IT'S HALF PAST SIX. I'm about to go out to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. First one in nearly 2 weeks.

Buggalugz sent me a wondrous Tales of the Riverbank link. Tales of the Riverbank is about a hamster, a rat and a guinea swine who go on adventures by the riverbank where they live.

I particularly like Hammy's scenes in the diving bell and the toy aeroplane they ride in.

You can see two episodes if you scroll down to yesterday. Am I the only person having problems watching Youtube screens I've already embedded? When they don't play you can click the lower righthand corner and bring them up on a separate page; then they tend to play.

Last night I was in bed by 6pm; I slept right through and woke up in a bad mood, having forgotten to take methadone. So I took it and spent two hours feeling like a manic-depressive ice-block as I irritably waited for it to take its tardy effect. Then I went down the Post Office, got out some money and crowded home and watched Jeremy Kyle. By 10am I was so miserable I only wanted to go back to bed, so I took off my trainers and went to bed with coat and hat still on, where I stayed until 2. Deshane came round but I had no idea who was ringing the door-buzzer so I paranoidly declined to answer. I thought it was the council calling by to persecute me.

At 2:30 I got a call from my friend Pinky (Perky's ex) who wanted to borrow £20. So I lent her £20 and got her to score for me, which she did. The gear she was buying sounded crap and I would have cancelled the order if only she'd described in advance how lousy it was.

Anyway I took it home and banged up in my foot and now I'm in a better mood than before. I'm still going to NA. Everyone who has any association with AA or NA assumes I'm a terminal drunk when I reveal to them that I'm still drinking and that I drink every day and that I can't stop. By "can't stop" I mean I can't go a day without a single drink. I don't mean that once I start I continue knocking it back until I collapse in a cataleptic stupor. I had drink when I woke up this morning, but aside from one single swig, I couldn't face imbibing anything bar chicken and vegetable cup-a-soup (with croutons).

Because Pinky has the most miserable and upsetting life-story I've ever heard I offered to write it up as a book for her ~ and to my surprise she said yes. I'm also penning my own life story. Not because I think it's at all interesting, but because I want my family to profit from my misery when I die. I only had the idea in a fit of suicidal angst and thought the coroner's report would make a fantastic epilogue to my life. Maybe I shouldn't be saying this but I've told you everything else. I don't really like analysing what I did when and why, which is of course what you have to do to write a memoir. That's the stumbling block I encountered last time I tried. But if I don't write it and I die, my life will have been in vain. I want my family to profit from my death. And if I don't die and it does come out in print, I'd use the cash to get a private script for injectable methadone and morphine pills. Oral morphine is used as a private treatment for those who don't respond well to methadone (like me). The sustained release tablets need only be taken twice a day and would make you feel as though you'd hit up heroin at some indistinct time earlier. Rather than the spurious hold methadone has over you (complete with sweats, mood swings and hallucinations) morphine is well known to give addicts "a better quality of life" than rubbishy old methadone. I'd only ask for methadone because when prescribed privately you can ask for injectable 50mg/1ml amps which are of course far more likely to quench the urge to use on top as you've already had a hit. The NHS used to give out injectable methadone to intractable cases such as mine, but as my worker confirmed, nowhere in London does nowadays. In this day and age you're only allowed a chance if you go private, so it seems.

I don't mind methadone triggering mood swings, by the way: just as long as they're manic ones not depressive ones. Or that I don't get too manic, or too irritable. That's the only bad thing about mania: it's too unpredictable and uncontrollable. It isn't happiness (a good mood, versus a depressive bad mood) ~ it's excitement and excitement doesn't always feel great. I'd still rather be manic than depressed. Only a week or so ago I was so hyped up I was laughing uncontrollably at every opportunity. And there seemed endless opportunities for laughter. Now there are none at all and I fear over and over again that I'll have to give in and submit to mood stabilizers.

I can't read or watch or think about anything to do with ordinary life because everything makes me irritable or angry. Because it's not done right. The only things I can stand to occupy me are the Japanese language and hamsters. Everything else annoys me. So if I carry on in this bad mood I should be fluent in Japanese in no time at all.

I finally found a proper textbook (typically no accompanying CDs are available) that teaches the language from scatch in its proper script: that is, in standard Japanese orthography: kanji with hiragana and katakaa as appropriate. Not all in kana, like some Japanese textbooks. It's called Japanese for Everyone by Susumu Nagara and I found it here.

I also wanted to order Electroboy by Andy Behrman and The Quiet Room by Lori Schiller while I was at it. Both are psychiatric memoirs. Electroboy is about bipolar mania; The Quiet room is about schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (nobody appears to understand which). Probably I shouldn't be reading stuff like that, but I thought it might inspire my own drugs memoir. Electroboy has two covers: an electric yellow one, with the title in huge capitals, which I really like; and a really soppy arty one. If I wrote a book like that and had another manic episode I coudln't promise not to turn up at the publishers and shoot whoever OK'd that ridiculous cover between the eyes. It shows a really stupid face wearing a black hat, which is supposed to represent a the electric couplers on ECT machines. (ECT being a treatment for acute mania as well as depression; hence the title.) Poxy book covers are, in my opinion, an even worse crime against nature than cup-a-soup without croutons.

By the way the author of Electroboy claims to have taken huge amounts of cocaine while manic. How the hell he was able to do this and engage with life in even the most desultory way I cannot understand. One day when I was hyper I drank five cups of coffee in a row (I thougt I was tired). I then spent what felt like several days roaring like a wild animal, so deranged I had lost the ability to think in English. If I had taken coke in that state I doubt I'd ever have come back down to earth. (Some might say I still haven't.)

Well I'd better go. I have an NA group to attend and a memoir to ponder over (lots of thinking, no writing; that would be me). I've decided to write it as quickly as humanly possible just to get it over and done with. Apart from the money I'm only writing it as a cautionary tale to put the impressionable and destitute off ever experimenting with drugs the way I did. I don't think my life is fascinating and I don't think it's unusual. I just think I could tell the story well. If I set my mind to it. Pinky's story is far more interesting than mine. I'm really surprised she said she didn't mind her real name going against it. I'm not putting my real name on mine!


TALES OF THE RIVERBANK

THE DROUGHT
Hammy gets rained on and looks really cute



SAY CHEESE!
GP, the guinea swine makes a camera and a white guinea swine in a top hat takes everyone's picture...
ps has anyone noticed how Hammy looks like he's about to keel over from sheer exhaustion at any moment?
Hamsters are nocturnal and this was shot by the glaring light of day...

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!