My House

MY FRIEND PASCAL wanted to score today so I came with him to a house where we waited for nearly an hour as the inhabitants piped their breakfast. "It wasn't a proper crackhouse," Pascal knowledgeably declared at one point afterwards. Well it wasn't that pleasant a house. In reply to Vincent: what IS my own house like ... I am tempted (daydreamer that I am) to give a description of my ideal home. Just saw on television a documentary about this guy (an architect) who is attempting to renovate a 14th century castle to live in again as a fully-fledged 7-bedroom home. I had to switch off in the end as just couldn't handle the stress of watching that. Anyhow my house is a council hostel so you enter a dark hall that smells of old dog-blankets. Up flights of grubby stairs to the bathroom etc. Depending upon my fellow occupants the atmosphere of this place has changed dramatically at different times. I don't really know what to say, it's not the most salubrious of homes. We have no plugs in any communal sink or the bath at present. And we never did have a shower. The radiators were on most of last summer until I eventually turned them off using a piece of boltcutter like equipment borrowed from a friend. Now they will barely come on again and to be honest I do not want radiator heating in my room. I would far rather use my own heater as and when required which is what I do.

Funny... I am severely running short of inspiration to talk about the place any more.

Basically it's just a place I want to get out of as soon as I possibly can. So I'm going to write a bestselling novel. That is my only hope of escape..!

My Dreamtime Wednesday

DREAMING, RECOVERING , WAKING, REDREAMING, REAWAKENING ... what is when when this is now?

After a seemingly incredibly long night during which my loud thinking repeatedly awakened me I sit here at close to 6pm wondering what to make of it all. Famous faces, vacuous spaces all spinning through my mind. What can I give voice to in the darkness? It is sunset now. The sun is vanishing and all of us here must survive throughout the long night.

Thank God for electric lighting!!

Laundretta did a little more tantrum-giving. One time when I opened the front door to her when she had lost Matran's key for the zillionth time she (& why on earth did she do this?!?) "offered me out" for a fight!! Something to do with her drunken gurglings ... she thought I somehow took issue with her ... or cared about her sozzled brain's shortcircuited connexions. I stepped over her and told her not to mistake me for someone who gave a sh--.

Mother Hubbard was going ape this morning because she couldn't score. Pascal saved the day, offering to purchase a weighed amount with her money. So I came with him to a vulgar house. Crackhouse might be the word the newspapers would use for it. Three black early twentysomethings sitting round a breakfast table having their breakfast. Only food did not come into it. Breakfast for them came in white smokey form: crack cocaine. And one of them, perhaps the biggest one in there, with particularly rampant afro hair outgrowings and the pastiest pallid face turned out upon our leaving actually to be a woman!!

I'm glad I brought a newspaper with me to that place. Not only did it kill the boredom of sitting in someone else's "crack"house nonrentpaid virtual squat (and I'm sure that's what it was, somewhere the landlord was being strung out for as long as he possibly could be for no rent at all...) but avoided my making eyecontact with any of these people who thought they were so ... well, not cool but so whatever they thought they were ... and basically gave me a mental teleport outta that situation. I'm getting old now. Too old for situations like that.

At long last, nearly an hour later, Pascal's friend's friend eventually showed up with this heroin and we made good our escape. I couldn't help but wonder, as we walked out, who those young people were, how they made their money, what they thought they were doing and where they were all going in life. Sometimes it's so much easier to focus those questions on somebody else.

Am I making any sense in an otherwise nonsensical day? O what am I saying? The day has gone past. Evening is come. Tomorrow shall arise as predicted.

I have nothing to latch on to. Nothing IS as predicted. Does that make any sense to you. Does that make any sense?

I want to lie down. And then unconsciousness takes away the time. And dreams knit together what remains of reality into fables. Simple as. Simple.

If only life was that straightforward!

Tuesday TV Views Day

WEARILY I CLETTERED ALONG last night, half-sleeping and half-not. Waking to television shows to teach schoolchildren to pass science examinations. Waking to Friends but too tired to stay awake anyway through it. Waking to Frasier eventually. I love Frasier. After Friends it probably is my favourite American sitcom. (Might I just interject here: American sitcoms were viewed over here for decades as rubbish. The Cosby Show being a really good example. Riproariously popular on your side of the pond. And yet lacking any wit or bite or point of view except that of the slightly right wing Reader's Digest-reading Montel Williams viewing homeowning parent:... know what I mean by that?? It wasn't until Friends came along that any American sitcom became popular over here. And suddenly an invasion of American TV happened. Not so much on our screens (because we've always had American imports (though we make more of our own shows than any other country in the English-speaking world)) but in our hearts. Before the 1990s most of those imports were regarded as candifloss TV. Barely there. Rarely missed. (A few exceptions, of course.) But in the 1990s American telly really seemed to grow up. And now I can say and mean it that ER is better than Casualty (British ER). And Friends and Frasier are better than ... well ... anything else. What a long posting about nothing. Do you see now why I lived for so long without TV? Am I making sense? It was all to do with loving it too much. Not hating it. I just marvel that I did about a year and a half without it!!!

Laundretta hasn't woken since her last bender. Matran has been dead quiet. The house is in drab misery:-== What's new there? But I'm not sleeping as long as before. I'm off to finish the last of my Sainsbury's marge-fried veggie fingers in wholemeal pitta breads & a dash of tomato ketchup. Sorry I know those ingredients were ever so slightly offputting but I love 'em when they're crispy!!! All the Best now. Gleds.

PS If y'all would like to view some fabulous fotografs, (horsey, doggie, flowers and wildlife) have a click on this.

The Seductive Process of Addiction

LIVING A DREAM HALF AWAKE: my favourite sort of day. When I can sit alone and, not having slept so well at night, and having drugged up I drowse and wake and drift between wakefulness and dreaming. It's in these states that I wonder whether dreams or wakefulness are really the more real... Not that I even needed drugs ever to drift out, disengage, dissociate. I do that so easily anyway... I question why heroin ever needed to come into the picture.

But drug-taking doesn't necessarily have the deep, dark roots that people so frequently ascribe to it. ("You must have been dreadfully hurt to be taking such hard, hard drugs")... isn't necessarily true at all. As the one perceptive psychiatrist I have ever met once told me: people take drugs because they make them feel good>> simple as. And I'm inclined to agree-- but only on one level. On another: many addicts do have all manner of pain and darkness and horrific things in their pasts. Some do. But there are as many reasons for using as there are people who use. In fact there are many many MORE reasons. Nobody does anything for just one reason, not in normality. Everything in life is multifaceted. Drug addiction, dull, depressing and overridingly BORING as it is in actuality, is no different.

How I got hooked on heroin is a long, long tale of caution intermittently thrown to the winds, of sadness, U-turns, resolutions broken and bad friendships. I willfully went out looking for heroin. I was very depressed and knowing the stuff might kill me the first time I took it only heightened its glamour. For two or three years I managed to keep my using to a one weekend a month type of basis (my tolerance was so small that in the beginning and when the drugs were good, I could get high four times by smoking £10 worth). Even so, there were times, looking back, having used the stuff every day for over a week that I was putting on layers of clothes, taking them off, never able quite to get the temperature right... I now know, with bitter hindsight that I was suffering very light withdrawal and not even knowing it. I'm glad I didn't know either, for that would have pushed me towards using. Another thing that put me off was the unpleasantness of scoring. Right from the beginning I was getting introductions directly to the dealers themselves, not going through a "middleman" junkie friend the way I subsequently found out (years too late!) that most casual users did. No, I had to do it different. And how I hated dealing with these people. The bad vibes I felt emanating from them like radiant shadows. (Contradiction, but I once saw that in an hallucination. A shadow-man walked towards me when I was alone, at night, in a huge industrial squat. Nobody to hear me scream. A shadow man effulging a light that literally engulfed me crept up to the cupboard where I was sleeping, opened the door, flooded me with light and bzzzz-PING! He vanished again. Leaving me in pitch darkness... In my early heroin days I knew somebody who would sell me small bits of methadone. Now for all the complaints junkies will make about methadone (mostly because it takes so very long to take effect, often two hours or more, when you really need it to). If you are nontolerant, methadone can make you pretty high. Only it takes, as I say, at least two hours to do this. Which I do not advise. For it is even MORE dangerous in overdose (being longer-acting) than heroin. So do not mess with the meth. OK? Anyhow, I gradually got into the habit of recreationally drinking this stuff until I was knocking back a small bottle every other day... Went away to stay with a friend out of town only to be hit by a mystery virus that made me hot and cold and sweaty and restless, gave me diarrhoea and had me waking absolutely drenched in sweat in the middle of the night ... I knew some naughty friends. They told me I was "sick" (ie in withdrawal). I didn't believe them but was more than willing to go along with an excuse to use heroin. Strangely, every dose of heroin I took mysteriously relieved this strange condition. It was only nearly two years later with much contemplation and hindsight that I looked back and realized: yes the seeds of my addiction were sown all the way back then. That was the first time in my life that someone gave me a "chill pill" (chloral betaine -- a kind of tranquillizer or sleeping pill) that I felt the "mellow" effects of, but it singularly failed to hit the right spot. That spot being the opiate spot. Only methadone and heroin hit that.

The sloping down of my addiction was a long and gradual and drawn-out process, so gradual in fact that to this day I cannot isolate a specific time or line I crossed from not being an addict to suddenly becoming one. So many little events occurred. From me willfully going out and scoring, experimenting in secret (I never had a bunch of heroin friends in the beginning. I knew the local junkies, but I used alone. And I kept the heroin part of my life very strictly separate from the rest of it.) I got more and more used to the drug. I tore myself repeatedly away. One afternoon having been in great internal conflict, meandering down the street I picked up what I had at first assumed to be a bag of sweets. This was no sweets. It was several grams of bagged up heroin. Enough to keep me high every afternoon for five weeks. That got me round my dislike of scoring and broke down a hugely important barrier: that of using every day. Of course I got a little habit. Came off it with strictly reducing methadone. That summer, the official version was that I was clean. I was not clean. I was using about once a week. What really did it for me was striking up a relationship with someone who had a ten year habit. She wanted to use at every opportunity that arose. How I loved that ride! ...

And so it went on.

And here I am now. Just remember this: how slowly or how gradually something happens means nothing in the end. Because -- whether you get there slowly or quick -- the destination is exactly the same.

Do not use heroin!

I'm knackered now, it is a quarter to two a.m. and I'm going to have to sign out. Will tell more tomorrow ...

Laundretta's Spin

WELL THAT WAS A BIT OF A curt and to the point post about Laundretta. That's what comes of typing straight into the computer, not reading it back and pressing PUBLISH without any consideration. But my rule of nondeletion means it has to stay. I keep things in despite the humiliation they cause to myself. Despite the bad light they throw on me. I'm not keeping this blog to look cool or together (what a lie that would be!) I'm striving to tell the truths about addiction that go so frequently untold. There are many, many of them.

As for Laundretta's situation (she cancelled out on an operation that should have been scheduled for today) she has my full sympathy. I think her anaesthetist told her to drink as little alcohol as she possibly could and to use as little opiates on top of her methadone script as she possibly could. So what did she do but go on an alcohol bender all weekend. I know precisely how she must have felt. Ever-increasingly wound up inside. Conflict building, building up. And she relieves the conflict the way an addict always does by taking the drug, maybe messing up the situation but simplifying it at the same time. What can be more straightforward than using, using, using. As per normal? I remember the day I went to a private clinic to be switched to Subutex (buprenorphine). To do this you need to be taking as little heroin (and in particular methadone) as possible. I was told to turn up as withdrawal-sick as I could bear. Of course I could not bear it. So I used and actually used more than I would have done if I'd just used as per normal. Using to try and desperately steady my nerves. What a hopeless task. And then, having been told by the doctor to take the first dose of Subutex when I really was craving a hit, I took it half way home. Because I was craving. I'd have had a hit (ordinarily, assuming I had "gear" on me, the minute I got in through the door). So as far as I was concerned I was indeed craving. He didn't mean psychologically craving. He meant physically craving. That is what did it for me. The too-early dose of the buprenorphine precipetated some pretty horrible withdrawal symptoms. NutNut wanted to call an ambulance. No way! I protested. No way was I going to feel like that, writhing on an Accident and Emergency trolley!... know what I mean??!? So I just toughed it out, as I had no option but to ... eventually awakening the next morning feeling bright and early and very very vivid. The Subutex had reset my system. A miracle drug: I didn't feel like a junkie anymore.

Laundretta has my sympathy because in her shoes I don't see that I'd have done anything different at all. Only perhaps despite the drinking I'd still have dragged myself in the hospital, looking forward to being knocked out cold very much indeed..!

Yummy Queries Answered, Youtube Videos, Tropical Marine Fishes ...

IN RESPONSE TO YOUR QUESTIONS, the dinner of yumminess devoured on Saturday night was four (fried) Bird's Eye Vegetable Fingers (fried in Sainsbury's own brand marge (next thing up from Value range), in wholemeal pitta breads from the Turkish corner shop with a dash of Sainsbury's own tomato ketchup. Mmmm!! Really yummie!!

My correspondent Slaghammer posted up a wonderful Youtube video: Male Restroom Etiquette. As well as Male Restroom Etiquette: A Response, there's a Female Restroom Etiquette for your entertainment as well as lovely old Spiders on Drugs. So have an entertaining time regarding these links. And all credit to Slaghammer. Who has one of the most entertaining commentary images I've ever seen. I hope y'all have immense fun regarding these viddiclips..!!..

I could not get to a computer yesterday, hence nothing said. Yesterday was a pretty "straight" day; ie no drugs. Having lost a bottle of methadone I thought I was going to be feeling rather unwell. Don't get me wrong, I HAD taken some, but really felt I could do with quite a lot more. So when eventually I did find the mislaid hundred milligrams bottle -- man I was disco-dancing into the evening!!

There's little sensible to say now. I'm still reading my Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment, the English translation). Saw some wonderful David Attenborough nature films on Mother Hubbard's television yesterday. Life on Earth: what a blast from the past that one was. I remember watching when that first came out and thinking how amazing it all was, the shots they'd got. And I was only something like ten back then ..! Later on last night they showed Meercat Manor (they love Meercats at the BBC: I do find their contrived names: Bluebell, Shakespeare, Parsley rather idiotic but that's naturalists for you, there you go.) Later still it was coastal waters of the Indian meets Atlantic Oceans on the blunt tip of South Africa. If you're going on a beach holiday be sure to pick the Right Hand Side (ie the East side) of the Cape/whatever it's called because on that side the water's warm as a bath. On the other side, I'm reliably informed, you can barely stick your toe into it. But it's lovely for great white sharks! The Indian Ocean warm current mixed vividly with the Atlantic cold on thermal sattelite image: creating a wonderful glow. And myriads of tropical reef fish swirled and gleddered about the teeming waters. It looked lovely. Hammerhead sharks came out to eat them. And sardines appeared too. They were probably looking for a tin. Don't they like use discarded tins and matchboxes as their fishy bedroom..?

Well I'm rabbitting now and shall have to go.

O I forgot to tell the news of my madhouse: Laundretta was all set to have an operation today but pulled out at the last moment. Having had a special meeting with the anaesthetist and told him about her methadone dose, alcohol drinking and heroin smoking, she was told to cut down on all of these as much as possible. And of course in trying to do so stressed herself so incredibly much, poor girl, that she ended up on a drunken bender all weekend. Now she's too paranoid to come in incase the anaesthesia won't work properly because of her enormous tolerance to opiates (and alcohol shows a crosstolerance to benzodiazepines and barbiturates, I think. All of which drug families are employed in the general anaesthesia cocktails modern hospitals use.) So I don't blame her reluctance to go under not knowing if she truly will go under. I mean, what could be worse than waking up under the scalpel as many people have done, especially with the modern methods of light anaesthesia... She tells me she's going to arrange a proper and full alcohol detox before next time. I hope this is true and not just a fob-off. She doesn't need to fob off me. But I don't want her to fob off herself. Her life is one hell of a mess. She seems always to have surrounded herself with bad men ... I do feel sorry for her sometimes.

All the best now and take care, y'all!!

Gledsxx

Yumm-Yumm: My Industrial Cookery Secrets

MUNCHED A YUMMY TEA tonight: Vegetables (42%) (Sweetcorn, Carrots, Peas), Water, Breadcrumbs (Contains Turmeric Extract, Paprika Extract), Potato Flake, Sunflower Oil, Wheat Flour, Salt, Eggwhite Powder, Yeast Extract, Maize Starch, Onion Powder, Mustard fried in Water, Vegetable Oils, Salt (1.4%), Emulsifier: Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Preservative: Potassium Sorbate, Citric Acid, Flavouring, Colour: Carotines: Vitamins A and D for ten minutes and served with a dash of Tomatoes, Spirit Vinegar, Sugar, Modified Maize Starch, Salt, Spice Extract (contains Celery Extract) and Soya Bean Oil. 140g Tomatoes in 100g Product (so it's magic as well!!) in Unbleached Untreated Wheatflour (Wholemeal), Water, Salt, Yeast, Preservative (Potassium Sorbate). Mmm:- Just what I'd have put in if I'd prepared it from scratch ...

And what did you eat today?...

PS: For beautiful Turkish cookery recipe's in English go to http://turkishkitchenmelbourne.blogspot.com. Thanks Ceviz!

Where Did The Old Me Get To?

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT this morning. Matran wasn't hurting Laundretta yesterday btw. I wouldn't have laughed about it if that was so. She is up and about this morning. Quite sober and together: especially for her. He is being very quiet. He's a quiet guy. I woke up not thinking of drugs this morning. I'm pondering over and over more and more what am I going to do with my life these days. As I've stated before, the days are long gone when I ever wake up thinking, "What am I going to do with this day?" What will I put right? Attain? Achieve? Those days, which were a big part of my old life, have well and truly flown the nest. The way grown-up children inevitably do. But I want them back. The grown-up version of Creative me. Creative people by necessity do create. Their actions preceed them. I am not creative. O yes I am potentially so. I have the potential to be an extremely creative guy. But I'm not. I create nothing. I do nothing: except lumber lugubriously from day to dismal day. And I want out of that morass. This isn't even (merely) down to drugs. It's due to laziness and melancholy and the inexorable result of years lived never for tomorrow, always just to solve the problem of today. The drugs problem. The problem of getting enough drugs to fix up not to be sick. That has been my life. My only wonder has been that it has not lead me into far more trouble than it actually did do.

The old me decided to go to Thailand and took up learning not only to speak but to read and write Thai. Long story but I ended up in India: don't ask. Story of my life. The old me saw a job going for a clubbing correspondent in a music magazine. I was clubbing every week at the time and knew the "marketplace". What do I need for noisy nightclubs where a dictaphone will pick up more background noise than speech? I definitely need shorthand. And so I'd learnt the basics in a week and given up smoking at the same time. (I used the shorthand pad to make endless doodles every time my hands wanted to reach for cigrettes.) The twin goal-setting worked really well. Although I never got the job I did stay off cigarettes -- completely -- long enough to go all summer and through New Year's Eve not touching the dreaded tobacco. Now I'm smoking so heavily the inside of my front teeth are black. What my lungs look like I hate to consider. Though I've never been the type to jump up and down proclaiming "what I'm going to do", I did used to seize opportunities, set goals and actually (after a fashion) attain them. I don't set any goals now. I don't think about them. A couple of years into this drug addiction I stopped myself one afternoon realizing: I don't daydream anymore. I used to spend my entire life planning on what to do next. As an addict I knew what to do next. Make money. Spend it on heroin. Take heroin. Make more money. And so on. So simple I never needed to consider anything more than where the money was to be made and who I'd ring once I had it ...

Maybe this is what growing up in Britain does to you, but I remember a few years ago telling a friend that if you wanted to be successful (and why would you want that, he probably asked himself) the key was to set goals. He looked at me wide-eyed and queried: "REALLY?" This was a new concept to him. I couldn't have survived without having set goals day to day. Another thing I learnt was that life is fulfilled day by day by day. Not by lunging into things quickly and getting them over with though of course there's always a time and a place for that approach. But a little of the same thing every day mounts up. Books are written. Languages learned. Money saved. Et cetera.

I want the old me back!!

PS I suppose I have indeed created something lately: I've created this blog.

Further to my Earlier Post

YES FURTHER TO MY EARLIER POST, Nicole commented that she didn't know how she could put up with Laundretta & Matran's daily (or more to the point, nightly) played-out soap opera woes, (see below) no matter how addicted she was to anything. Dan said why don't I move out... which I am on a waiting list to do so at some indeterminate future time. When it all started with Matran and Laundretta I was in such a mental state, I barely noticed there was anything unusual about their behaviour. Nowadays I do: however I simply sleep through their bang-crashing, wailing, shrieking and yodelling. None of this is "sexual", incidentally. It is all argument-oriented. Or more to the point Laundretta throwing a tantrum. Earlier on tonight I heard bang-crashes on their floor. Now she claims the man underneath Matran's room is obsessed with her (she seems to think all men are, but there you go). And has claimed he comes out of the bathroom in a shocking state of undress doing shocking things before her. I do not know what to make of this. But they both seem to delight in stomping on the poor guy's ceiling as often as they ... well, remember to ... I think he is mentally ill as much as the rest of us. So there were more bang-crashes on the floor and I hear her desperate voice (desperate she does really well, but she's told me herself she's a first-rate liar. So I watch her now like a poker player. I know her tics.) She was imploring Matran to "get off me; let me go" he must finally have lost patience with her and grabbed her. I smiled to myself and turned back to my reading book: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's actually a really good read, despite being "literature". I can kind of relate to the characters in an unusual way.

Sometimes I'm sceptical of "literature". A Midsummer Night's Dream for example: was Shakespeare paid by the schools curriculum authority to write something nonsensical to torment generations of schoolkids with its meaninglessness? And add in characters called Titania and Bottom just so at first glance it seems like it's going to be entertaining..? I love Shakespeare but I loathe that play. I like the big four tragedies and Romeo and Juliet. And I've never seen Cymbeline or The Tempest but would like to.

I saw Valium Marilyn earlier today, she's had bird flu. Well that's what she would have said if only it had come to mind. Common cold is my diagnosis. And hasn't left her couch for three days. "Well at least you've got cable TV (the full-on package as well)." That doesn't make any difference," she claimed. Well it does. Last time I was there for hours we watched Animal Planet practically the whole time. That's why I did without TV for so long by the way. The polar opposite of being sniffy and bourgeois about it, I'd let TV intrude into my every waking (and sleeping) hour. I never used to turn it off. I only had the ghetto version of digital, which in my old room used to work through a £1.99 set-top aerial (less than 30 channels) but you pay £20-£40 now for the box and there's no subscriptions for ever. My televisual fantasy is HD in every room (smallest possible screens for optimum picture quality), Sky satellite plus motorized multi-satellite for foreign plumbed into every room in my fantasy house including the bathroom. In fact in my old life television never got turned off unless there was a power-cut. That's why I threw the failing old telly out and did not replace it. And tried to live via books instead. Which is really hard for someone with no focus. The last novel I read cover to cover (a veritable achievement for me) was The Fingersmith by Sarah Walters. Set in Victorian/whatever London and Berkshire (or somewhere like that ...) well you really want to read it for yourself. Even though it was nominated for a major literary prize it's still a good read (it didn't win though, so they made a mistake nominating it in my view. Only boring books ever get nominated for those prizes.) I like the kind of books people actually read, not leave on glass coffee tables to impress guests...

Well this has tailed off the original point. What was that?? I'm musing on my next project in my mind. Then I will do it. Then I will tell you what it is. When I've finished it. And then life will go on precisely as it had before: because that's what my life always does!!

PS... Except one day it really won't. If I got money behind me the first thing I would do is put myself in private treatment. I'd arrange an anaesthetic detox (which, last time I looked into it, involved flying out to Spain, being put under for three days and waking up with a naltrexone implant that fully blockades all heroin's effects for at least six weeks. Knowing myself well enough and having smoked the stuff while blockaded on Subutex -- no way on earth would I smoke crack in these circumstances. The comedown was horrendous. So that's two drugs dealt with. The last one is alcohol and that's down to me. But then again, on Subutex even that lost most of its appeal. I did still drink, but only one or two cans a day. And I shared my last mouthful with the pavement rather than swallow the liquid Brillo Pads stuff. (Cheap cyder is 49p-59p a can. 500mls at 7.5% ABV. The very cheapest form of alcohol you can get in this country. Without opitates dulling it, the body suddenly becomes prone to hangovers again... no thanks.) So I'd do this private detox. Get the naltrexone implant and use naltrexone pills as follow-up meds in the weeks when the implant has worn off, thus completely blockading myself against heroin for as long as I want. Further to this, part two would already be instigated: I would have left London behind and all the users and dealers I know and I would live somewhere I've always wanted to go. My top three choices in descending order are Berlin, Amsterdam or Paris. People associate Amsterdam particularly with drugs. But if I can't take the drugs I used to like I would be straight. And not everyone in Amsterdam is a junkie. Nicole isn't. All cities have their druggie sides. I would not let that put me off living somewhere I've always always wanted to go. So that's what I would do... or maybe to put it another way. That is what I will do -- soon as I get the chance.

Laundretta's Howling

LAUNDRETTA HAS TAKEN to sleeping for the last couple of nights on the first floor landing (that is the second floor to you Americans) outside the bathroom. Yesterday night she lay there one breast exposed, a half-drunk bottle of white wine beside her, using her handbag as a pillow and snoring away. She has been rowing (row rhymes with cow: our word for a marital/relationship "fight") with Matran the Rat Man. Although I dislike him for many reasons he has been strikingly stoical in the face of her acting out. Many many times she slams doors (literally all hours of day and night) bellows his name, insults him, has one-sided conversations (as if anyone listening gives a s---) etc, throws tantrums and worst of all indulges in spates of forced "crying" when she either squeals like a swine trapped by the balls, or a wolf trying out for coloratura soprano operatics. It all sounds very false. I never remarked to myself that there was anything so unusual about this because everyone bar no-one who has ever lived in my house (self included) is deranged in some way. And when they did first move in I was so off the planet in my own little way that other people's 4am howlings... well they barely impinged on my consciousness.

I was most ungracious to my visitors yesterday as they called round in the middle of a personal sulk. Well I don't know what else to call it. I was hibernating today as well, until about 4pm when I finally decamped from the nest I built using duvets etc in the middle of a pile of rugs on the floor (why am I admitting to this? Why do I do it? I don't have an answer to either except I find a lot of beds far too soft.)

So I basically live in a madhouse. I'm only shocked I've managed to come out of there daily so very sane ...

Two People Disturb Me

A VOICE WAS CALLING me this afternoon. A posh (male) voice that I did not recognize. Calling me by my Christian name. (Maybe I had schizophrenia.) At some point this character got into my house and came upstairs to knock on my door. Assuming he was hiding there, I gathered keys, money, valuables together and shoved them in my pockets, opened the door: nobody there.

Venturing downstairs, nobody to be seen or heard. I did not open the front door, though. For all I knew this could be bailiffs or anything. Bailiffs will try and trick you by calling your first name in a familiar name to trick you into opening doors. They know all the cons and people don't admit it to their mates but of course they fall for them. Bailiffs wouldn't try these techniques on otherwise!

Ten minutes passed and again a soft knocking at my door. I demanded to know who it was and a wellknown shoplifter (he is about as famous, in a Dick Turpin kinda way, as any petty criminal gets to be in local circles) answered me. Very reluctantly I let him and his public school accomplice in. It was the accomplice, who is a nice lad from a posh background (and I bet his family give him absolutely f-all money or support) who had been calling me. That's why I couldn't place the voice. Unfamiliar because he's not someone I normally see except rapidly passing on (his) way back from expeditions and to or from liberating the financial value of purloined goods. They sat on my bed talking about prisons, nerve damage, hitting arteries and fights with women. It was mostly Da Man who talked while accomplice stayed quiet. Da Man I know from a decade ago when he was dealing. I gave my first or second ten pounds to a heroin dealer to him. So I remember this guy through dirt-tinted spectacles as the onset of my scuzzy habit. What else can I say??

Today all is upon me, all is stress, all too slow or else too fast, not there when it should be and intolerable when it is. It's one of those days. And these two characters were the last addition I welcomed. So I didn't make them feel welcome but they gave me a bit of free drugs and though accomplice was a little bothered, Da Man doesn't care what anyone thinks as long as his own needs are sorted, which they were in my presence. He got somewhere quiet to smoke his drugs. I hardly need mention what drugs they were but to put anyone who's wondering out of their contemplation he smoked crack and then some heroin. He has to smoke the heroin now because he's been on it for so very many years (at 55 years old) that inhaling vapours from tinfoil is the only way his body will tolerate taking heroin in. Why is everything about heroin so multiple-ly addictive? Rituals, routines, manoevres all become part of the brain-dulling day-in-day-out reality that is heroin addiction. A life minus excitement for the most part as it is minus pain. You take a drug that quashes both and life performs its own little rebound for you. The effects always speak for themselves far louder than anybody's testimony, if you get me.

I've decided to testify the details no-one else gives. Though it humiliates me often to do so, I think the unspoken aspects of the junkie life need speaking by someone.

And hence my blog ...

1. A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL who took part in the Sponsored Comments. Ruth has made 107 at the time of writing and so asked me to say she DOESN'T NEED ANY MORE. The £50 is winging its way to charity...

2. My doctor's appointment is now rescheduled for Friday so I can forget it then... (See the post below.)

3. Does anyone know how I get my photo identity on my comments? I've found a picture I like on the internet but blogger ask me for a "photo url" what on earth does that mean??

4. Am I supposed to post something grisly like last week, or dull like I normally do here? All I did today was miss my appointment and hibernate. I didn't want to go out anyway and was so put-out when I realized what I had done (see below). I did write a huge posting on neurotransmitters (why??) but that's on paper. I have a project up my sleeve that is fermenting (but no it is not home-made wine...)

5. OK that's me done for today. I quite like Tuesdays. EastEnders is on as I speak and I do not miss it anymore. It is quite nice not to feel attached to things either. EastEnders is the one TV prog I used to be well aware if I misssed, and I'm hardly alone in that. Try and score drugs while it is on if you don't believe me. I guarantee they will not be delivered until after the closing creds have rolled!!!

6. Righty-ho I'm off to get cod-in-parsley-sauce and grating cheese...

Every Time

EVERY TIME I DO SOMETHING I do it wrong. Whenever I juggle I drop at least one item. Whenever I'm successful at one aspect of life I'm neglecting something else. Why can I never get it right?? What have I done today? Gone and missed my appointment with the doctor. Which I know will really annoy them. And where is my phone for that matter. I have to go and sort this out now.

Why is there always something??

Charity Appeal - Leave 100 Comments

THIS IS A CHARITY APPEAL on behalf of my friend Ruth. Go to her "million stories" blog which is ruth-boofie.blogspot.com and leave a comment. If she gets 100 comments then £50 goes to a Cancer charity.

Other news of today... let me rack my brains and think of something: I'm not sure that I can. I've been most weary and dozing on the floor for most of this evening. Then the computer so severely misbehaved I seriously never thought I'd get to post - hence my braindeadness (well I'm not going to wind myself up at an essentially locked-out terminal thinking up stuff to say knowing I'll be unable to post it, am I??)

Tomorrow I see the doctor to try and sort self out a bit, so wish me luck with that.

And go to Ruth's blog and jolly her along with those hundred comments. You all know you can do it so don't be shy. Come on!! £50 goes to charity and you don't even have to fork out yourself!! What could be more convenient than that??

Okay Sunday; Roll On Monday..!

THE DAY HAS GONE THANKFULLY QUICKLY AND PAINLESSLY. CANNOT LIE: DRUGS HELPED. However, having said that, I woke up with methadone finally holding me - ie not freezing cold, not checking clock for mad 9am dash to pharmacy, not sweating all morning like a tropical amphibian. Have been watching things like Friends on telly. Channel 4 must have bought the rights to endless repeats over several years because they're certainly milking their money's worth out of that series. I love Friends though. It is my favourite sitcom by far. Absolutely Fabulous and Porridge are two others. But Friends is best. Also unlike Brit series, they make 24 episodes a year. Absolutely Fab came in about 3 or 4 series of 6 each ... I mean ..! Hardly a commercial decision. And the BBC has become increasingly commercialized in recent years.

Had Sunday lunch at Mother Hubb's house. Our crazy schizophrenic friend was there. Telling me he believed the entire London tube network had been built above ground and carefully sunk, among other remarkable things. He wants to be a heavyweight boxer of Mike Tyson magnitude, but the psychiatrists won't lower his compulsory meds enough for him to say he can train ...

We watched lots of television all afternoon. David Attenborough presenting the Life of Birds. I liked the one that gathered a massive beetle wingcase collection and laid the entire lot out lined up and sparkly side up to attract a mate. I like a bird like that. Most of the other birds in the mating prog just resorted to a good oldfashioned fight to stave off their rivals!!

It is not even seven pm but feels much later. I was going to continue my opinions on drugs treatments etc, but all that will have to wait till tomorrow as I don't have much time at this computer.

Okay, take care everyone!!

Gledsxx

Sober Now

WOW I WAS self-pitying earlier on, wasn't I? Well I had my "gear" and slept all afternoon and watched some rubbish on television and now I feel a lot better. Many thanks to everyone who got in touch. I'm not trying to scare people or shock people or be childish. Whenever I feel like that I am always put in the same quandry: to be careful what I say, for so many reasons. A trivial one being that I risk sounding like I'm just speaking for effect. Another one being that I don't want to cause people genuine hurt. The reasons go on ... On the other hand I did always call my blog "candid confessions". So if I'm not being "candid" and am holding off on the "confessions" I'm hardly being true to myself (or my blog) am I? Well I'm going to continue with my "theory of addiction" tomorrow ... Till then rest easy, y'all ...

PS Isn't it a pity we don't all speak the same language. Look what I found in Portuguese. It's intriguing. But I don't know that I'd have the patience to go through translating every paragraph ...

More I do not believe in the power of the sin, neither I import with that believe it, I only opt to living in a world where the truth is more proxima of that I feel. The people have of form so impregnated these ideias of that it is certain e is made a mistake that they finish living as marionettes in accordance with the values that it are impostas.E this make with that they leave to act, of living, not simplismente they dare to risk because such thing "is missed" and thus they finish seeing the life to pass without leaving the lugar.Por much time I was thus and today I see the quão donkey I was, in such a way of suffering that could have to evitado.Mudar everything this tambem is complicado..é very facil to be rock, dificil is to be glassware.

(From Psicotidiana)

Addicts ...?

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE I just wrote something and did not post it. Reason being: I'm not out to offend the people I mentioned.

Well I feel like my life is going down the toilet yet again. I am drunk & maudlin. I am waiting on someone who will "save" me from this situation. A two-stage save. 1. make money. 2. score. Actually 3-stage. Stage 3 is get a vein & make my day.

My veins have nearly ALL GONE.

I do not want to plunge a heavily acidified brown heroin mixture into the crook of my thighs. To do this you have to use a long orange needle (possibly the 1ml integral insulin 1ml "works" will do it but this is a debatable fact) but if not the massive blue horse needle--you plunge this not at a 45 degree angle as normally when injecting. You plunge it straight down right to the hilt. Right where a vein, a HUGE artery (that you do not want to inject into: you could lose your foot. EASILY) and the SCIATIC NERVE all run in close proximity. As I did mention before: doing this you can so easily & readily get DVT= deep vein thrombosis... I can't think of anyone who's done it for more than a few years and not had problems.

Cases in point.

1. When you inject into the "groin"/femoral vein as above desribed you go straight down. This feels gory & horrible. The acid itches your vein. You can often feel it tracking up towards your heart. Obviously I am used to this. But the implications do not escape me. (Not from going in the groin but in other veins.) THE ACID IS DISSOLVING THE VEIN.

2. Even if you don't get DVT eventually, from hitting the same/similar spots over&over&over a "sinus" develops. This is what they call on the street a "bullet hole" or an "eye". Ie. literally a hole big enough to put your little finger into going straight from surface flesh to vein. Eventually the vein & artery can become linked. In this case ... well read what I said about arterial injecting.

I know several people with one "bullet hole" each side. I met one in rehab who had three each side. That's what "habit" does to the body.

Incidentally if anyone reading this is/is thinking of/not initiated into but wants to inject ... YOU NEVER EVER INJECT INTO AN ARTERY. You can LOOSE FINGERS/TOES. if THIS HAPPENS take rings off asap. OR YOU WILL LOSE YOUR FINGERS. Ring ambulance asap. Why am I giving this advice. Will anyone listen . I think not.

3. Now I have parroted this myself... The supposed fact that addicts never grow up from the time they become an addict....

On the one hand. Yes this is true. I have seen for myself. Heroin addicts are hopelessly childish. Those that aren't childish INVARIABLY took up using later in life. Heroin is about escaping suffering. That is why addicts suffer even more than normal people. It's the law of diminishing returns. The law of natural inversion.

On the other hand... NA call ALL ADDICTS THE SAME. By that standard anyone addicted to tobacco is the same as a heroin addict. Are tobacco smokers hopelessly immature? I think not. So I don't know what to make of this point. But I felt the need to bring it up.

Okay I'm going again. I can't stand too much of this.

Friday not Sky High Day

IT'S ABOUT A QUARTER TO NINE NOW... maybe I shouldn't have been quite so negative in the previous post ... but hey, I have been in a famously sour mood for the last month.

My "conjuring trick" very nearly failed to materialize anything of worth earlier. Then I flounced my magic hankie once more... puff of smoke... hey presto!... £15 appears in my hand. I took this to a flat where I exchanged £10 for a tiny-looking heroin bag. The other £5 I spent on food. The days are gone when I donate my every last penny to the "cause". The heroin was supposedly strong (I can vouch that I tasted it last night.) If it had been cut, it would appear a lighter shade of orange in the works (coloured cut is a sophisticated process beyond the ordinary dealer's reach). I might add for clarity that our gear is always "brown" meaning from peachy-"flesh" (white skin) colour through concrete/wall plaster pine/blond brown to dark muscovado. Usually it's at the lighter end of the scale. A greyish light mud-coloured substance not unlike dried mud. But quite concrete coloured. When you cook it up (adding citric acid to liberate the drugs) the resulting solution is usually a far richer brandy-brown than the powder would appear to produce. So I'm pretty sure the drugs are indeed the same. Just my useless body isn't tolerating them... correction is tolerating them too well. My tolerance to heroin has always been sky-high. I'm like an opiate-sponge. Cocaine... initially I seem to be able to use more than most other people. But very quickly I come to a point where a metaphorical giant power-swich is flicked in my head to ON. And stays ON for a long while afterwards. So all in all I'd say I cannot tolerate cocaine or crack because I'm far more prone to the negative effects (including florid voice-hearing paranoia) than most people I know. Last time I binged big-style on that ... well I could easily have been sectioned if only a doctor had got to me. I was in one hell of a state. Nearly electrocuted myself. The devil was hissing at me in one corner of the room. From another, secret cameras were filming my every move. I got quickly fed up of wearing no clothes to "give them an eyeful" and took to dismantling plugs/etc with a small screwdriver. To prize out their evil electronic monitoring eyes. And very nearly electrocuted myself. What am I blabbering about here???

Okay well back to today, someone lent me £15 (my ONE possible source of loans). Dealer was there on time. After an unremittingly bleak day I felt more of a lift from scoring than the drugs actually gave me. All heroin does (generally) is make me feel no different whatsoever for taking it. Or possibly makes me dull and sleepy. A not worth paying lots of money for feeling. Not even as nice as a sleeping pill (and weaker). So I question why I bother using at all, I really do. Okay I'm not up for rabbiting on so I'll continue tomorrow....

Laundretta/Nutnut

THE PHONE RANG AT 9.04 this morning. Do I "want anything"? When do I not "want" "it"? Only problem: no money in house. (Or bank.) So I said I would call later. (When he won't be answering bc he is so lazy. So someone else will get the business.) Later being after I have conjured readies out of the air by dint of magic trick. ...That sounds like babelfish talking.

I posted nothing yesterday because I was seriously not in the mood. Could have got myself into a dangerous situation. Lost my temper with someone. O wot can I say nothing.

Sitting here dripping with sweat. BADLY. Have taken medication. It is not holding me. If you held my hand you'd feel like you were touching a tropical frog. Sweat is running down my back like a mini river. That is how Nutnut knew when I was "using" again (years back)... when I came in on a winter's morning sweating profusely, ran a bath (I was so clean in that house ... the bath being my only excuse to lock the bathroom door. And keep it locked for long enough to draw up water. Prepare a spoon. Get filter. Citric acid. Cigarette lighter. (If I forgot this I came out pretending I was desperate for a bathtime cig.) Do not be heard flickflickflicking on lighter. Her banging on door. Are you in that bath. Me sitting with one leg in water stirring it. Can't you hear that I am? Then when injection prepared got into hot water. (Brings veins up lovely.) Then try to restrain swearing etc when they didn't behave readily enough. Eventually sink back in water not caring if drowned (maybe that was half the attraction, well I have to be honest. You never lived with that woman.) And then carefully hide every little twist of torn syringe wrapper, cigarette filter, spilt citric, black from bottom of spoon, blood drips ... Just in case she declared a sudden interest in using loo whilst I was in there. How did I get on to this. O yes. When I went on Subutex/buprenorphine for about a month till relapsing in grand style. Took what I thought then was a "small hit" ie a third of £20/$40 worth - woke up with her slapping my head & screaming at me. The noise of my choked & shallow breathing had woken her at 7am. "That was a death rattle!" I said furiously. Why didn't you just let me die?" I genuinely hated her for "saving" me like that. (Though I'm sure I would have come round anyway.)

There is chaos in my present house too. Laundretta has been drunk and bawling since about 4am. Matran the Rat Man took her last £20 and spent it all on something (likely crack). She was still blowing her top at noon. That's what I call persistent. Nutnut was more persistent we used to have blazing public rows lasting literally nine a.m. to five p.m. (fortunately neither of us had proper jobs). Followed by minor eruptions for upto three days afterwards. Laundretta has destroyed the vacuum cleaner kicking remains of my needle lids/empty wraps etc all down the stairs. They try and be "respectible" junkies and not let it show as much as I do. She was a prostitute before she was an addict (which is very unusual) - used to make good money (still can make £300 in a night). Claims to have been in Dubai etc. Certainly explained how a hostess bar works in convincing detail. Now she is really just a drunken lush. Who sweats so heavily after a drink she looks like she has showered fully clothed.

Well I'm off now to read a book. Bye.

You Gotta See This

YESTERDAY, MOTHER HUBBARD knocked her (sometimes rather odd) housemate's door, ushered me into his catpiss stinking room and two Nubian slaves bonged massive gongs. A red curtain opened, a puff of smoke arose -- and the following appeared on the computer screen. SPIDERS ON DRUGS. Now I have seen this before. I even put the link on my blog. So I watched again and went "haw-haw-haw" and decided not to knock the stuffing out of someone else's "hey--look what I found!! Moment." So I kept my mouth shut. But if you want to see the vid, click the above link in green. Surely the entire universe except you has seen this by now.

Can you believe this. I was advised not to give up on something for which I have enthusiasm. So here goes. The thru-&-out-the-other-end-again Chinese, Traditional via blah translationism:

You obtained yesterday to look at this, looked after HUBBARD to knock her (sometimes quite to be strange) the housemate gate, is greeted I to enter his catpiss to send the odor room and two Nubian the slave bonged giant gong. A red curtain has opened, the smoke blew appeared -- and below appears in the computer screen. Spider in medicine. Now I before saw this. I even invested the link in mine blog. So I again watched and go to "haw haw haw" and the decision do not knock stuff outside others' "hey -- looked any I discovered! ! Moment. "so I maintain my mouth to close. But if you want to look at vid, clicks on the above link by the green. Definitely the