A Blast from (our Grandparents') Past

I THOUGHT THIS might entertain y'all... a business letter from my 1929 shorthand manual I decyphered when I could not sleep...

I don't consider myself right-on politically correct but this really made me laugh. By the way you can click here and see the original squiggles under "89: Reading and Dictation Practice" and see how clever I am~ har-har.

Dear Sir:
I have an opening immediately for a man with a
thorough knowledge of French and Spanish to go abroad
with a committee representing the officials of this company. If
present plans are completed the party will leave next
week on the Ile de France and remain overseas
between six and eight months. The officials already
have expressed their opinion that it will be necessary to employ a
college man not over thirty-five of good family.
It will be of special value if he has some knowledge
of finance.

You will readily agree that getting such a
man is no easy task. I feel that since
you know so many college men, as well as your
own fellow classmates you may be able to send one
of them for this job that really has a future in it.

May I ask you to phone my office soon. Yours truly,

Man? Man? Man? Good family? I make no further comment...

Re: yesterday's NA rant, as I said and I must reiterate because I'm not NA-bashing just making an observation on certain (always uncommented on) features that have really niggled: NA does work for those who "work it" (as they say). It has saved countless lives in the most literal sense and in the widest possible sense because nobody was born to be a crackhead or junkie. In the depths of the addiction I lost sight totally of this. I saw my body as nothing but a receptacle for drugs and more drugs (heroin, alcohol, crack in descending order) and began to cuss my disappearing veins. Why else did I have veins, except to spear hypodermics full of gear into them?

Thanks for yesterday's Answers. I wanted to reply to three points:~

Why couldn't I just ask the man who "drug of choice drug of choice drug of choiced"? Well you're allowed no cross-talk which means people talk in turn and if you want to ask a question like that you'd normally do it afterwards in private. And the reason I didn't do that was this bloke was famously curmudgeonly and might well have snapped "mind your own business: if I wanted you to know I'd have shared it"!

Why 12 steps?
Best way I can put it is, they're like the 12 base camp stations on the way up Everest... it's by far too big a thing to take on in one.
I don't know how they came about, but someone somewhere had ever so cleverly picked up every excuse-making, backsliding self-deceptive tendency of the addict (though I believe these 12 steps originated with Alcoholics Anonymous) and constructed a life-encompassing programme of recovery with no excuses, no unfinished business. Hence Step 9 involves making amends to those we've damaged, wherever possible, except when to do so might cause harm (I've puzzled over what type of "amend" might cause harm and what type but drew a blank). Through the Steps you can achieve closure with the past, gain a renewed almost "reborn"-type perspective on life and far from going on just not taking drugs ~ RECOVERY is gradually achieved ~ a state of newness, unity and health I have seen in the spirit of others who have done the programme... and finally learned to live. That, to my understanding, is what Recovery's about.

If the phrases work for some people isn't that OK?
Yes it's fine but they can put off the newcomer and cause confusion and irritation and people first come into NA in extremely vulnerable states. Anything that doesn't help should if possible be avoided.


MUSIC ~ VINCENT
THIS is my favourite Don McLean song. I've heard it sung by Julio Iglesias who may claim to have bedded 2000 (or is it 3000? women) yet so obviously hasn't a clue about the passion this song speaks of...



RIGHT I've got to go I've gone all paranoid about whether I left the cooker on with boil int bag fish... YUUURKS!!

*** "WHERE DID THE 12 STEPS COME FROM?" QUERY ANSWERED ...

Grotesque

THE DEALER TOOK SO LONG this morning and I was resentfully waiting wound up into ever such a state that, despite over 80mg methadone (which I've been on every day so it's well entrenched in my system) that I found myself vomiting yellow bile. Yet telling myself that I wasn't really "sick", just winding myself up. Bile-retching is a big part of the withdrawal syndrome. But I'm telling myself it also had a lot to do with barely having eaten yesterday, partially because I was sulking due to "no gear".

My head has been shillyshallying both ways between dead-set on not using and "if it was here I'd be doing it right NOW". On the one hand I can put a sustainedly "clean head" on for several days at a time ~ which used to be near-impossible for me. But on the other I'm recognizing more and more the chinks in my armour and the feebleness of my desires to stop. I don't know how I'm ever going to make it happen now; it feels forlorn.

My new year's resolution was one I thought worth working on and that's to say bye-bye to crack. I say little about it here because there's little to say. You go up like a skyrocket. You come down. Most people want more and more and more. I've succeeded in reducing consumption to one £10 rock, once a week. And even if I DO find I have money "spare" that could go on it days later, it does not. Most of this coke gets mixed into heroin, which candifies it up massively. But that means that when I DO have crack I can easily get through a gram of the other in a day, which is way more than I want to be using. And just to explain to non-users: it might be easy to assume that "a gram" means a dosage unit but with heroin this is not the case. In fact a gram of the local street heroin is potent enough to kill a (non-tolerant) family of four. Most junkies would get between three and ten hits from a gram depending on how much they're used to using. I hate the fact I've turned into an opiate sponge. Almost anything I take seems to get soaked right up and barely touches the sides. My aim with heroin, if I can't stop completely, is to use as little as possible. All things are relative, anyhow. The more you take, the more you need. So you may as well take as little as possible ~ then you'll need less.

I got fluorescent vomit all over my notebook, which means I'll have to copy my shorthand lists of "brief forms" and other contractions into the volume I set aside as my "secret diary" (except half what's gone in there has been posted up here!) My searches online have revealed to me that after Mr Gregg's death around 1949, rights to his shorthand were bought by another company, who, through successive editions of the manual, progressively dumbed it down till it was nearly useless. My "simplified" textbook from 1950 is the least dumbed down version but I'm working on converting to the 1929 "Anniversary" version, which is the last edition Mr Gregg worked on and used himself. Writing shorthand is one thing: you've gotta be able to read it back! Hence the practice. I've wanted to learn this art since I was very little indeed and I'm not giving up now. Who knows... Someday I might even get a job out of it..?

Back to my addiction "issues"... thanks for all the comments everyone. I'm just getting tired of all my own words. Fed up of hearing them. But still, I've readlized, I don't have strength enough of desire to turn away. I just hope that meanwhile y'all don't get bored to death!!

Last but not least, purloined from my friend Welshcakes Limoncello's blog (what a funky screen-name!) is this polyglot HAPPY NEW YEAR message!!