I HAVEN'T BEEN SLEEPING at all well since the end of last week.I had met one of my old drug dealers who gave me a sample of the most shyte hot heroin I had tasted in a long time. I could actually FEEL it. And so I was scoring off him every single day for over a week. Blew loads of money I'd saved up. I felt like I did in the early days of my addiction: too scared to stop. Scared in an indistinct, distant type of way and not knowing what I was going to do with myself without this wonderful heroin. My veins even started to behave, meaning I got 90% of my hits straight in. The warm buzz of yesteryear was back.
Then the dealer started taking the piss with timing. Leaving me waiting 4.5 hours one particular day. All he said was that for another £5 I could have another bag so of course I got one more. The next day he answered and promised to come right round but it transpired he had no driver and to add insult to injury he'd picked up a new batch of "B" ~ call me cynnical but it was probably nowhere near as good as the old stuff. Which is just about the only B of normal quality I've had this year. All else has been cowshit and how junkies can queue up on street corners for the crap most people sell is beyond me. They must have seriously low tolerance. I'm only on 70mg of methadone and I literally cannot feel most people's heroin AT ALL... just the vaguest opiate tinge, which could be imagination. Then nothing. Even this good stuff made me feel good for all of a minute or so then I was just tired. But not in the cross-eyed nodding out semi-conscious state heroin is supposed to put you in.
I was terrified of stopping because I was terrified of withdrawals from the extra tolerance I thought I had built up over my week and a half of using. On the last day I scored some B that was so weak I couldn't feel it (ie it was the rubbish most people buy and convince themselves they're getting some sort of buzz out of). I got my weekend methadone so I could at least take my doses when I felt I really needed them. This helped a lot.
Another issue was that I was fighting off a particularly nasty bout of depression that just made me feel my life was over. On heroin life felt OK. Without it, life was intolerable. Please please let my mood switch. When I'm manic I go vehemently anti-drugs (why waste money on illegal chemicals when you're high already?) ... It's not mania as such, but my mood did switch from exceptionally sour, down and ill to normal, up and interested. Suddenly life seems full of possibilities. Life has meaning and the meanings are beautiful. The downside to this has been pretty bad insomnia. For a couple of days I can't have slept much more than 2-3 hours. I remember one day I huddled under a duvet on my chair and just slept a while as BBC News blared away. I was taking Valium which took the edge off my ragged mood but did very little to help me sleep. Eventually on Sunday daytime I slept and slept all day. I did sleep about 4 hours on Sunday night but something's going on. I know it's not depression. When I'm down I nearly always sleep hours longer than usual. In my brief periods of "euthymia" (that is "normal mood" to me and you) I sleep almost exactly 8 hours. I am not sleeping eight hours. I feel like I've been out clubbing all night on illegal stimulants that will not wear off. Not drugged out of my head, but buzzing enough not to want to BOTHER wasting the time and effort involved in putting my head down. I dropped a sleeping pill last night and still spent longer reading The Andy Warhol Diaries than I ever did sleeping.
Good news: I've thrown out on SCART-less television, one microwave, one foodmixer. The charity shop won't accept electricals. I've given them maybe as many as 40 classical music albums on vinyl. People who should know better, people like Deshane, my Jamaican support worker, say to me "vinyl's worth money man! Don't give it away! You should sell that." The last thing a compulsive harder like me needs to hear. The ONLY records I have kept are Mike Oldfield's Tubular bells on vinyl and UB40's Signing Off. Which I very nearly gave away, thinking all the writing on the cover meant it was a Brahms concerto!
I've got to go and take my computer to the shop it came from but I'm not relishing the experience. This store is well known for having the worst customer service in the business. On the two occasions that I ventured in the staff were uninterested and dismissive and one didn't even appear to know what "dual core" meant. There's a problem on my hard drive. Not with the drive itself (so it seems) but with the cable. Unfortunately the cable is integral to the drive. I know this as I've removed and reinserted it on several occasions in my attempts at getting better connections. So they're almost certainly going to insist that I pay for a new drive thus leaving me with a totally empty computer. No Norton. No Microsoft Word. Both of which I paid extra for. What am I going to do? Does anyone know if/how the shop can reinstall these products for me. I only use my computer for blogging and wordprocessing. Oh and it MUST wordprocess in Chinese and Japanese, like the old one did. Yeah man I'm a true citizen of the 21st century. I can input in Mandarin Chinese!
Which reminds me, I really must get back to my Spanish course. Unfortunately I rapidly realized that Spanish is inferior to French. Not linguistically, but culturally. French literature, for instance, is the only modern literature that can seriously vye with English as the most superior body of writing of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. French is spoken in some amazing places.
Example: I made Friends I never would have been able to talk to without the French language when I spent a couple of weeks in Morocco over Xmas/New Year 1991/1992. It was hardly a glamorous vacation. We spent new year's eve sleeping with the homeless at Fez station in bitter bitter cold mountain weather. I woke up in the very early hours seriously worried that the local man next to me, shrouded as he was in a peaked ethnic hoodie really was dead. Then the railway station master came out at 6am to loudly shoo us all away. He piped down when he saw me and my Japanese friend. Gave us a funny look. And we got on the next train to wherever. I still think back to Morocco, the most evocative place I've ever been. Even more so than India. Berber coffee, North African cigarettes and tangerines on the trees in December. I wandered the perimiter of the royal palace at dawn watching the king's trees bathed in golden light thinking: WOW, I'M IN AFRICA. Africa! How cool is that. I'd so love to go back. And I got there from West Wales taking trains and boats the entire way. It took three days but it's only a three hour flight. I can't think of anywhere else in the world, apart from the crossing from Spain to Morrocco, where two entirely different universes come so close. The one European and "Christian"; the other Berber-speaking and Muslim (Moroccans aren't really Arabs, they're Berbers. The Arabic language is mostly used in government and by the media. We got to stay in this doctor's house we met on the train and he had satellite television. Now I always think you haven't truly seen a country unless you've watched their television and I spent a couple of days glued to Egyptian soap operas and the Moroccan version of "songs of praise". The doctor could not understand my fascination. I really wish I'd known Arabic, but as I say, French is just as useful as Arabic out there and English (at least in 1991-2) was almost exclusively used for tourism (and probably international trade).
The weirdest thing that happened to me in Morocco came when the official guide joined heads with the manager of a carpet shop then came up to me and offered me a kilo of hashish on credit card!
Ho-hummm... such is life. I'd really like to go back to Morocco if and when I ever get myself 100% opiate clean. I'd rather do my healing in a faraway place... and Morocco does feel a LONG way from home ~ except it's only a 3 hour flight back to London! I could reinvigorate my French. Hashish is no temptation to me; I absolutely despise the stuff. And I doubt there's much heroin in Morocco. Morocco was the only place I could think of that I'd really like to go to that ISN'T a notorious production or transit country for opiate narcotics. So maybe I will go. One day... one day... one day.
And how are YOU today?
PS Reading Andy Warhol has inspired me to become a great pop artist in my own right. My Mum sent me an art easel for my birthday which I'd really like to get some 2x2ft canvases for, so I can paint cartoons in acrylics. Cartoons are probably just about all I'm capable of producing art-wise... I'm going to save up and blow £100 in an art shop. I'll try and slap up the results online... (dont' hold your breath until this gets done...!)
Andy Warhol ~ diarist extraordinaire; the mysteries of the "east" (actually the West (Morocco is just as westerly as the UK)); hashish ~ it is exactly what it looks like
IT WAS A VERY QUIET DAY I had hot chicken Madras (supermarket stylee) and a bottle of fake Baileys and watched the Queen's Speech at 3pm (British tradition). That was about it. Then I took some Valium and fell into merciful sleep. Anything that helps one escape Xmas is an excellent thing in my book...!
GREY, COLD, RAINY WEATHER. Waking up in the afternoon wondering just how life can go on.... Morrisons packed out with customers manically buying whiskey smoked salmon (as I did)... tinsel everywhere... yes IT'S CHRISTMAS AGAIN! I HOPE YOU ALL ARE ENJOYING IT!
1: the council wanted to perform a Residence Check ~ to make sure that the person living at the address really was me
I TOOK IN 5 OLD EUROMILLIONS tickets to my local shop to be barcode-checked and guess what? On Friday 21 October I won £3.20!!! 
enough will to power themselves through...) (methadone is actually stronger than heroin and more dangerous; it just feels weaker).
I'M FEELING WAY BETTER than yesterday and the previous few days. I think finally I have caught up on my lost sleep.
TOMORROW I'M BUYING AN ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE. They cost £8 for a nonrechargable disposable one that contains as many blasts on the nicotine as 30 real fags. I'm determined to get my absolute money's worth by holding in the nicotine as if it's crack smoke. £8 is $12 and almost as much as real fags cost anyhow but I'm determined to give these electronic ones a whirl. I've seen people use them and they look so funky. The rechargable ones used to cost £40 ~ then you have to hunt down a supplier of refill cartridges and of course I'd only want maximum strength ones. I'll let you know how it goes...
I have ever tried. It takes a good 90 minutes for any real effect and "peak serum levels" are reached after four very long hours. I wake up each morning sweaty yet cold and it takes a good 2-3 hours to steel myself for that nasty same old same old walk to the chemist for a sip of barely effectual linctus. As you all know I can't stand methadone. I have an appointment in the new year to see the doctor who should hopefully reduce the dose still further from 60mg to 40mg over the course of a month. After that I want to get down to 20mg and from then on if the clinic won't give me take-homes, I'm just buying methadone on the street and weaning myself off it at my own pace.
I loathe cabbage (except raw) and hate brussels sprouts. They smell like farts. I eat my salad totally undressed (70s lower middle class style) so I'm keeping my calories to a minimum. I could do with losing a bit of weight. Last time I weighed myself I was 220lbs! ~ that's gotta be close on 15 stone! I've also been eating those industrial microwavable cheeseburgers you get from the chilled meats isle. They come with a relish sachet and aren't bad doused in American salad.
I haven't taken heroin in more than a week and I don't miss it. The relapse started off when an ancient dealer of mine ran up to me on the street and led me to his car where he gave me a sample of B that he guaranteed would be better than anyone else's. It was. So I scored it every day for about a week. Then one day he couldn't get it together to come to my house so I thought **** it and just left it there. I was scared of getting withdrawals so I scored off someone else whose gear was reliably crap. And the day after that, and the next day, and so on I have used no drugs at all. When I couldn't sleep I tried Valium which only took the jagged irratable edge off. I kept getting told not to talk so loud and I was losing my temper with certain people on the phone who owe me money and the Valium probably did calm all that down. One night I took a zopiclone but not even that made me sleep and zopiclone is the best sleeper I've ever tried by a mile. Even in a severe manic episode if I dropped it at 10pm I'd be asleep by midnight (and then get up, raring to go at 2:30am!!) So it looks like I had a miniature half-arsed manic episode as I was only sleeping about 2 hours a day for days on end. Then one day I slept all afternoon. Then returned to not sleeping. Yesterday and last night I slept for hours and hours and hours and surprise surprise I feel sluggish with flashes of depression. I really hope I'm not going down.
It took me quite a while to get a hang of Andy Warhol's personality. There's more humour and warmth there than you'd credit at first glance. He did his last christmas day giving handouts in a soup kitchen, which was sad. No Halston. No Bianca Jagger. None of the glamorous friends. Just him and a member of Interview staff handing out free food to the homeless. In fact at the very end it seemed a lot of his old social set had dumped him ~ and then he died, after an operation as minor as a gallbladder-ectomy.
I'm supposedly getting Freesat TV within the next month and a half at the longest. I'm hoping to get someone else's cancellation. I can no longer bear living with four channels of snow and endless trails for things on BBC3 and E4 and other channels everyone else seems to get in Britain apart from me.
I went outside and had a good scout round for satellite, cable and other TV inputs going into our house. The aerial on our roof doesn't work but there IS an old satellite dish up there, right on top of my bedroom and I looked and looked for a line coming in. I found the cable line which the installers helpfully split so I can route that in through my upstairs window. Does anybody know how to get free cable TV? I have the right box and everything but no viewing card. I plugged it in yesterday and it said "digital TV initializing" which was the biggest wind up as I knew it wasn't even lined into the cable. But please anybody how do I get free cable? As you can see I have become obsessed with television. This is because my life is otherwise empty and I was getting so depressed that as recently as yesterday I found myself lost and staring into space in Morrisons. Not just once but three times. I even did it at the till. Just nothing nothing nothing there. No inspiration no joy no hope and barely any life. I feel much better now because I've started taking my medication again and it works QUICK. I had genuinely forgotten to take it for about two weeks hence the lull. Remember those happy days when not taking medication made me totally off my head manic? I wish I could be on that side of the equation. Not raving mad. But a little bit high. That would be good. There is a drug dealer with heroin I can actually feel so guess who I've been phoning. The bags are tiny which just shows how rubbishy most heroin must be nowadays to even be able to get high on such a tiny dose. I don't know what I'm going to do. My only hope in practical terms is a bit of mania. When I am manic I feel high anyway and go vehemently against drugs. If I could be manic I could be clean. I want away from all these drugs but look in despair at my own life and my own behaviour and think what for what for what for?
I'm very depressed. I've been taking drugs. I'm trying to get my TV sorted out. I either need to pay for an aerial to be fitted (wouldn't count on my landlord bothering with that in a million years) or more likely a dish. If I get it pointed at 19.2E I get loads of channels in German. So I can educate myself as I stare gormlessly into space for hours on end. I'm supposedly moving house almost immediately but frankly it's worth paying £150 just to hurry the move up and I get to keep the digibox. I'll just have to convince the community nuthouse I'm moving to that Euro TV will be to my benefit. I can also get Freesat installed for £67 but that's too complicated (they only take payment by debit or credit card) whereas if I arrange it myself and pay extra I can pay in cash and should get a cash discount. So that's all that's happening at the moment. Me trying not to take drugs and getting increasingly irritated by the rubbishy picture on my telly. 4 channels and you have to move the aerial to view each individual one. On a lucky day you can even get channel 5. I do possess a freeview box and bought a £70 high gain rooftop aerial on Wednesday. Unfortunately I hadn't a clue how to assemble it. So took it back to Argos under their 14 day money back guarantee in favour of a simpler aerial which supposedly came fully assembled but I couldn't work out how to fit the coaxial cable to the gizmo that plugs in the back (even though I have done this before albeit over 5 years ago). So I brought that one back and changed it for a £59.99 really posh indoor aerial that eventually scanned in some freeview channels (minus BBC, ITV and Channel 4 ie the main channels everyone buys it for) only for it to claim "no signal" on every single one. At one point I thought Al Jezeera was going to come through but no such luck. I only like Al Jezeera because I know George Bush wanted to bomb it. And no I am not an Islamic fundamentalist. Well that's that. I woke up feeling really sick today and I think it might have been withdrawal. A drug dealer on the street gave me a free sample of strong heroin which sorted me right out. Now I've had my methadone and intend to stick forever after to that even though the clinic have a ridiculous policy of insisting that anyone on a declining dose MUST drink it in the chemists under supervision, while a person on a level dose is allowed to take theirs home! This is all "to make sure you drink all your medication". Yeah, as if you're going to drink less than all when you're on a detox. Really logical. Of course I could have opted for take homes and just cut myself down but then I'm going to get moved back to the old catchment area of the old clinic and would have to either go back up to the dose prescribed or confess to the dose I was actually on because all new "clients" at methadone clinics are automatically put on supervised consumption for a few weeks. So that's that. I took eight pairs of jeans and two pairs of pensioner style trousers plus a vase full of the most horrible artificial flowers I've ever seen (all magnolia and brown, like artistically arranged dead moths). Got rid of that tat. Still have an everest sized amount of rubbish to go. Now I must leave you as this computer is about to terminate me. Please someone send me some happy vibes I'm so miserable.
I'VE FOUND a new internet cafe that hopefully lets you publish posts after posting them. The one I had been using before had something ikky about their computers. So, a 20 minute walk later... and I'm here. Just around from crack corner. But I'm feeling strong. I'm truly fed up of all drugs; the last time was "the last time". I am resolved.
GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING. Finally I have got on a (public) computer that works because the mad woman who's always hogging it isn't here today. That kebab I had yesterday had way more salad than in the picture by the way. I woke up at 7am-ish so I'm already craving a lie-down. But no! Dishes have to be washed. I have purchased brand new Alpine flavour washing up liquid just for the occasion. Also I am dead set on FINALLY EMPTYING OUT THE COLLECTED ASSORTED RUBBISH MY HOUSE IS FULL OF. I have found out I am a compulsive hoarder of spectacular proportions. Eg I have at least 4 if not 5 televisions. I haven't a clue whether any bar the one I use actually work. I threw out 3 dining chairs earlier in the year. Clutter clutter. Endless pears of jeans with busted pockets. Or huge holes in them. Or too small. Or too big. Or just wrong. Endless clothes with fag burns and holes and motorbike-repair-style oil stains upon them. No! Life is going out of control. And I missed Jeremy Kyle (stuck record talk show host who "resolves" loud lower class people's problems and is 100% likely to criticize anybody who dares not to have a job!) because I was glugging my methadone. 
I did drink a can of cyder this morning, but my alcohol is less than half the govt's recommended weekly limits, meaning NO DOCTORLY PERSON CAN CRITICIZE ME for the odd drink. I was never into AA type meetings because everybody seems to say "I'd have one drink then I couldn't stop" whereas I always could stop after one. I'd space my drinks throughout the day to achieve a mild but constant intoxication. I never liked the taste of booze. And I never liked feeling drunk and out of control. Ironically it was a feeling of being IN control that hard drugs, specifically heroin, gave me. Confidence. Energy. Antidepressant effect. My problems were over! (So it seeeeeemed, ahem.) Oh cripes I had better ping off now else I'll only get terminated mid-sentence. Take care y'all!
to get to that overheated chemist's shop. Strangely, apart from feeling cold, I feel fine at home. As I say, it's only when I start moving myself that I get a disgusting sweat on that only evaporates a good couple of hours after sipping the noxious gunk I am prescribed. I feel my life is over now I'm no longer taking drugs. OK I do indulge about once a fortnight but I never feel the gear. I've had the odd bit of crack but I don't even like that. So I'm stuck in sobriety and hating it because I'm so unmotivated and down.
THIS IS what I wrote on Sunday, but the (public) computer wouldn't let me publish...
OK it's now Wednesday and I'm still coughing and spluttering thanks to the Common Cold. I'm thinking of purchasing an electronic cigarette, you know, the type that light up then you suck in pure nicotine vapour minus any tar. You even see "smoke" that is actually water vapour, a vehicle for the nicotine.
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