Tell Me What A Soul Is For?

STREISAND: WHERE IS IT WRITTEN? (YENTL)



this is a really good tune. i'm not fulminating with rage this morning i slept from 1am till at least 4:30 so i'm doing really good i don't WANT to sleep any longer it will only bring me down.

Here is significance:~

There's not a morning I begin without
A thousand questions running through my mind,
That I don't try to find the reason
And the logic in the world that God designed.
The reason why
A bird was given wings,
If not to fly
And praise the sky
With ev'ry song it sings.
What's right or wrong.
Where I belong
Within the scheme of things.

And why have eyes that see and arms that reach
Unless you're meant to know there's something more?
If not to hunger for the meaning of it all.
Then tell me what a soul is for?
Why have the wings unless you're meant to fly?
And tell me please, why have a mind
If not to question why?


You see, I spent years killing my life-force, never succeeding and now this: it comes back with vengeance. Every problem in my life boils down to energy. Too little, too much. Or self-esteem: too little/too much. You may not know this about me but I know it: if I'd had money success and power at a young age I would have turned into a monster of arrogance.

I do not understand life. Why is everything, EVERY SINGLE THING that seems good or alluring or exciting, why does all of it turn to shit in my hands? I can't even be in a good mood without a doctor saying it's mania. And why when I truly felt higher than high, why then was my mind run away like quicksilver, like a beautiful starburst. Why did I have to be raving mad when all I thought I was was happy. Happy. For once in my life happy. You know I have been unhappy ever since my parents divorced when I was 8. It was that moment when my Dad told me he and my Mum were no longer together I felt darkness fall across the world. The sun never rose again. I have only ever felt happiness from drugs or mental illness. That's why I like being mentally ill. Wouldn't you rather be insane than live with the reality the utter unbearable horror of this world? It's not fair; I never asked to be born and I'm lumbered with the responsibility of staying alive and for what? If I thought it would help I would kill my family to spare them the pain. If I didn't know that was a sin I would do it. Those lost souls who kill their young children are not motivated by viciousness but mercy: they are sparing innocent lives the sadness to come. Multiple sadness, disappointment, heartache, unspeakable horror and pain. Why must we be born into this world to see these things? There is not a single thing worth seeing that would be better left unseen; there is nothing worth living, nothing worth surviving that would not be better unsurvived. King Solomon once said the happiest people are babies who never were born. Vanity vanity vanity. All is in vain.

Lots of things, including an anti-drug rant

I JUST HAD A GANDER at my new passport photo. The one showing me tanned with nicotine stained hair and an attitude. I look like a Costa del Sol criminal wanted for the importation of 7 metric tonnes of China White heroin (I look way too classy to be involved in the smuggling of dirty old "brown").

By the way I heard a friend of mine has a criminal record for Heroin Importation. You Gossipy Ladies out there: you'd all have been proud of me the way I pumped this individual for information. What type of heroin was it (brown! ukh!!) And how much? (2.9kg) Who paid you and how much (a dealer paid £4000 plus the price of the holiday to Nigeria). How long were you punished in prison for? (2 years 6 months of a 5 year sentence ~ in the UK thank God). How did you feel when customs pulled you with kilos of heroin and freedom glowing joyfully round the corner? (More gutted than words can ever describe. And more terrified.) The ex-smuggler told me I should be a journalist. Never had she been grilled so thoroughly, except by customs when she was being punished for bringing the dodgy contraband over. Oh yeah and how long did you THINK you were going to do in prison? (20 years ~ ie 17.5 years more than she actually did do.)

Every single person I have ever met who claims to have smuggled drugs has been foreign. It is drummed into the British very deeply, being an island race, that drug importation is very heavy shit and only fools ever get involved in the sharp end of that business. And only bastards get involved in the cushty "my kitchen is so high tech it was fitted by NASA" end... "And I've never physically touched heroin in my life. Let alone actually taken the stuff. Even though heroin made me my houses, my cars, my boats, my wife's jewellery and my planes."

I just spent the afternoon round Valium Marilyn's. I weighed myself on her scales and still weigh 194 lbs. That's a weight gain of circa 4lbs. She noticed I was restlessly perky and said don't worry about it. Except when I got a vehement attack of the farts and had to keep going out the room to quack the foul wind to freedom in the confines of Valium Marilyn's hallway.

I asked Deshane about Moving to Posh Park and it's still "on the cards" ~ so I'm told. I can even go and have a poke round the Posh Park house very soon indeed! A meeting between me, my support worker and my housing manager has been arranged. I cannot wait. Means some progress is mighty soon to be achieved.

Why has NONE of you commented on my WONDROUS, AMAZING, FANTABULOUS MUSIC posted yesterday? Ave Maria sung by The Voice of the 20th Century ~ Barbra Streisand. And Barber's Adagio sung by a "celestial" choir as wonders of the universe ~ courtesy of Nasa ~ flash by.... This stuff is amazing. I shall STERNLY REPRIMAND YOU if you FAIL TO COMMENT AGAIN. come ON!

Valium Marilyn kept politely telling me to calm down because I was getting hypomanic in her house. She has bipolar disorder in her family and so knows the signs. I had a healthy 3 hours' sleep last night and was getting cocaine style rushes all the way home. In fact all day I've felt like I was coasting up on Ecstasy or coke. Lovely jubbly. FREEE DRUGS FROM THE MIND ~ WHAT CAN BE BETTER. I wish I could have unipolar not too severe mania. That would be the best mental illness of all. But as it is I have to plunge the depths of reality as well as the stratospheric heights. I'm only glad that I've gone higher on bipolar than I ever went low. That is some consolation to me. I once went so high I was atop the universe, gazing down upon everything. I felt infused with the power of God Almighty. I don't think bipolar disorder is any type of genuine madness; I believe it's a true way of perceiving reality. If you view any type of bipolar mood chart you'll see peaks and valleys and a pitifully narrow band in the middle marked "normality". Now if that's as far as Ordinary Joe's emotions ever go, then give me bipolar any day. I have seen everything, felt everything, experienced the highest exaltation and the most dismal meaninglessness; I have been a worthless, worn-out hunk of human junk and known it and felt it with every fibre of my being. My perceptions, being wider, are truer than Average Joe's. Where's the madness in that? Joe is blinkered into retardation. Not craziness but emotional constipation. I with my bipolar enhancements am effortlessly superior to most other people alive and that is a Simple Truth. Don't worry about it. But feel privileged to read my proclamations. (My tongue is only a bit in my cheek...)

Here's something amazing. Forget the singer, hear the song:
AVE MARIA sung celestially:~



Valium Marilyn got ripped off on a 14 temazepam 20mgs deal when I was there. Not a lot we could do once the *****r had gone, leaving just THREE temazepam 20s and 11 dihydrocodeine 30s. Dihydrocodeines, which we call "DFs" after the old brand name "DF118" are equivalent at 30mg to 3mg methadone and hence worth only about 30p a tablet. Not the £1.70-ish Valium Mal was paying. She kept asking my advice and I said "look he will not refund your money so take whatever reparations he offers, whether you want them or not: take take take". I also left an ansafone message for her. Very polite but very firm too. I had drunk 2 cups of tea on top of my hyper mood and so was well and truly soaring by this point. Caffeine has a cocaine-like effect on my manic self.

Well I have to go and find something else to get really excited about. It's raining. It's pouring. My love life is boring me to tears... after all these years...



Eh, talking of Donna Summer, what post would be complete without thee greatest disco track of all time: I FEEL LOVE!?!





A meeting has to go ahead with my housing manager, Deshane and me and I MOVE MOVE MOVE. Moving on! I so want to LEAVE THE AREA, live somewhere more salubrious. Kiss the drugs goodbye. I don't crave heroin AT ALL now. The last time I used heroin was about 2 or 3 days ago and I did get it straight in a vein on my torso and I did feel it. And it wasn't worth it. And I never want it again. And I will not miss something that nearly destroyed me, nearly killed me, left me without a life worth living, kept me depressed and yet told me it cured my depression, removed what scraps of self-esteem I had left and dropped me to depths where the only rational course of action appeared to be suicide ~ and yet I was too disorganized, depressed and generally mentally destabilized to get it together even to kill myself (and I did genuinely want to die: what I didn't want so much was to actively commit suicide. If I'd have found out I had a terminal illness during this stage no way would I have elected for any treatment bar opiate painkillers.) Heroin nearly destroyed me. I can see that now. For a while I was confused by the fact that heroin is prescribed to some addicts in this country as an experimental or last-resort treatment for severe, entrenched dependency. Knowing this, and WANTING such treatment and knowing that heroin was and is used extensively in British hospitals as the painkiller of choice for terminal illness, trauma and emergency medicine, prevented me ever being able to believe that heroin was "evil".




HERE'S A LITTLE RANT TO ANYBODY CONSIDERING EXPERIMENTING WITH HEROIN OR ANY SIMILAR DRUG:~

Let me tell you something: heroin is evil. It does no good to anyone to abuses it. Take heroin and you lose. Every time. Not everybody loses the same way or to the same degree. But I have never known a case where a person is truly better off for being on heroin. If you do know a person you believe has made heroin addiction somehow "work" I would urge you to look closer and to bear in mind that you don't know somebody's life until you've walked a good mile in their shoes. A mile is a good deal longer than any junkie would ever walk without a pressing reason. Example: a lack of heroin. Because no amount of heroin is ever enough for long enough.

Heroin addicts just want to keep the world at bay. To float in that primordial amniotic wonderland that is called the Opiate High. Junkies aren't afraid of dying: they're afraid of living. The longer you indulge in heroin, the more worthless life seems, and the more frightening, until ~ if you're like me ~ you just can't cope. I know I am an extreme case. Not everybody has the psychopathology I have. But everybody who plays with heroin suffers for it. Heroin is a painkiller. If you make it your life's ambition to escape pain, the laws of nature decree you'll suffer for your folly. My one word of advice to anybody considering experimentation with any kind of strong opiates is just don't. You have survived an entire lifetime up to this point without heroin or oxy or Dilaudid or whatever else is gnawing at your soul before you even took it. Because I know you have mixed feelings and I know you feel confused. The reason is very simple: you know that taking opiates is playing with fire. Somehow you reason you'll get high like every other junkie, yet you won't get burned like every other junkie. It doesn't matter whether or not you use a needle. Opiates get under the skin like you wouldn't believe. Eventually they become your skin, like a luxury coccoon. And life without them becomes not merely unbearable, but unthinkable. You may reason that you'll only use once a week, once a month, once a year, once in a lifetime. Every addict I've met, with the exception of those lost souls who deliberately got addicted, only ever intended to try heroin once. But heroin doesn't work like that. You do not get the full effects until your body is already well on the way to becoming habituated. Then it's already too late. If you want to be happy, want to be free, you must piece together your opiate-free time into one continuous stream of drug-free existence. That's the only way to do it. Take it from someone who didn't do it, who nearly died doing it all wrong, who lost all semblance of a life. So much so that at my lowest points, even the other junkies didn't want to know me. Heroin only kills the lucky few. Chances are you won't die. Chances are you'll live in pain. There is nothing more painful than learning to live without the strongest painkiller in the world.

Heroin? TAKE MY ADVICE AND GIVE IT A MISS.

And if you do have a problem, my advice is contact Narcotics Anonymous. They're not the only way out of addiction, but their programme most definitely does work "if you work it". I advise it because it's run by addicts for addicts, and it's free. Be very very cautious about shelling out money you can't afford to cure an addiction that might only be in it's earliest stages. It took me ten years to go from intending to stop heroin tomorrow to being able to survive on methadone day in day out without constantly using heroin on top. I'm still addicted to methadone. I don't know when I will ever get off the stuff. I'm "dual diagnosis" because I have mood swings of psychotic proportions on top of my drug problem. I can't advise anyone anything except to stay away from hard drugs, from mind-bending drugs... from all drugs. No drug has ever benefited me. I hope someone somewhere reads this someday and hears me. As the old saying goes: if one person stays clean due to what I say, it's all worthwhile... Maybe that would make my mess seem somehow worthwhile. Because I can tell you, it certainly doesn't feel worthwhile from where I'm stuck. Still addicted. Stuck on methadone and hating it.

STAY AWAY FROM DRUGS! STAY FREE!

✰✰✰✰✰✰✰


Nelson Center for Emotional Healing: Did Amy Winehouse die of self-loathing?

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...

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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

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Positive Positive

I KEEP TRYING TO POST Positive Positive Positive but when it comes to it I just cannot keep the bullshit up. I'm trying NOT to think about Death, Suicide or Drug Addicts being round up and shot because doing so makes me unbelievably angry. Angry that our deadhead dimwit government won't DO something drastic about this problem for once and for all.

I woke up wishing I was dead with the phone ringing with Valium Marilyn saying she felt intolerably low. She asked whether I ever felt the same. I told her exactly how I feel. Marilyn has been depressed for years and it took me quite some time to recognize that. She clings to Valium as her last remining hope. I don't think it helps her. Marilyn no longer touches gear at all; she only ever takes pharmaceuticals. Benzodiazepines are not antidepressants. They're only good for anxiety and agitation. Some are licensed as sleeping pills. I only ever take them in small doses occasionally when I get anxiety attacks. Last thing I want is to get a benzodiazepine habit. Withdrawals from that are said to be the all-time worst, with some ill effects continuing for years after the pills were last taken.

I know I probably need some kind of mood stabilizing agent, but I don't even know who my doctor is any more. Technically I'm between clinics. But the new one hasn't written to me. And I need to see a doctor FAST.

As time marches on I feel more and more depressed. In the beginning, the tail end of mania was preventing me from going down too low; now that has gone I feel crap. The medication I'm prescribed is an antipsychotic and I'm not taking it. I don't think it helps with depression at all.

First thing I saw on wakening was a dead space alien. It was staring back at me from the cover over my bed. This is another symptom of depression: ugly twisted faces in walls, carpets and ceilings. They're nearly always set off by the wrinkles in piles of clothing or carrier bags or the play of light and shade against a wall. But knowing this isn't "real" does nothing to make it go away. Sometimes they stay for a long while. I know antipsychotics would help with that type of thing. But you have to look on the bright side. Visions and voices do add colour to life.

This glaring dead alien just made me get up quick when all I really wanted was to stay in bed. That's the worst thing about hospital: being made to get up in the morning when really you want to do nothing. I wish I had some kind of permanent housing so I could go in hospital without risking homelessness. As I said yesterday, next time I go in I don't really want ever to come out again.

If depression is a lack of energy I don't think I'm depressed. I feel energy. Just negativity as well. Every chronic malady I have had was a disorder of the energy.

Drug abuse is said to misaleign the energy system.

The first illness that really messed me up was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Here the energy is massively misaliged. It's less a case of no energy (as in some depression) more a case of it being massively misdirected and running out very quickly. Mania seems to be a huge surplus of energy: I don't understand precisely how it occurs, but again some kind of short circuit must surely be responsible. When I was truly manic I felt thousands upon thousands of volts running through my brains.

So that's what's wrong with me: something to do with the energy system. Because I am prone to low self-esteem it often manifests as depression. But I'm not totally lacking in energy. As I say, there's some fault on the circuit that is making it run out faster than it should. Strangely when I was manic my self esteem soared higher than ever. I swaggered down the street and people visibly backed off from me. When I was angry (as I was a lot of the time) no words or actions were necessary. I merely had to look at people and they recoiled. Sometimes I wish I had the high energy back but it's only another "illness".

The opiates misalign energy, or at least align it differently, but heroin also seemed to put the breaks on my mood swings. Without heroin I'm definitely far moodier. Whether or not methadone actually provokes instability or merely fails to stabilize me it's hard to say. I still think the doctors are wildly negligent for prescribing anything that leaves me in the state methadone does. There are other treatments that wouldn't do this. But they're only available privately.

If I can get off all opiates I can at least give my brain a chance to restore itself. But it wasn't well before I started! I only went ON heroin after years of depression, then chronic fatigue syndrome and finally bipolar type mood swings. Yes the bipolar manifested BEFORE I ever had a habit on heroin. It's quite normal to experience depression for a few years and for mania gradually to interweve and kick in. This is why I say I cannot hope to be "well" off drugs. If the past is anything to go by, I'll just be drug-free and still sick.

I suppose the ideal would be to be "well". But that's probably too much to ask...


Here is a perceptive and partially nonsensical article about the misaligment of energy in bipolar disorder. The author states that people get the disorder due to bad karma from previous lifetimes when they were executioners and torturers. You wonder why I keep thinking about being executed? It's all down to my past lives!

New Spectacles Horror

FINALLY, nearly three years after the issue hit boiling point and my first pair of glasses disintegrated and having found a pair on the pavement three minutes from Valium Marilyn's house and that pair having disintegrated so badly the donkers look like they're doing the splits and both lenses pop out freely when I'm trying to cross the road, I got it together not only to make a sight test appointment but to order in TWO new pairs of glasses at $100 each (two for one special deal; £69 the pair and thirty-something pounds off thanks to a Government Voucher so I pay £33 and get two new pairs of glasses. And from the 2nd of July onwards I'll finally be able to see!

The kindly Indian testing my eyes said that with the new lenses intact my vision is as sharp as human vision can go. I was able to read the very bottom line of print, which seemed readily to surprise him.

I begged him not to give out an over-powerful prescription: one optician once did and I spent the next six months being astonished by jutting angles jumping out, everything in 4D, ultra sharp and scarily detailed. He said no that's fine, you don't need a prescription for your slight astigmatism.

Then the horror of choosing my own spectacles ensued. The school leaver who processed my forms looked like she was trying not to laugh whenever I picked up a pair of frames, glanced at my gruesome refelction for the shortest possible interval and grimaced. Then a really stern Indian girl took up position and kept asking if she could help me. I think she was convinced I was into shoplifting the empty frames, which is a useless thing to do. I remember meeting a nutter in NA who wore a pair of very obvious show frames with POLICE in the lower lefthand lens. I do believe POLICE used to make "designer" glasses. But I do believe also it's pretty bad form to walk the streets wearing the plastic lenses they come in on the spinner. Everyone kept a straight face. This is the one who "relapsed" on zopiclone sleeping tablets and within days was back on the heroin and crack. And that's why I take NA's philosophies with a pinch of salt. If I'm a heroin addict who can't sleep, I don't believe I'm "using" when I take a presription sleeping pill at the recommended dosage, and I will not be brainwashed into believing that medicating my mental state is the same as using heroin. But hey.

Anyway... the first frames I looked at were the £100/$160 ones in science glasses style. Black at the top; just bare lenses underneath. A third girl, who seemed less anxious than "can I help you" but more scared than the school leaver said to me, "if you had these really you'd need our special lens thinning technology" and how much is that? I asked. "Only" another £40 ~ that's $60 ~ extra. So those went back on the shelf.

Then I found a pair in bronze in the same general style but fully enclosed in metal, and I kept putting them on then taking them off, then trying the same ones in silver. But I did look like a Danish serial killer. Other frames made me appear variously like a Slovakian double-murderer, a Bulgarian child molester and a German exchange student with Delusional Disorder. I think the pairs I picked make me look like a deranged axe-murderer. Or more to the point, like a deranged axe-murderer wearing glasses. The ation of looking in the mirror was so traumatic that 20 frames into this process I just wanted to up and run. Oh yeah and the girl said you're not allowed to put down a part deposit: all spexx must be paid for in full before you're allowed to order them. As far as I understand it, my luxury glasses shall be ready the Sunday or Monday after next. I do believe she said July 2. So I'm scuttling around between now and then like a myopic roborovski with a surprised look on its face.

I went to see my friend Paddster afterwards and either I'm paranoid or he was treating me like I was mentally deranged. The doctor at the methadone clinic asked me whether I thought I was manic the other day which did my head in. I thought, on balance, that I was in a "normal" mood. That is, if you averaged out the peaks and valleys of the day the intervening line would be pretty rasonable. Not that I was in any way on a flatline. Who knows maybe she was just winding me up by asking me that. I thought manic people were meant to gesticulate a lot and I don't think I was doing that. It has been pointed out to me that I jump from one topic to the next with nary a rhyme nor reason as to where I'm going (unless I consciously rein myself in) but that's my ordinary thought process. It only goes truly off the wall when I'm truly hyper. I have to say my head has been jumping with alien thoughts in massive quantities, y'know, kind of like I'm tuned into Radio Gaga again, but that's pretty normal too. I quite like it when they get very bizarre. It's free entertainment for all the family!

My new drugs worker seemed to think rehab was a really good idea. I didn't tread into Truthfulness Territory ~ giving my real opinions on those places. That they are run for the convenience of the staff. That most people are only there to avoid prison. Etc etc.

Oh yeah and they seemed very surprised that I only tested positive for heroin and methadone and was vehemently against hashish, cocaine, speed and the reat ~ in thought as well as deed. Only teenagers (or really withered old speed-freaks) use speed in this country. Crack is lousy stuff. And frankly I'm offended that anyone would even ask me about cannabis. I last bought cannabis when hash was the norm: ie before the trend for premium grass came in in 1993/1994. Yes I have been stupid enough to have the odd toke between now and then but I've regretted it more and more and more each time. Last time I smoked grass I picked up a dropped spliff at a bus stop. Believing it to be a roll-up cigarette I puffed away until the grotesque smell of skunk stoppered up my lungs. Even the tiny quantity inhaled offended my brain and I went into a peculiar mindstate. Why on earth anybody smokes that crap is beyond me.

The workers at these clinics seem to know nothing about drugs. If they did they wouldn't be surprised to see someone steadily fall apart the longer he's off drugs. That's the meaning of self-medication. When you're on the medicine you're better. When you're without it, you're all over the place. I only use that phrase "self-medicating" beause the drug-clinic drummed it into me (then offered no alternative medication, I noticed!) Something in me seems to have changed and opiates no longer have the effect they once did, which is why I'm steeling myself for a life solely on the gloop. Next week I start a gradual gloop reduction and I can't wait. Once the dose gets to 30mg or below, which will take weeks to achieve, I can consider switching over to Subutex or Suboxone. My friend Paddadadster recently went back on that, having singularly failed to handle life on nothing at all. He's expecting to stay on it till he dies.

Well I was supposed to be focusing on positive things. I feel a lot better in general than I did last week. I still don't know where I'm going or what will become of me in the future. I don't know how to survive. If I am going to be moving house I want to get the move over and done with as quickly as humanly possible. Deshane says three or four weeks. I am holding on till then. No shiba-inus today... I have to run. Take care y'all..!

No we haven't done yet.

MY LAST post is annoying me so much I'm writing another one at 4:14am just to obscure it.

I wasn't in a very good mood when I posted that.

I'm not in a very good mood now. A few hours ago I seemed to get high on 3 cups of coffee. The 1st 2 were separated by about 4 hours, yet I still got all excitable and OTT.

Maybe I have what you call "mood swings". I can't sleep, won't sleep. Keep thinking about using 'eroin but I know that's not the answer. Maybe I ought to go back to NA. Maybe I ought to ask for a mood stabilizer. Maybe maybe maybe. I'm sick of thinking.

I owe all sorts of debts that I would like to clear but I don't even know who I owe the money TO. They get passed over to new people. I also owe council tax and my lawyer person wanted to get me declared Severely Mentally Impaired. I don't think I am anything bar misdiagnosed, I don't think there's anything wrong with me except "should have been drowned at birth" syndrome.

O wow see I try and say something new and the same old crap comes out time and again. I think I should perhaps start up a false blog full of cheery thoughts of nothingness that people with Alzheimers could swiftly forget. I am too pissed off for words.

私は流暢な日本語を話せるようになりたい。
Watashi wa ryūchō na nihongo o hanaseru yō ni naritai.

There: that says "I wanna be able to speak fluent Japanese".

Here is one thing that distracted me: a bouncing smiley:



This post's title is a random thought I picked up in my ears... no we have not done yet.



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BUGGERLUGZ sent me this... thanks so much xxxxxxx
i really love Hammy; so tubby and furry with poppy eyes... not to mention the turnip accent...
"soon Hammy really gets the hang of firing the canon"... Hammy you furry swine!



Doesn't Hammy look cute in the aeroplane?...!

Thought for the day: 7am

IT'S just before 7am. I've been up since 10 to 5. Terrible trouble sleeping. I keep waking up again and again in the night. Even when I try and get my head down my brainbox is chattering shite at me. Random words and phrases pinging about. It's like listening to a deranged band of nutters chatting down the mental hospital bar. Radio GaGa.

When I woke up the second timme I watched an episode of the Royle Family and had a fag. Then I pondered on why I had been so depressed. A lot of it had to do with me having a breakdown that turned everything upside down, then finding out I was labelled a schizo. My parents think I have taken it to heart too much. But what would you do if you found out you were a schizophrenic. Hearing voices and all. I haven't heard any lately, apart from the odd murmur. The walls don't talk these days. Point being: all my hopes for a future had instantly vanished. All I could see was myself half mad and overweight, off drugs but terminally lazy. Watching television for the rest of my life. Basically the life I've got now going on for ever. When I was young I had dreams and ambitions. I wanted to get in the Guinness Book of Records. I never thought I was a schizo. Even being bipolar was bad enough. I kept those mood swings hidden from doctors for years. Until they got so extreme I was just annoyed at having to accouht for why my life was a mess (on forms etc), writing "depression and drug addiction" in the medical box and knowing that was far from the entire truth.

I'd just about got my head round the fact that I appeared to be a type 1 bipolar (that's the nutty sort who hear voices); Katherine Zeta Jones is bipolar II which means horrible depression and hypomania which is an exaggerated good mood. Anyway I'd just got my head around the idea that I might actually be a manic depressive, when the doctor tells me I'm schizaffective! Manic depression and schizophrenia at once! I was totally stumped. Despite my persistent elevated mood that one really shut me up. I'd been jabbering away in that office not caring that I was mad. I was really careful not to give an overblown impression of the hallucinations. Left all the best ones out (parking meter turning into a really fit police woman; spectacular full-colour Northern Lights type display in my own house; Barrack Obama talking to me; fantastical psychedelic movies popping out of the walls etc) I never told him any of that. In fact I was quite careful to underline that nothing nutty happened all the time blah blah blah. I couldn't lie. I wasn't in a state to discern what was relevant from what wasn't so I just told all...

Loads of successful people have been bipolar. Ted Turner, founder of CNN; Beethoven; Lord Byron; Vincent Van Gogh; Virginia Woolf to name just four. Bipolar disorder is really trendy. Nobody's scared of it any more. I could still be a successful writer and be invited to lots of bourgeois dinner parties with bipolar. Schizophrenia is a totally different kettle of fish. How many famous schizos can you name? Apart from that bloke from the film A Beautiful Mind?? Yeah don't tell me: I'm going to have to be the first.

Well this is what was on my mind. And all I could think was how schizos are fat and slobby and lazy (basically what I am now). And how, even when I kicked heroin, I was never going to be OK. And how I would live the rest of my life on corned beef, methadone and daytime television. And how I might as well end it all now on the railway line. And how even if I didn't do it now (British trains don't run in the early hours) my lifetime odds of death by suicide were running at around 80%. I wasn't depressed when all this came to me. Just thinking clearly.

So I don't know how to fix my problems. But I'm still not taking heroin and I am cleaning my house.

Anna Grace is clucking off heroin. She actually wants to detox, and the detoxing has given her a manic episode.

I'm neither manic nor depressed. Just undulating. I get really excited over nothing. Then really depressed and want to cry. Then really tired. Then I can't sleep. You know: an in-between stage.

I hope Anna Grace is going to be OK. I thought she was going back down the methadone clinic. She said the local one wouldn't take her on because of her bipolar issues. They insisted on a 90-day rehabilitation sesh before they'd consider her. Anna was all set for a stint in a dual diagnosis place when she bottled out. I'm no-one to talk about bottling out of rehab. I was in twice in one year and ran out the door within days of entry, both times. I wouldn't mind a rehab full of nutters as much as one full of criminals. The criminal type all look down at me these days for having mental problems. Having been in both rehab and the nuthouse, I can vouch that nutters are far easier to get on with than crackhead junkies. At least nutters go mad in different ways. Addicts are so same-same-same they're frankly boring. I couldn't handle going nuts again in front of a bunch of junkies. That's what happens to me in rehab. So I'd have to go to a dual diangosis place, wouldn't I?

I hope Anna does manage to sort her problems. She never seems happy without drugs. Never was happy on them either. She's done far better than me as regards sticking to programmes. I never gave in a clean urine test until literally this year. Anna actually reduced her methadone, switched to Suboxone, which is an excellent treatment for anyone genuinely ready to be clean. She actually followed through on Suboxone until she was 100% clean and serene and sober. Still was miserable afterwards though. I don't know what Anna wants in life. She's been writing memoirs.

I wanted to be a writer too, but I much prefer fiction to fact. That's why Valerie flows from my pen so much more easily than my boring old self. As well as Valerie there's Boomer and Bruce and a new character I've invented but I'll let this person speak for themself when the time is right.

I know this post says nothing knew. But it's what was on my mind tonight. It's half past seven now. I don't know whether or not to go back to bed. I can get to the methadone chemist in the hour. Then that's today over and done with.

WISHING Y'ALL A FANTASTIC WEEKEND!!

While Blogger Was Down....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Little Trotter Donkey and Little Trotter Horse

MY NUMBER ONE FAN accosted me in Iceland this morning, asking what I was looking for. I said "not pizza; it makes me feel sick" and he ushered me up the isles to the Pakistani takeaway I ordinarily buy.

My head was banging with classical tunes: TOM TOM POM DIDDLY OM POM POM! And I was in a dearly good hyper mood pinging up and down.

Two cups of black coffee were to blam. So I'm drinking it in even MORE moderation from henceforth on!

Later on some friends were meant to be back with some gear but it took them six and a half hours to sort this. They had ongoing health troubles of their own. So I forgave them. I was in a very good mood when finally they pulled up outside my house and dished up a £20 baggie of heroin wrapped in a £10 note! (The money was owed from times past...)

The action of waiting on heroin all afternoon had wound me up into a nasty irritable, anxious mood. Anxiety! Beyond the pale! That's why I took Valium and it helped. Then I realized my head really has been racing. And I'm in irritable, expansive moods, and no longer a depressed one!

It's way better than depression so I'm barely complaining about my woes. They've mostly gone now. What I need back is my fully elevated mood!

No, Anna Grace, I don't actually desire to go crazy. I wrote my words in a fit of despair, believing psychosis and happiness were inexorably intertwined and I'd no choice but o accept one without the other. All my life, I've never been happy. Never truly happy. Never serene. I've been high from a thousand causes. But happy and high aren't the same thing at all ...

Eventually X and Y returned; I had some heroin and it's calmed me down a bit. I had some drink and it did almost nothing. What is pink nothingdust? See my mind keeps racing into irrelevant corners. Over and over it goes again..(!)

I hope y'all are OK. I'll cut y'al off and leave it all there. Take care everybody. NO DEPRESSION FOR TWO DAYS NOW. WHOOPEEEEEE!!!

Here's my half-asleep mind-wondering version from earlier. Reproduced here purely for your entertainment value!!

I had what appeared to be twelve hours' wondrous sleep last night and woke up feeling wonderfully NORMAL. Not depressed any longer! I ran into the sea and recognized... nothing. I keep thinking of nuclear things. Like the nuclei keeping me safe. Sorry my mind is running off in all directions.

This morning I had a wonderful section. If I did a bit of shopping in Iceland. 2 black coffees were enough to set me off into racing elevated mood with me pinging up and down the isles. Classical music was coarsing through my head POM POM POM TIDDLY-OM POM POM!! Variety.

I told myself "you better be careful, security will be on your arse". Sure enough...

Little Trotter Donkey and Little Trotter Horse are in a good mood also. Clopping around their furry fields. Cantering and neighing and saying "hello! Hello!!"

Little Trotter Donkey!
Little Trotter Horse!!

RALPH FRIDGE: PARADISE
j'adore!!

7:07 Entertainment

WOW IT'S ONLY 7 in the morning. It feels later. I slept for hours and hours because I took a whole load of methadone that was full of sugar (someone else's). It doesn't make me feel stoned at high doses, but it does make me sleep at night (not even during the day though, as heroin would).

Which is the crux of the methadone issue (because it's not like heroin) but Governments love it. (Because it gives outward signs of improvement.) Most addicts aren't willing or ready to improve that much and so methadone therapy is a waste of time. E.g. on the man who was willing to sell me £40 worth! His house is like a crackhouse. That's the place where everyone was rude. Everyone but him. He's OK. Gruff. But OK. Someone once said he was trying to intimidate me, but I don't feel intimidated by people like that. Who express how they are feeling. All they are doing is laying cards you already knew they had on the table. So dealing with them is easier.

Anyway I know a story about this one certain person that makes him out to be a Paper Tiger. I had another friend who was genuinely Hard and they came into conflict...

I don't particularly like the word Hard, when Strong and Tough describes somebody better. There's someone else I know like that and I respect him for it. Then people get to know me and call me "Hard" which annoys me. I also used to get called Cynical when I'm just normal in that respect. So people can be self-centred and nasty and I can see that. Ain't cynical: that's being realistic. It was when a heroin addict was banging on about how you "have to do stuff for your grandkids" and I was like "yeah once you've had a hit first" ~ and we all know that is the reality of heroin addiction. Once you've had your gear you're ready to Engage. Before that, no engagement can or will take place. And what little does comes with a whole slew of resentment. Forcing a heroin addict into meaningful activity before their heroin is like forcing a starving man to work before giving him any food. It won't make him like you.

Last night I put on Meet the Fockers again. My mood had fallen at about 7pm and I was pissed off. No longer manic but depressed. Manic depression. Doncha just hate it! I was particularly offended when my shrinko used those 2 words together in that phrase as if manic and depressed have to be 2 components of the same thing (but they are: I just hate it).

I was also very bothered and pissed off that I have schizophrenia. That is what schizoaffective MEANS. It means bipolar + schizophrenia and I know the schizzy bits in me. They are the bits that don't add up that I couldn't explain to another person. Like rooms in a house divided by bullet proof glass walls. Just because you can see into doesn't mean you're GETTING into or that anything gets out. What comes out is a report of that which is viewed not experienced. The experience takes place in that impregnable fortress of an experience-bubble. One day, to those of you who are interested, I will try and explain what is schizzy in me. Because I do think I grasp it. Just can't do it at 8 o'clock (as it is now) in the morning.

My roses are opening beautifully in their pint glass, especially one. The other has gone limp. I just cut the stem again. Now they look like Little and Large. Tomorrow I'm getting some Art Stuff to make my trotterdonkey Acrylic Paintings for my wall.

So this is now; that is then. I've got to go. Pizza and tea ready.


FRANTIC
i used to go to this club, it was nuts
and this is the sort of music i used to go eeeeeeing to: psychedelic hardhouse



these ones all have that unmixed compilation cd quality. a good dj would flash the next tune over the old one and dijjydit through so you're bouncing on the old one and then the E!-E!-E!-E!-E!-E!-E! energy of the new one takes you flying off....

HARDHOUSE MIX
stonkinstompin
but why the words? hardhouse = no words! CMON!!! i love the choon tho



CLASSIC HARDHOUSE 2 i love this one
what does this say to you, that squeaky word says all different words
squeakymunchtime diginmymind it's like a musical pill-dispenser
this one has words but the words are in the tune not outside of, that's what works better



this is what i've got. i have symptoms of bipolar schizoaffective disorder

Racy Brain (not down the drain)

I FEEL I'VE BEEN LIFTED UP!
I SLEPT A LONG TIME lats night because I had the antipsychotics, antihistamines and alcohol. The antihistamine was to make me sleep because despite the other stuff I just couldn't do it. And now I feel woozy and my head is racing and spinning. I feel in a much better mood. I'm not "high" but the same stuff is going on as when I'm going there. In the chemist and the post office I kept seeing visions in the floor. The chemist was a girl in a beautiful egg-shaped water drop with drops like rain behind her. In the post office I saw a slavering wolf in chalk-white on the brown floor. Then I looked away and there were just shadows where wolfie's features had been. I really am getting paranoid today I can't tell when people are and aren't talking about me and I hear weird noises. Whether or not this is the risperidone pills I don't know. If it carries on like this I know I'll go back on a manic whoooosh uppp-p-p-P-PPPP!! Least I'm not depressed right now all is fine with me. I'm stressed about seeing the doctor on Thursday and I don't like the way thes pills make me feel wibblywobbly. I can't deal with change and buying things in shops I just have to give money and get the girl to sort it out it caused a massive headfuck when all I wanted was an Oyster top up that's an e-bus ticket. Sorry if this doesn't hang together well my head has a distinct lack of focus and my memory is shot to pieces these days. I forget people's names, everything. Have a nice day everyone. Mine's going well. My racy brain has elevated me way above yesterday's dreary misery-schmizzery so I'm good. Good health to all!

PS ANNA GRACE: a lot of your comments got dumped in spam and I just found them. They're in their proper places now

5pm Sour

I CAN'T KEEP UP. I can't keep any buzz any happiness anything good that I feel, it just falls flat, like an actress in a long dress walking up steep stairs in high heels I fall down flat. I've lovely alcohol in my system but I just feel slightly drunk plus depressed. And I have to go to this doctor on Thursday and try not to present as a picture of self-pitying misery. If I do he will just laugh inwardly and think "bipolar". I feel like such an idiot for ever getting swept away on a high that was somehow of my own making, except I can't make it now. Trust me if anybody could get high like that the world would be full of hypomanic and manic individuals spending, bonking, dancing and wandering round in psychotic confusion, clothes inside out going "dib-dib-dib".

Ask any psychiatrist which mental condition they'd chose to have and I guarantee they'll all tell you "hypomania". That is mild mania: euphoria without paranoia, delusions or voices. So I'm watching Meet The Fockers and I still can laugh at Robert DeNiro and Barbra Streisand. If they can outdo Ben Stiller they're A1 comedians. So I try I do try I keep on trying. Where did I go wrong? Considering this was going BEFORE the heroin. I remember a friend of mine saying she wanted nothing more to do with me "while I was on drugs all the time". But I wasn't! It was mood swings she was seeing. Not drugs. I never was a druggie (a drug-taker; yes. A druggie: no!) I wasn't a druggie until I got into heroin and then I took heroin every day. Heroin flattened out my mood. No more depression. No more highs. The "high" of heroin is very mild and weak as drugs go. I only really took heroin as a chemical coping mechanism, not the indulgence people seem to assume it is. That rubbish about recapturing some original high is pure bumkum for me and most people.

Most people, self included feel little more than an indistinct wuzziness, a hot and itchy body and nausea when they first take heroin. More likely than not you'll end up with your head down the toilet, puking. Only when you get used to it: ie get hooked, do you get the full-blown opiate high. And that rapidly fades into an enhanced version of OK. I OD'd on heroin before I'd ever had a major habit, was in hospital for 2 days. And the high I got (in terms of strength, not niceness) was little higher than a 4 out of 10. Heroin feels weak. It feels clean and fluffy as fresh towels. It doesn't feel dirty or depraved and it certainly doesn't feel "hard" like a "hard drug". Crack does. Crack is drug-induced madness. Heroin makes mellow, gives very little but takes much. It takes away pain. It might eventually take your life. So this feels like it's come to and end. See ya later.

Illustrated: what Americans call a pratfall. Looks better when a pretty girl does it

6:41 calm

I DO RECALL A TIME not too long ago when I posted "X o'clock calm" a few times, meaning a lot calmer than I was a couple of hours ago (when I had been in a manic frenzy). Well I'm not exactly feeling wonderful but I am trying to bring myself up or at least distract myself with nice music. I don't handle depression very well I'm afraid and yes I feel depressed and have done since almost precisely 3:30pm last Monday. That is the time that I crashed down from my high and I've been feeling increasingly bad since then. I recall the time because I was supposed to meet Valium Marilyn down the library at 4 and by the time I got there I felt so dire I couldn't even distract myself with the books. I gave her 14 minutes then disappeared into HMV the record/DVD shop where I bought stuff I didn't even want (Michael Jackson) in a forlorn attempt to cheer myself. Now the cheer has vanished and I don't know what to do, how to handle this crisis, what I'm supposed to be doing next, what I'm doing wrong. I'm doing something wrong else I wouldn't be suffering like this. And I want an explanation off that doctor I don't think he realizes how much he does my head in just listening then saying nothing when everyone around him is saying "bipolar" and I feel in sore need of a word to YELL IN THE FACES OF NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS for judging me, looking down on me, thinking me a fantasist and a liar because maybe THEY manage to shower, wear clean clothes and put themselevs together on methadone but I don't. I get more lost, more fucked up and frankly more ill the longer I take that stuff. I turn up to most meetings looking like I've been dragged through a hedge backwards and people wonder why I don't want to engage in the weirdo group hug! Would you want to hug anyone if you hadn't showered for the best part of a week?

Yes I could shower. But it takes me an hour and I've no clean clothes to change into. So I either shower and don't go. Or do go and go dirty. That's the limit of my coping skills and we've gone way past "cannot be bothered" into "it never happens".

I have a desperate desperate problem I have to sort out somehow and I don't even know where to begin. Y'all need to bear in mind I've had troubles with my moods going back arguably to childhood and most certainly since my late teens. I had symptoms of bipolar intermittently from my early 20s though these were originally triggered by antidepressants, so I thought they didn't count. You have to bear in mind the label "manic depressive" while sounding very much more interesting than plain depression also scares the living shit out of me so I decided to hide anything that could possibly be construed as manic from prying doctors until a couple of years ago. By which time I was taken as a deadbeat junkie looking for an excuse to justify my using. Now I get into the mess you all know about. Well, the bits I told you about, and suddenly the doctors are listening. I know doctors and I know human nature and I know when I'm being taken seriously and I'm taken seriously now. Now that I find out if I am actually bipolar I'm not just type one but "severe" with it. Which makes me very bitter, because I asked for help repeatedly and was nodded at and ignored. I told the doctors when I was in the shared care scheme which is a methadone programme for junkies who are doing "really well" (ie ones the ordinary clinic hasn't time for any more) that unless I addressed my long-running problems with moods I wasn't going to make much progress tackling the addiction side of things and got lots of nods and no action whatsoever. THEY are the professionals. It's up to THEM to help ME when I ASK FOR IT. AND I GOT NO HELP WHATSOEVER UNTIL I WAS SO CUCKOO THE WALLS WERE SPEAKING TO ME AND I HAD TO RESTRAIN MYSELF FROM SETTING MY HOUSE ON FIRE AND JUMPING THROUGH AN UPSTAIRS WINDOW. This is the shit I have been trying to deal with. Me going so badly off on one I just don't know what I'm doing any more. You can put whatever interpretation you please as I'm sure you will do. Self-indulgence, hypochondria, whatever. The fact is I was not drug-taking, I wasn't drunk and you get the most watered down version acceptable. I cannot post in full detail, I just can't.

I mean, I realized at one point I had probably been yelling and screaming to myself in my thin-walled room far more frequently than I'd realized. And it suddenly makes sense why my housemates who used to treat me like a junkie but mumble hello now scurry away and hide completely at the first sign of me.

Yes we're back to THIS yet again, because THIS is a whacking great huge unresolved issue that I'm frankly tired of dealing with on my own. I don't know what to do. I feel suicidal or I feel so high I just cannot be bothered with the most basic social niceties. At the extreme I stopped being a human being and had a tiger in my head who ROARED my thoughts for me. I was amping with energy like a nuclear power station (this was a couple of weeks or so ago). And I wondered why people backed away from me in the street!

All this is incredible fun in the high phase but I crashed down and now I'm suffering for it. I'm writing in a lovely clear window of peace, serenity and calm that pragmatism tells me probably won't last. I'm not being negative I'm merely being realistic and if you were like this you'd have to be realistic too. I'm not asking anyone for an answer. I know you can't give one. I see my doctor next Thursday and I only hope I am in a good enough mood to bother leaving my house because I've been so hacked off of late, if I didn't want to go, I just wouldn't. I have been sorely let down by the medical profession when I did all I could to ask for their help. Now that they're willing to give it I really need to do what I have to and just get to appointments in time. But the way things are going I can't get my head round sorting out one set of clean clothes and a clean me by next Thursday. Yeah, it's like that.

This doctor knows exactly what's going on, what drugs I took when, how much, how I felt and when, what happened, how intense it was when and for how long, when x started, when y started happening and when I turned into a living bunch of ZZZZZs. So don't worry on that score. I was so desperate when I saw him last December I could only give unvarnished, unedited truth. I had no idea what he wanted to know or see, so he just saw me. No pretence, no cover-ups, no acting, no "showing what he needs to see". I felt broken, confused, injured and very, very raw. I was in such a mess I had to remind myself to move my arms down when I put them up. My head was rushing but my body was frozen. What I recall most was how shocked he looked at the state of me. Psychiatrists have to be poker-faced for their job, but this one gave himself right away. Nothing I have seen or heard or read, and I did avoid excessive reading about "symptoms" ~ no attention span for one thing ~ but nothing that I did hear did anything to put me at ease. Words like "serious" "severe" and even "lifelong" crop up an awful lot. This pinning it on drugs I gave up months and years ago stuff ... I don't think that's going to wash. This guy seems to think I'm mentally diseased. So apart from trying to cheer myself up with films like Meet the Fockers and mugs of hot chocolate I don't know what else to do.

And I'm leaving it there. Sorry to rant yet again on the same old same old shit. It's just every time I think of what to post it's this issue eating away at me. Originally when y'all said I was thinking too much you probably were assuming I think about what I post all day long, which I don't. But now, because I'm down down down and out, I do think about my failings a lot. And I don't know what the hell to do about them.

Peace and best wishes to y'all. Have a cheery weekend. And if it ain't cheery, may it at least be tolerable.


SEAL: CRAZY
i love this tune



SONIQUE: PUT A SPELL ON YOU



SONIQUE: FEELS SO GOOD



12:33 THIS actually cheered me up: "how did you get diagnosed?" stories....

Bye bye Heroin

OK I feel OK now. Coasting down from heroin might have something to do with this.

I don't feel "addicted" to heroin, not the way I was. The compulsion to acquire more is not eating away at me. In days gone by I'd have been chomping at the bit to get more money tomorrow morning to go direct to the dealer for more. This lot was a 0.4g for £15. I rang 2 separate dealers. One wanted £15; the other £20. Mr £15 sells 2x tiddly £10 bags for this money. Mr £20 sells fat bags. When I finally met them by Argos they were both together so I gave Mr £20 £15 which he seemed to be cool with, and took a big chunk of dark brown heroin home. I had alcohol and cigarettes so I was in the best mood I could be in, considering how sour I was yesterday (pretty sour, to be honest).

A lot of people say I'm still in detox from the heroin I gave up in early December (though that gear was so weak, I really gave up proper heroin at some point last November). But I did ask Naomi about this again at Nutter Club (where I was in a foul mood) and she says no. If quitting heroin in favour of methadone causes problems as severe and persistent as mine it's "underlying" stuff. Not a "reaction". Well I don't know. I'm asking the doctor. But I noticed he barely mentioned drugs last time and finished with the words "at last..." meaning at last you've found someone, at last you've found acceptance, at last treatment, at last, after all this time this is being addressed. Which doesn't sound like he means a state of temporary detoxification.

Maybe the methadone has permanently damaged my brain. We all know they only prescribe it because it's ineffectual. And so was thalidomide.

I rang my former friend Mother Hubbard who didn't want to be bothered engaging in very much talk. She says she's down to 10mls methadone and thinking of going back to lithium. She always said she was on lithium before heroin. But on heroin she didn't need it, as heroin evens her out better. She said of lithium: it's "very helpful". Yeah and it's the all-time last drug that I want. Anyway she said she didn't have time for me and I said yeah I know our frienship fizzled out years ago. I don't think she liked my directness so I said "bye!" in a cheery voice and blip-p-p-ppp, I hung up.

Then, half an hour later, Pinky rings. I don't think they'd been comparing notes. I only know Pinks through Hubbs but Hubbs talks to no-one these days. I think Pinks was hoping me to be all manic and babbly and entertaining like I was last time. She rang twice. The second time I had heroin in my system so I was far more amenable to conversation. She talked about her borderline personality disorder (the mildest of her three diagnoses). She said she had googled herself and thought I was borderline too. (She's told me that one before.) I've only met two borderlines and both told me I was one too. I don't actually believe that but when Nursey wanted me to google myself about a year ago prior to an "engagement" with the local Personality Disorders Clinic that never happened, the borderline personality disorder was the only one I matched up ding ding ding ding ding! I don't actually think I'm "borderline" at all. I don't believe I have any personality disorder. The dr. thought I might have one... that was until the last couple of times when I came in all hyped up and confused (and drugs-negative). Personality disorders are out the window at this moment in time. Mood disorders are in, so far as I can tell.

Then Pinky said something I'd never heard: that the first time she met me she thought I looked manic. She said the second time I was a bit less manic, then I was depressed. And she asked Mother Hubbs whether I was a manic-depressive and Mother Hubbs said yeah. Mother Hubbard has had that theory about me for years and frankly I thought it was bullshit. I wasn't in the mood for talk of what I might have been nearly ten years ago. I'm down now. Nothing feels real to me any more. I only feel real when I feel high. (Natural or drugged.) The difference between drugged and non-drugged high is that the opiate version makes me ultra-focused so I can do stuff like spend hours doodling Chinese characters or I tell myself I'm being constructive, because I'm learning something. I can read novels. I can plough through books in German, dictionary in hand, consulting every single unfamiliar word. Heroin always gave me this focus.

The natural high gets more and more scattered the higher it goes, so I get into far more of a mess on that than I ever got on depression. I got into terrible troubles through these mood swings so if it is methadone causing it all I'm demanding a change of medication on clinical grounds. It's more than negligence; it's profound negligence to prescribe something that disagrees that vehemently. I got asked twice whether I wanted to go straight into the psychiatric hospital when these moods weren't even peaking. I was an absolute mess. Physically and mentally I was all over the place. How on earth they can justify prescribing medication that does that to me I just do not understand. If they refuse to change it I'll sue. In Britain you have a right to appropriate medical care, no matter what your condition. It's interesting y'all seem to think what's wrong fits my own original theory: that methadone does not suit me at all. I'm lobbying for MSTs ~ morphine sulphate pills.

I just glanced over what I wrote off heroin.

Shamanic Heaven? Very shamanic. Not heaven.

And if you think that's screwy, have a look at some of the nut-nut forums online. The bipolar one did my head in the most because if I'm that I've get manic a lot more intensely than anyone who posted on the board. Schizophrenia: that was really screwy. Page after page of ranting about how the US Government had implanted a chip in this guy's head and that's how they read his every thought. Drug addiction: that's me! I only stumbled over the criteria once and I fulfill every single one beautifully. As beautiful as a flower opening at dawn. If only addiction wasn't the ugliest illness going I'd be junkie-proud. What am I saying. No I wouldn't. I'm not 16 anymore. And I never got an addiction until I was 28 years old. Problem with me was I was already sicked off with depression. So once the seed of Heroin Addiction came along, it flourished in highly fertile ground.

A nice man came to see me this morning. He works for a charity that gives support to living train wrecks like me. Thankfully no psychiatric history was demanded (now giving that in a "highly hightened state of awareness" put me in touch with all manner of horrors safely stashed in the Forget Me For Ever box. I don't usually find memories traumatic. Because I choose not to remember. In that Mentalist Reception Centre I was forced to relive the most depraved and horrible episode of depression of my entire life. And I suddenly realized, if it hadn't been for Heroin, I might never have survived it. Now that was a headfucker. Usually I like headfucker things. But this stuff I hated. Most things couldn't harm me if they wanted to. Nothing is real. I don't need heroin to tell me that. That's the feeling I have, that disengages me. That's why there's chaos on the outside; and a diffuse white light on the inside. Peace. If only I wasn't so unhappy, I would be a beautiful place to be.

It's only the world that is ugly and I thought I needed heroin to cope with the world. When all I really needed was to be harder than it. I try not to care, but in a way I care very much. But I'm able not to do it. And that's what counts. So you see this supposed "illness" of mine. What Naomi calls illness. What the doctors think of illness, because it's they who speak of antipsychotics and lithium, not me. I wouldn't know what to ask for, except quetiapine. It's meant to be better than risperidone and you can dose once nightly. So I'm asking for that. But even my fellow "clients" at the Nutter Club label me ill. Which I found crazy. Because I wasn't ill that time I came in laughing hysterically and babbling. I was just a bit excited and I had gone into a 48-hour cycle. 43 hours awake; 5 hours asleep. Makes ya feel lovely.

When I said to Naomi, who wants more people to join our club, why don't you let everybody in? Most addicts, after all, have some anxiety and depression. We all want to die during detox: that's par for the course. She said no it doesn't work like that. You need serious mental illness just to get in the door. I didn't know this when I started attending. Naomi knows my issues. I was complaining of mood swings for months (when I attended infrequently). Moods that nobody else seemed to notice. I didn't dispute the point in case she chucked me out because I don't really even really get depression. I just get in a mood where I see Truth. Same as being on a high. What you see is Truth. It's the in-betweens where lies flourish. Nowadays the tables are turned on me. It's me saying I'm perfectly all right and Naomi banging away at me to take medication. If I do, it'll stop me getting high again and that's what I want; another high, man. I feel the sea swelling as we speak, but I couldn't tell you which way the current's taking me. Heroin is the only thing that calms those tides. I'm neither up nor down nor left nor right on heroin. Just a wuzzy version of OK.

I'm afraid of not taking heroin again because I feel desperate and lost and confused without it and I've never survived without heroin except when I was so hyped up I didn't know what day it was. Hell, when I really got going I rushed so far ahead I honestly thought we were living in next year. None of this is bad. Don't pin suffering on my description. What would you rather be? High on nothing free of charge? Or "high" on heroin and paying every penny you have to be little better than OK? Only advantage heroin confers is a modicum of focus and concentration that I just don't have without it. Methadone gives nothing and that's why the Government give it. They want me to get confused enough that I wander out and get hit by a truck. That's what they want. They want rid of me.

So this nice man named Deshane had to come in and endure my house. I knocked back one cherry cyder. Found a full can on the side I'd forgotten about, knocked that down on top of it. Only felt depressed. I kept glancing at the time thinking, "I'll give him 15 mins, no more," and he turned up bang on time.

He tried not to look shocked at the state of my house. I have two carrier bags full of 50 Nigerian DVDs that I thought he might be interested in, but he's from St Lucia, so he doesn't speak Yoruba. Shame. I don't want to throw these films away. Now if you want an illness, that's my illness: hoarding. I have five televisions, three surplus chairs, three or four toasters, four or more radios, five or six duvets (I use them all at once to make a giant futon)... and I have sackfulls of clothes fished from bus stops and rubbish bins full of tears and holes that don't even fit me. It was the psychotic guy downstairs who pointed out that I dress like a homeless and I looked at what I was wearing and realized he's telling the truth. Nothing I wear was bought. It was all salvaged from the streets or given to me. I wouldn't wear anything nice. I burn cigarette holes in anything nice, because ... because I am inattentive.

So we had to go through my care needs which I don't recall. I honestly don't remember what he said. I was so stressed I just wanted the interview over. What he did say was that they can get me DLA, the benefit for Mental Fuck Ups that I had twice and let run out twice because I was too fucked up to claim it (sad but true). And he can get me my own place. I said my neighbours all hate me and with good reason, the amount of rubbish I collect, I don't blame them. But he says I can have my own front door and a bedroom and a separate kitchen. It sounds good and as long as I can paint my walls blue I'll be happy. I'm buying superglue and handcuffs so when intruders break in I can place the under citizens arrest. People will victimize you badly in London if you let them. Anyone dares break into my place and I'll lie in wait and stick them to the floor. And you think I'm joking. I intend to be a proud home owner.

Deshane thinks it's a really good idea that I ought to pack what I DO want in boxes, giant tartan bags etc (I have many a spare hammy cage and fish tank that I can fill with books to save space). Anything not packed up I can safely throw away.

Akh why does this have to happen? I feel heroin wearing off and my usual sourness creeping on. I feel as sour as a month-old pint of milk. Well you have to laugh at it. If I did't have dissociative mechanisms I'd have died long ago. Dissociation means nothing is actually real. If my life really was as bad as it was I'd never have survived it. I just cannot see how I would survive. And all this is down to that methadone they are poisoning me with. I found out a bit about how you appeal to the head of the local health authority when methadone is an inappropriate treatment so that's what I'm doing. Taking my complaint right to the top. It's not normal to have symptoms of a severe mood disorder just because you're taking that Mean Green the government force on me.

I've seen how other heroin addicts and crack addicts live. They all look well put together and they live in clean houses. My house looks like a hurricane has hit it. My life is post-nuclear. Everything is a mess. If only this meant I could motivate myself to change it would be a useful insight but it's not. Because the reality of life is hopeless and pointless. I know you probably want to laugh but this is how I feel.

Well I'm going now. I've banged on enough about my boring self. If anyone actually reads to the end, I'll give you a gold medal with "I AM A METHADONE SURVIVOR" engraved across it. How does that sound?

OK I just read back over this and it's farcical. I can't even tell whether I'm being sarcastic or real or not real I'm just fed up. Better to make y'all laugh at me than to make y'all upset. I've had enough; it's 7:30; my chemist opens in an hour so I'll get that one done and hopefully sleep all day. I hope you have a good day. Does anybody know a magic cure for unhappiness where I can be drug free. I don't care how long it takes to work. I have the rest of my life. And I'm going now, before I say something I regret.

Have a nice day y'all!

I'm sorry :-(

SORRY FOR UPSETTING YOU ANNA GRACE. And anyone else. Anna is my best friend and the last person I want upset or crying over me. I'm truly sorry.

Now I'm upset because I was only trying to say how I feel. Yet how I feel is unacceptable. What can I do?

Baino who is one of my very best and most supportive friends online said to me something to do with not believing my experience is real and she's put me into confusion. Finally I am telling the doctors the truth instead of some sanitized version that goes "I become slightly depressed"; I'm telling them what really happens and this is complicated and embarrassing enough without people messing with my head telling me I'm lying or I'm not real. Whatever it is it feels like an accusation. All I have ever tried to do is report accurately however much it shames me however much of an idiot I know I will look I just put it down. Baino is only trying to be helpful. From where I'm sitting she tells me "don't disappear up your own arse; it's just mild drug switchover that everyone goes through".

If I thought this was right I could accept it but none of the professionals I work with takes this view. The psychiatrist is being cagey by not diagnosing. It's unprofessional to give a name to an inherently unreal condition within 6 months of clear cut shamanic weird experience emerging. And that's what it is in some of its facets.

My totem animals are the Syrian hammy, which will beat the shit out of any critter or person who dares mess with it. And the tigress. I relate to the tigress better than the tiger; tigresses are fiercer and have pet baby tigers to play with. Can you imagine going to bed with six baby tigers all purring and being furry? That's why I want to be a tigress. Because of the baby furry entertainers.

I'm sorry I upset y'all I didn't mean to I only was trying to report how I feel. This doesn't upset me. Problem is, none of the professionals I "work" with have ever expressed this view. To them I am cuckoo. To me I am fantastic and unreal. Far superior to most of you. Effortlessly when I'm hyper and high I feel natural. When I'm low I don't feel clinically depressed, which is where this "personality disorders" idea came from. I'm fed up with it all.

Yes I took heroin. To be frank I didn't care about my life or my future any more, which is blurry to me. I just cannot think straight.

Sorry I have to go I keep falling asleep with fingers on the L or D key and I'm not posting the rubbish I put up 2 nights ago. That was purely to make a point.

I hope this isn't too much of a mess and makes my point. I don't have a problem with anyone I'm confused by my friends, my good friends who I know are genuinely trying to help me and in my heart this makes me sad because I know I can't understand and you're not helping me the way your words should help.

How on earth will I ever deal with these skyscraper-high issues? I honestly don't know.

Now I'll have to leave it there, else this shall never get posted. Sorry again for the mess. Much love to everyone. Baino please forgive me for bringing you up so many times. I know you are only saying what many people probably think and I'm just really upset because I can't do it. Whatever it is I'm meant to do I can't do it. Am I ill? should I lie in bed then? What should I do?

And how can I ever cope without heroin. I cannot handle feeling as bad as I do. I feel too bad for words. I won't use melodramatic language, but I don't feel good at all now. What is happening to me.

Take care everybody. Thank you for all your support. I appreciate it more than you will ever know, even though we end up at cross-purposes so many times. Please don't give up on me.


Illustrated: a beautifully kept room is a sign of a well-kept mind; my totem animal having a furry nap; the naughty stuff, trademarked by Bayer Pharmaceuticals in the late 19th century...


Some music

Lots of talking

I WAS SURE I posted something else but whatever I said got lost. My memory is poor these days. Chemist says I missed a methadone pick-up Monday but I'm not sure I did. I'm pretty hot at methadone and making sure I have enough. I need to be as I'm fully considering dropping the State Controlled Prescription and merely buying methadone on the strreet. Which is my option for when they start messing my head even more than presently.

Earlier today I was in the bad mood I've been in for three days. I crashed down. So this afternoon I took heroin therapy and feel far better for it. Frankly I don't care about myself or my life or whether anything is good or bad. Gear is the same as suicide so I'm self-medicating with slow suicide and it works. Doesn't stop me feeling manic and/or over the top, doesn't stop me being depressed and/or mood swinging. Stops the worst of it though. Which implies if I'm in withdrawal as y'all want to tell me I'm still withdrawing when "high" enough on gear to be in near-unconsciousness. So shove that in your expert pipes and toke it.

Baino can you please explain something what do you mean the dr says I'm psychotic? But I'm not? How so? I don't get this you're really confusing me. You think I'm exaggerating? Then you're wasting your time here if I write a ficiton blog it would be WAY less sad thatn this one come on. So what do you think is real? I don't get it. As I said I'm not a psychotic what really happens is psychic, that's how I hear other people's thoughts. Telepathy. If you can't hear the reason is simple YOU'RE DEAF.

The shrinko is the only one I trust and even him I think he is trying to kill me when I go to an NA meeting. So I trust no-one. I wouldn't post anything if you knew who I was so THAT, ANNA GRACE IS WHY I'M "HIDING BEHIND MY BLOG" as you put it
when you try and push me gently into behaviour I'm not comfortable with. You might want people to look at you; I don't need my neighbours reading my blog. That might be a buzz for you; to me it's a buzz-killer. I want to be read, not stared at. Leave a comment Anna I leave them for you and you won't even leave a single one when I specifically ask you.

Baino, Anna, Gattina, please answer in comments I cannot do email it's a total headfucker. Unless it really is confidential please everyone use COMMENTS. Comments I can do; email I just do not do. I just do not do it; ask my family. I get your point Gattina: your blog is a shiny happy blog where you don't want my heroin-talk so I'll email that from hammynutter@lycos.com. Please anyone who emails, no matter what the subject LEAVE A COMMENT SAYING YOU EMAILED or I won't be able to find it. There are no rules chez moi that anyone needs to comment on the post they answer under. If you want to tell me anything, relevant or not to anything else, just slap it under today's load of Gledwood-drivel and I'll get it. Don't email me unless you really do need to use email. OK?

I am going to ask this Consultant Psychiatrist yes/no am I in detox on methadone? Yes or no; tell me. Methadone is a substitution therapy and should leave you in no withdrawals. I certainly don't withdraw physically so how can I "withdrawl mentally" without craving? I only want heroin in depression. Depression I had for DECADES before I ever tried heroin. Question number 2 will rear its head: that being so, why on earth are you giving it to me KNOWING it turns me into a psychdedelic shaman who's not taking psychedelics? And can you please make the psychedelia stronger? Thankyouverymuch!

I can't go on I'm too sleepy to focus. Things I cannot say are seeping out of my mind so I'm leaving it here. Nutter Club report comes later.



MADONNA: HUNG UP
time goes by so slowly for those who wait; no need to hesitate...