOR TO PRESCRIBE THE QUETIAPINE I WANT. But the NHS has let me down yet again. I don't even have a psychiatrist. They have transferred me from a consultant I knew and respected to no-body. My paperwork appears to have fallen down a black hole. So I'll probably only get quetiapine in the nuthouse. I could do with a break anyhow.

Why they just won't prescribe it to me I have no idea. Oh yeah because I used to have a doctor and now I don't. Will someone explain that to me please.

Well I've got to go. EastEnders is on. And they're doing prison scenes on Coronation Street. I love women's prison dramas. Why on earth did they cancel Bad Girls. When I lived with Lona, who kind of had mental health "issues" of her own, the two programmes we watched together (apart from EastEnders) were Bad Girls and Footballer's Wives. Footballer's Wives eventually got Joan Collins then they cancelled the entire show! It was the only thing about football (apart from the World Cup final) I've ever enjoyed watching. And the world cup final was more entertaining for France getting boo'd and Italy getting cheered. Because the French and the Brits hate each other ~ in a loving sort of way. Britain and France have almost equal populations. They have about five times more land. We have a superior language. They have high taxes for the rich, spectacular natural scenery and far better food. We have London. They have Paris. The best parts of London are far superior to Paris. They have Galleries LaFayette (all perfume and women's clothes). We have Harrods which sells just about everything. Harrods' pets department sells axotlotls and fishtanks connected by swim-through tubes. Their hifi department is amazing. It's the stuff you'd buy naturally if you had a proper income.

Did South Africa win the last world cup? I thought the African teams were only in there to make up numbers. World football is usually Europe vs South America. I feel sorry for Americans having to watch American football (a very camp version of rugby) and baseball (glorified rounders). Football is more versatile than American football because it can be played on just about any bit of flat ground with a ball. No special equipment required. I was actually quite good at football. When I troubled to make an effort at playing. Which I did about three times in my life. The main reason I hated it was that I was "supposed" to like it. Also I loathed all team sports in childhood. And I hated ballgames. Rounders/baseball is the worst. You're supposed to hit the stupid thing with a glorified pea-stick! No wonder I always missed. Most exciting thing about playing football at school was deliberately running to the opposite side of the pitch and avoiding the ball at all costs. The only sport I enjoyed was crosscountry walking (though we were supposedly running). The only sports I was any good at were the hundred metres sprint, the high jump, long jump and triple jump. Everything else I was crap at.

I can't remember where this post was going. Why am I watching Coronation Street? Oh yeah because of the women's prison. Best women's prison drama of all time was Prisoner Cell Block H (known by other titles in other countries; it's the 80s Aussie drama by Grundy Television). My favourite episodes were when Meg Morris (formerly Meg Jackson, until her husband was murdered with a pair of scissors by Chrissie Latham) and the governor (both the kindly witch old one Mrs Davidson and the lesbian gym mistress type... Ann Reynolds (not that I just looked that up on Wikipedia).

Oh cripes it's late I've got to go. Dà hǔ tóu fēng 大虎頭蜂！

(Say that to a Chinese person, I dare you. They'll laugh aloud. It means "giant tiger head wasp!")


Illustrated: beautiful sleep; "green" ~ yucky noxious methadone; the Welsh language; not tits and bums but manic-depressive mood swings; Joan Collins and Zoë Lucker in Footballers' Wives; cockney Chrissie Latham from Prisoner


MEMORY

I'm not sure, but this might actually be a real Barbra Streisand pop video...
Barbra's vocal knocks Elaine Page's effort out the window!



HOT NEWS! DANCE DRUG ECSTASY TO BE USED AS CANCER THERAPY!

Punished for Nothing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

More looting and rioting

MY LOCAL SHOPS, including the 24-hour convenience stores are all SHUT this evening thanks to widespread rumours of rioting in this area tonight. I've already heard vulgar voices outside my window and am armed and dangerous. Anyone who dares come in will be getting it bigtime.]

I didn't mean to imply rioting was good in my previous post: I was merely describing the carnival atmosphere down Wood Green High Road yesterday morning. Soon as I got off the bus there were crowds of people gawping at the smashed windows of HMV -- CDs and DVDs everywhere as if a hurricane had hit the shop. T Mobile was completely vandalized. McDonalds strangely missed out -- possibly because nobody wanted to loot a rancid Big Mac. Neither of the big supermarkets got it either. Mostly sportswear stores: JD and Footlocker, electrical shops and places selling DVDs etc. Police were in attendance but not exactly guarding the looted premises and this WAS about looting and not rioting the true riot was in Tottenham. No evidence of petrol bombs to be seen. I could easily have crawled into HMV and just helped myself to Barbra Streisand memorabilia. I was still a bit manic yesterday (that's why I was in such a good mood on top of the carnival atmosphere of the place). I was in a very good mood indeed when my stingy crackhead friend came back and repaid my 25 quid. Reason he hadn't repaid was that he's basically gone and got himself a crack habit. That's what's happened. Even his immaculate wife was piping away and they wouldn't give me a pipe because they've seen me on crack and it's not pretty. I indulged in heroin instead. To be frank I was suspecting my chemist had watered my dose because I felt ill ALL THE TIME. The heroin did at least put me to sleep ALL NIGHT for the first time in days on end. I also fell asleep in my chair, like a normal person. If you can't fall asleep in front of the telly there's pretty much no point going to bed in my book. Yes I do feel weak and idiotic for taking heroin. I wish they hadn't come round now the longer they stayed the grottier I felt I was so incredibly tired and so thoroughly enjoyed sleeping in this morning it was a real luxury. Also whenever I tried to get up I was too chilly for words. I have some mystery illness, I know I have. What the bloody hell it is I haven't the faintest idea but the symptoms are these: farting, sweating, chills (having to wear a Russian hat in August), physical fatigue and insomnia (3 hours'sleep a night) plus mental feelings similar to being high on coke. What illness is that? I know the mental side is called hypomania but what about the physical symptoms? Also I'm dreaming of Barbra Streisand?... She's singing me the most beautiful lullabyes. My family once told me Leona Lewis had a better voice than Streisand because it sounds normal and not nasal but NOBODY beats Streisand in the singing stakes. Have you ever heard anyone who sounds even remotely like Barbra Streisand? I haven't. Whitney Houston is arguably superior because her voice is stronger and more even. But Whitney has completely destroyed her voice by all accounts -- freebasing cocaine. Silly bitch! BTW I'm talking voice-as-instruent here not choice of songs. If musical repertoire were the criteria for greatest pop star Madonna would beat everybody hands down!

Now I must check my tex mex pizza. I stocked up on cloudy lemonade at 54p for 2 litres and Old Jamaica ginger beer at 1.04 for 2 litres on special offer. Even Morrisons were closing early in terror. So far the unrest has spread to Hackney where there are no decent shops my friend Tommy Tired used to live on Graham Road so what anyone can loot from Hackney apart from dealers'supplies of gear, crack and evil cannabis I've not the faintest idea!

My Dad is telling me now not to move anywhere near the main shops but I think community nuthouses are on twee suburban roads like the one in Posh Park. I so much hope I get the chance to move out there I have just had enough of living as I do. Did you know I once kept my washing up in the shower for 6 months because I couldn't face doing it? The Posh Park nuterhouse has shared kitchen and living room so I can watch telly with schizophrenics instead of watching telly on my own and bouncing my balls forlornly on the ceiling to piss off the 2faced dole scrounger downstairs (claiming benefits yet driving an enormous car and barely ever in residence so my chances of actually disturbing him bouncing a ball at 4 in th emorning are about one percent!)

Shit I forgot 3 cheese coleslaw to go with my tex mex pizza. Ho-hum. I did get Onken chocolate flakes in vanilla yogurt with little chocolate strawberry hearts to dunk in it. I don't know what the health benefits of live yogurt are meant to be but somedays yogurt is literally the only thing I can stomach...!

O well I have to ride out the night on ginger beer and lemonade. I've given up alcohol! Haven't had a drink since Friday (I think: I'm not doing that one day at a time yet I'm counting the days thing). ALL the shops are now shut. If we do get a riot outside I'll post full details I promise you!

RIOTS SPREAD ACROSS LONDON: LATEST
Starting at 4:20pm, vulgarians kicked off the unrest in Hackney. Further flashpoints went off in Lewisham and Peckham (really scummy inner London suburbs way too vulgar for me to stray near!) Hackney's OK though. Nicer than Tottenham. Wood Green is the nicest place to have riots so far. I used to know someone who lived in Wood Green...

PLACES THAT BELONG TO YOU (VOCAL VERSION)
Love theme from The Prince of Tides - a brilliant film about a bipolar poet hospitalized after a serious suicide attempt. Nick Nolte plays the irritable city-hating brother, drawn to New York purely for his sister (the poet's) sake. Streisand is the psychiatrist. What starts as clinical unravelling of his sister's past turns into a love story...



PS MY CHINESE IS COMING ALONG FANTASTICALLY I GOT FULL MARKS IN THE END-OF-UNIT TEST. FAIR DOS IT WAS UNIT 1 BUT YOU GOTTA START SOMEWHERE!!


0016hrs RIOT UPDATE: EALING BROADWAY (W LONDON) HAS JUST ERUPTED; VIOLENCE IN NOTTING HILL (W CENTRAL); CROYDON (SOUTH) BURNING AND A NONFATAL SHOOTING. E HAM (EAST) ON FIRE. FIRES AND GLASS ALL OVER HACKNEY'S STREETS (NORTH-EAST). AND THE VIOLENCE HAS SPREAD OUT OF LONDON TO BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND'S FAMOUSLY VULGAR SECOND CITY... (ALL THE INNER CITY OPPRESSIVE ATMOSPHERE OF THE WORST OF LONDON BUT NO HARRODS, NO BUCKINGHAM PALACE, NO TUBE. ukh!)

LONDON IS THE ONLY CITY I'D LIVE IN APART FROM NEW YORK, TOKYO, PARIS, BERLIN ETC...


DAILY TELEGRAPH 0020HRS Violence spreads across London.

If you want to hear the latest, the best link is, BBC RADIO LONDON (phone-in station)...


SAM, YOU MADE THE PANTS TOO LONG
a highly intellectual song with emotionally complex lyrics. Not.

Getting on better

I AM GETTING ON BETTER with my "horrible new drug clinic" thank God. We started out on about as wrong a foot as you can get.

Talking of creditors I did get a note from them yesterday. The real creditors. Asking me to call them. So perhaps some end is in sight. I am considering phoning them today. My support worker is supposed to deal with all that but I don't see him till Thursday. Maybe I ought to leave it till then. I'm just scared of coming back and finding all the furniture gone. Hey it's not my furniture so what am I worried about..? Still not good though, is it? I think this all boils down to the council tax, which I'm meant to be "severely mentally impaired" for. That phrase just means "disabled" and I found out I am counted disabled for going mad. Well I don't know.

Cripes! It is 0950 hrs I have to bolt down the methadonery and drink it. Like an idiot I scored heroin for the first time in over a week. Yes it's gone down to literally one use per week now. Wish I'd remembered I have no veins it was a total waste of time and I felt NOTHING from the £10 bag. Total waste of time. See if I can stop that once per week I can reduce methadone to nothing, too. The clinic doesn't like me using on a reduction that's why they won't reduce me.

Gotta run!




Frost's Scottish Anatomy: Methadone implicated in 1 in 3 drug deaths...

Porkshire Reprimand

DATELINE LONDON 0942 HOURS ~~ i just saw a Chinese woman walking her lopsy-eared Porkshire. It did huge pooze on the pavement and she started reprimanding it loudly in Chinese. Sounded ever so funny.

My "creditors" mentioned yesterday are just friends I borrowed £10ses off over the 2 weeks. I was skint because of paying off bills last week so had to borrow money just to eat. Very depressing, that.

The weather forecast predicts today to be the hottest day yet. I am NOT looking forward to that!!

I've got to go now and imbibe methadone at the chemist.

Methadone + Risperidone

I'M IN A FAR BETTER MOOD than I was earlier. I wish I hadn't just posted what was on my brain like that without analysis. This risperidone does something pretty marvellous. Although it does make me feel anxious within a couple of hours of taking it (anxious and drowsy, if you can work that one out) I can already, within 4 days, feel it flattening my mood. Which is precisely what I used heroin as. A mood-flattener. Unfortunately I still feel slightly paranoid but that might take ages to go.

The words of my old doctor come back to me: "I want you to take my drugs now, not your drugs..."

His drugs do work. Risperidone even blocks most of the rush I got from IV heroin. I remember this. I haven't scored since I started taking it again.

Maybe there is some future on risperidone after all...

*

From The Sun:
Amy Winehouse: Dad, I’ve had enough of drinking...I can’t stand look on family’s faces any more ... How she had nearly beaten the booze

*

Summer's day prattle

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL SUMMER'S DAY and I'm trying to stay calm. Anxiety came back. I think it has something to do with the risperidone pills I take. Or maybe not. I'm doggedly not doing gear. Can't afford it this week anyhow. But I sat myself down yesterday and decided now this is what I'm going to do and why. I'm not taking any heroin at all. And the reason why is that I hate being addicted to anything, hate cavorting with criminals, don't even feel at home in a room full of addicts any more and have had enough of the whole scene. Confounding factors include the horrible druggieclinic wanting to give some sort of psychological gold star for testing clean, which I'm not interested in. And stuff like that. I'd rather be thought dirty and BE clean than the other way about. Maybe my thinking had become confused but I had to remind myself what I'm doing and why.

Otherwise I would repeatedly give in to the urge to use, which does hit me from time to time. It never hit me before. I don't know why. The summer is the most horrible season to any junkie. Due to excess perspiration. Once it's over I have much better chances.

I'm more into Valium these days than heroin. Even that I haven't taken in 2 weeks yet somehow managed to test positive for. I only take benzos when I can't sleep or feel panicky. I have felt very panicky of late. Every morning I wake up thinking of the horror of suicide. You know, the actual visceral feeling of pressing your neck down on a vibrating rail or pressing blades very hard into bumping arteries or how sick you feel after a whole bottle of pills has been regurgitated yet you're still puking up.

I've managed to distract myself with Other Things today. And I think I'm much better off using one of those professional clinics in Switzerland where there's zero survival rate, when I do do myself in. It gives me something to work towards, even if I'm just walking towards death.

Ukh sorry for being morbid: just being frank. Drugs clinic are doing my brain in. NOT reducing my dose. No idea why. Well they're to blame now for it being so high. They can't somehow blame me, like Duta was doing before.

I've been chucking stuff out of my house. 2 chairs and a plug-in radiator yesterday. Eight records and a manual typewriter today (charity shop). I've endless books I'd really like to get cash for but also just want shot of fast fast fast.

I wish I had hamsters then I could tell you a furry hammy story instead of this boring truth. O yeah and GOOD NEWS I found out I'm hep B, hep C and HIV negative!!

I was convinced I was positive for one of them. Hep C especially. Being positive to that would just give something else not to get treatment for. Know what I mean? I'm taking the antipsychotics again as prescribed as I don't actually enjoy being mad, wondrous as the experience is. Something about sanity appeals to me. I can't say what or why. But it does.

And that's it for today!

Just another manic-depressive Monday...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆



three trance classics ...

HYBRID: SYMPHONY 1997



THREE DRIVES: GREECE 2000



INFECTED MUSHROOM: MUSHI MUSHI

Weekend Ramblings

IT’S FIVE MINUTES to midnight. (Saturday night.) Awful music is playing on TV. I have chicken jalfrezi and “tricoloured rice” (800 cals the lot) but I can’t eat it till tomorrow. Else I’ll be out of money and out of food to boot.

I’m not looking forward to tomorrow. I hate Sundays. And what use is a Sunday without drugs to kill the misery. I don’t think I will ever be OK ever again after that psychiatrist gave me bipolar disorder. My family pointed out that a psychiatric titles are mere descriptions. Life is not a Chinese restaurant menu. As my old counsellor said, you don’t get to pick what cross you bear. But I do feel the psychiatrists have made me mad. I was fine before I went to any shrink. Interesting I supposedly had depression for years and yet my depression doesn’t match the extremes described in Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia, the alltime classic text on the subject. My overexcitement is exactly as described in the book, but the depression isn’t. So by Victorian standards I’m a maniac with a moody temperament. Which means I don’t need medication. I’m not taking medication anyway. Medication is a way of keeping people subjugated and compliant.

I think most people who feel depressed have reason to be depressed. I feel evil and full of death. I think I’m going to have to dig out a baseball cap. They don’t suit me at all. But together with dark glasses, they hide the eyes. I cannot handle people looking me in the eye. And I really cannot stomach this nauseating drug clinic I have to go to. The absolute falseness between me and my worker. All she wants is a show of positivity so that’s what I show. On Tuesday I was feeling a bit amped up so the energy I gave out was real. By Friday I wasn’t happy at all and the effort required to bullshit through my encounters is just too much. I am not looking forward to going there on Tuesday. Fucking group therapy. What I find intrusive and offensive is that you have to say your name. Not like NA where you can skulk in and out saying nothing.

My only goal left in life is to become rich. I want money because I know it will never bring happiness, but like heroin, money is tangible. I want money so I can isolate myself. I want to be unconscious and unremembered. I am too tired to go on.

On a positive note I am planning to go to NA this Monday. I would like to say life on drugs was miserable but that wasn’t the core problem. Drug addiction is disempowering and drug addicts are slaves. That’s what’s bad about addiction. All this crap about how much better I’ll feel. I know of many many cases who left behind drugs ~ and I mean opiate drugs that kill pain and stabilize mood ~ and these people all have bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or depressive psychosis. We all knew that the drugs were holding these people together. Without exception they broke down AFTER the addiction ended.

My problem is that if I am not weak then I am powerless. Money gives power of a fashion. I can’t think of a single person I admire who was poor. Only exceptions are the New Testament Bible characters, but they somehow had means to pay passage all across the road. One of the apostles went as far as Japan. As for the old testament: Abraham had audiences with kings. Joseph and Daniel both reached the status of Prime Minister.

Ugh. And talking about money there’s a nauseating miniseries about the Kennedys playing on BBC2. What people find fascinating about Jackie Kennedy I do not understand. I have a paperback about her and only read the bits about Aristotle Onassis ~ a far more interesting personality.

I have drunk cokehead neighbours. Yelling and bawling across the street. Least it’s not quiet I suppose. I despise cocaine. It’s powdered excitement for people too dull and drab to make entertainment of their own. O shit it’s 0041 hours. I’ve gotta sleep.

IT’S 10PM (Sunday night) NOW. I stayed awake most of the night, thinking I was doing a good thing depriving myself of sleep, as sleep is supposedly the fuel of depression. By about five a.m. I couldn’t decide whether or not to stay up the whole day through, but eventually went to bed. I was woken up just before 2pm by the most terrible nightmares. So I woke up in a bad mood and stayed in a bad mood all day until I eventually gave in and scored heroin.

The drug had some effect because suddenly I was depressed no more, or depressed a lot less. This effect lasted a mere three hours and as I write the bad mood is creeping back on me, making £10 seem a very dear price for a couple of hours’ normality. Now if only methadone had this remarkable effect I might find sticking to my script a lot easier. As it is, I had been about ten days without using. I knew I was going to be tested by the doctor next Tuesday and I refuse to remain clean merely to impress another person. I never have and never will avoid drugs due to external pressures. I am only detoxing (or at least reducing my metha-dose) because I have lived the junkie life. Nothing came of it bar a handful of experiences an ordinary person wouldn’t want to experience anyhow. As an addict, there was never any tomorrow. Just one constant mono-day. Same, same, same every day. Nothing new ever happened, except when some crisis came to a head. There was nothing to look forward to, except more of the same drug. And for a long, long time the main pleasure of heroin was that a day on it was a hundred times more tolerable than a day without. No amount of methadone did very much to inhibit my desire for heroin. And unless I took a dose many times larger than the one I was accustomed to I never felt any euphoriant effect at all from methadone. Any progress I have made was despite, not because of methadone. Some ill-informed people appear to believe that this substance possesses some special property that makes it especially suitable for addicts who wish to give up heroin. It does not.
The only reason methadone was selected as a treatment for addicts was that it could be dosed orally once daily under supervision whereas nearly every other opiate required two or more doses a day. This is no longer the case. There is a sustained-release preparation of hydromorphone (Jurnista) that can be dosed once daily. As far as I know there’s a similar preparation of morphine.

Methadone is preferred because methadone is cheap and in the words of the medical manuals “produces less euphoria than heroin and other opiates”. To a miserable junkie, the so-called “euphoria” of heroin, which is no more intense than the intoxicant effect of a double Scotch, becomes the only tolerable reality they know. On methadone, addicts tend to feel flat and listless. In my darkest days I did so badly on methadone because I simply could not bear the intensity of depression that resulted after taking it. It’s no coincidence in my mind that I also became psychotically manic while taking no other drug but methadone. If I were a doctor I could in no good conscience prescribe a drug which I knew to have effects this extreme on my patient. I believe I am in fact the victim of medical negligence. I’m only willing to endure the intensely malign effects of this substance in an effort to get off all opiates as quickly as humanly possible. The more depressed I feel the more my craving for heroin increases. But strangely the desire to get off opiates does not diminish at all. Bear in mind that a methadone addict is in every way as much of an addict as a heroin addict. Methadone is known to affect more receptor sites in the brain than heroin, including ones that are known to promote dysphoria. Milligram for milligram the methadone withdrawal syndrome is far harsher than that of heroin and it goes on for weeks, not days. I consider methadone a poison and I want it out of my body as swiftly as humanly possible.

There’s nothing good to write because I see no future until I am free of this rubbishy drug the government insist I take. If I won the lottery I would gladly leave this awful new drug clinic I have been saddled with and take my custom to a private doctor who would prescribe morphine continus tablets. I’ve experimented with Oromorph solution. It feels the same as heroin without the so-called rush of injecting. In other words it does everything methadone is supposed to do but doesn’t. Gets an addict away from illicit heroin and needles, allows them to stabilize. And keeps them feeling OK. I don’t think I have ever known anyone stick to methadone without either using heroin on top at every opportunity, or else swapping heroin for alcohol or benzodiazepines. True, methadone is better than nothing. But this is the year 2011. Surely it is time for the Powers That Be to start looking at something a little more effectual than oral methadone with its 4% success rate?
Until that day comes, expect the opiate problem to continue to grow. Expect more crime. More lives wasted. More overdoses. More suicides. An ever more crowded criminal justice system and fuller prisons. If methadone worked as well as its advocates claim it to, nobody would ever use on top of it, just as street heroin addicts don’t use on top of their doses. Now that stands to reason. Methadone does work for some people. 4% of addicts are treated successfully on methadone. But the other 96% deserve something else. Something better. And they need it NOW.

Oh roll on tomorrow. Money. Phone top-up. Can ring Deshane, find out about my supposed house move etc. Roll on fucking Specsavers with my Reactions lenses so I can get my other pair tinted blue. I know blue lenses are meant to be bad for the eyes but surely the UV filter will cancel that out. Blue light triggers wakefulness in the brain, which red light cancels out. So amber lenses are very good for insomniacs to wear while trying to sleep when it’s light outside. Blue lenses would if anything make one more wide awake and chirpy. I used to wear dark blue sunglasses all the time until a freak wave in Goa swept them away…
… then there’s that poor goldfinch hopping forlornly from perch to bleak perch in a gloomy cage in a shop he hates. They say caged birds don’t sing. This one doesn’t. Part of me believes he wants me to rescue him. The other part tells me this is sheer folly, that I’m in no position to be taking on new pets and what would happen if I became ill? A hamster can be left for a week or longer. Nocturnal hamsters can happily live hidden away in closets in the dark; daylight loving birds can be bundled into cupboards when landlords pay unexpected calls and the dark will shut up their chirpings but that is a far from ideal solution. I kept my robbies hidden from view at all times when I was out of the house and nobody ever discovered them. I’ve now found a female golden hamster sleeping in a ball… there are also lback and white ones going at £5 each in the goldfinch shop but the man has a very dismissive attitude. This is the same man who said “oh they’re not Syrian hamsters; I think they’re normal ones” DUR!

Oh I’ve got to go the more I think the worse I feel. I’ve been trying to access the local wireless networks free of charge. I wouldn’t make a good professional hacker. For example “Mary”’s network I tried passwords contrary, Magdalene, London, the part of London we’re in, the name of my road, what I assume to be Mary’s road and so on. The anti-hack security is wise to this and pauses pregnantly when I enter anything raringly obvious like password or secret… I think I’m going to have to stick with Starbucks in future…





THIS IS THE BEST EUPHORIC TRANCE TUNE EVER

binary finary 1998/1999
the version i knew came out 1998