I used to take heroin at every opportunity, for over 10 years, now I just take methadone which supposedly "stabilizes" me though I feel more destabilized than ever before despite having been relatively well behaved since late November/early December 2010... and VERY ANGRY about this when I let it get to me so I try not to.
I was told by a mental health nurse that my heroin addiction was "self medication" for a mood disorder that has recently become severe enough to cause psychotic episodes. As well as methadone I take antipsychotics daily. Despite my problems I consider myself a very sane person. My priority is to attain stability. I go to Narcotics Anonymous because I "want what they have" ~ Serenity.
My old blog used to say "candid confessions of a heroin and crack cocaine addict" how come that one comes up when I google "heroin blog" and not this one. THIS IS MY BLOG. I don't flatter myself that every reader knows everything about me and follows closely every single word every day which is why I repeat myself. Most of that is for your benefit not mine.
This is my own private diary, my journal. It is aimed at impressing no-one. It is kept for my own benefit to show where I have been and hopefully to put off somebody somewhere from ever getting into the awful mess I did and still cannot crawl out of. Despite no drugs. I still drink, I'm currently working on reducing my alcohol intake to zero.
If you have something to say you are welcome to comment. Frankness I can handle. Timewasters should try their own suggestions on themselves before wasting time thinking of ME.
PS After years of waxing and waning "mental" symptoms that made me think I had depression and possibly mild bipolar I now have found out I'm schizoaffective. My mood has been constantly "cycling" since December 2010. Mostly towards mania (an excited non-druggy "high"). For me, schizoaffective means bipolar with (sometimes severe) mania and flashes of depression (occasionally severe) with bits of schizophrenia chucked on top. You could see it as bipolar manic-depression with sparkly knobs on ... I'm on antipsychotic pills but currently no mood stabilizer. I quite enjoy being a bit manic it gives the feelings of confidence and excitement people say they use cocaine for. But this is natural and it's free, so I don't see my "illness" as a downer. It does, however, make life exceedingly hard to engage with...
PPS The "elevated mood" is long gone. Now I'm depressed. Forget any ideas of "happiness" I have given up heroin and want OFF methadone as quick as humanly possible. I'm fed up of being a drug addict. Sick to death of it. I wanna be CLEAN!!!
Attack of the Furry Entertainers!
Thursday, June 16, 2011
BRUSHWOOD DOGS come in a variety of colourings...
In the "old Nagano dialect" where shiba-inus come from, shiba can mean "little" (as well as its mainstream meaning of "brushwood") so 柴犬 shiba-inu can be translated "little brushwood doggie"...
I DIDN'T POST yesterday because I had nothing to say. Me and my "symptoms" went down the methadone clinic where I had little to say. Luckily I managed to change the subject off myself by talking about my efforts at Japanese.
On the way home I bumped into a schizophrenic I know who was having a psychotic episode. He seemed to be in a very Elevated Mood and was burbling on about God and the Devil. Then my Worker phoned me up about what Nutter Clinic I was supposed to go to. And this guy was blaring away down the phone about religious matters (but not in the matter of a country vicar sipping tea at Miss Marple's house; more manic street preacher style). I think my Worker thinks I have really peculiar friends now.
Deshane is coming by this afternoon. I'm depressed from trying to put together a to-do list in my head. The list seems un-do-able. Every time I feel like giving up some inner spirit kicks me and says Come On!
My council tax is in a complete mess, unpaid and seemingly unpayable. I wish I'd ticked the box now saying I was Severely Mentally Imaired. The Student Loans Company who I'm also in default to, wanted me to make a similar declaration of severe mental illness a couple of years ago, but I didn't think I WAS mentally ill. At least not in the way they said. Now I supposedly am ill but confused about the whole matter. A lot.
Deshane the home help key worker person is coming and I'm trying to keep positive. That's not very easy when something is slipping through my fingers. I don't know what's slipping. I just know I need to GET A GRIP.
Staying alive is the absolute bottom line; but what then? I feel confused now. I decided to continue my home clear-out. I have 3 typewriters. 2 are electric and just unusuable. The 3rd is manual and might be handy in a powercut, or if I decided to write a novel on a desert island. I have 3 dining chairs all retrieved from the street. 2 have to go. A whole bunch of Nigerian DVDs for the charity shop. I must have had a compulsive hoarding thing going on but I barely noticed it. See what I mean about living in a whirl. Whenever I try and make sense of things I'm told I Think Too Much. But without thinking, All is Nonsense. See I don't know. I just don't know. Did anyone except Mr Furtheron notice yesterday's last Shiba-Inu was a soft toy. The label on the back left leg gave it away...
Anna Grace's book I Hate Myself and Want to Die is available from Amazon. The American version has it in stock at $15.04; Amazon UK charge £9.86 and say they'll order it in.
忠犬ハチ公 HERE'S THE STORY of a great Trotterdonkey Doggie named Hachi, which means he was 8th in the litter, who met a professor of agricultural engineering in Tokyo sometime before World War II who faithfully followed the professor home every night. Each evening, Hachi used to wait at the main railway station for his master to return home. When one day the professor died suddenly of a heart attack Hachi refused to accept the death and continued to show up, every single afternoon at the appointed time. Thin and bedraggled he was fed sandwiches by the Japanese commuters... All attempts at rehoming him failed. The faithful furry simply ran back to Shibuya Station and continued his vigil.
After he died, a statue was erected in Shibuya Station in Hachikō's honour. In 2008, a Hollywood film was released, starring Richard Gere. This is the story of Hachikō's life. Original Japanese version. You don't need any Japanese to follow this; it's all set to music:~~~~~~~
Here's an Akita-inu tied up on the way to the dog show. Same coloration as a brushwood doggie; much bigger. Then you get to see lots of Japanese people down the precinct.
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I HAD AN ONKEN this afternoon. Vanilla yogurt with chocolate flakes.
Not much else to put. Not feeling too good.
8pm Hey I'm having "psychiatric symptoms" ~ "racing thoughts". I keep hearing the most random ideas spoken each side of my head. Down the library this afternoon I heard some woman whispering my full name, which irritated me. Then this other woman continued to have what appeared to be a pretty detailed conversation about me. The cow! I told myself I was "just being paranoid".
8:55pm the "psychiatric symptoms" have died down. I've been having them all day. I feel ill. I nearly went to bed just after 6. I don't know whether to see a dr. I don't see what a dr can do for me. I don't know what to do.
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HERE are some 柴犬 brushwood doggies, some shiba-inus in the snow...
I'M REALLY INTO THESE BRUSHWOOD DOGGIES now. Even the sign 柴 "shiba" in 柴犬 shiba-inu has a little brushwood tree, a 木 ki, in it. Put two trees together 林 and you get a wood. Three trees make a Japanese forest 森.
Shiba-inus remind me of HM the Queen's cogis:
Originally I wanted a giant wolf-like 秋田犬 Akita-inu. They look like huge furry shiba-inus. They're used in Japan as police dogs...
Nicotine patches no more match up to the early morning hit of the first cigarette ... than swallowing a dose of methadone matches up to jacking up a decent dose of smack. Nicotine patches and methadone have a lot in common. They keep addicts off the streets, stop them injecting/inhaling, and keep them in thrall to their drug of choice. p251
There's a good section on schizophrenia, though why on earth anyone with bipolar, which used to be called manic-depressive psychosis, needs an explanation of what it's like to be mad is beyond me. Lots of people with bipolar type 1 hear voices, though you wouldn't know that from reading this book.
With a brain prone to schizophrenia come accompanying talents and insights. For example, some people with schizophrenia have an almost uncanny way of sensing how other people are feeling. If the gift of manic depression is energy, the gift of schizophrenia is sensitivity. p283
That's my problem. I feel too sensitive, most of the time. Heroin is a psychic blocker: it made life very much more comfortable because I no longer felt too much.
On diagnosis:
To be diagnosed a manic depressive goes to the very core of who you are as a person. It is difficult to feel good about a diagnosis that reaches into your very soul. Furthermore there are no external signs to mark the condition out as special, to get the ordinary sympathy for illness or to provide even a hint of what you experience. Suddenly, medication becomes a permanent part of daily routine. Doctors and psychiatrists become privy to every personal fact andableto judge each personal experience...
Depression is the wages of mania. Lack of energy reflects exhausted mental batteries left for dead after the multi-millennial light-shattering firework display that was the preceeding days and weeks.
It is doubtful whether the brain ever truly recovers from an episode of mania; the world never looks the same again. p228
When I glance over recent posts and see statements like: I cannot imagine anything that would make life worth living, I wonder if people understand what I was getting at. I meant I look to the "future" and see nothing. I cannot imagine living as some supposedly functioning independent, successful individual. Because I never did. I did jobs, but the only ones I could get were very low-key compared to the ones my grandmother thought I should have been doing. Then again my grandmother had this idea that being clever somehow got you a good job. It doesn't. Employers are looking for people full of confidence and bullshit, which I wasn't. Which is how I ended up in jobs supposedly "beneath" me. I just wish I'd gone for something I truly enjoyed and done graphic design or painting and decorating. Lots of graphic designers have been put out of busiess by the ready availability of design software, meaning small businesses just do it for themselves. There's still work for painter-decorators, just not as much of it. I'm not qualified for any of this (you don't need qualifications, do you?)
Did you know the suicide rate in manic depression is around 20% compared to around 10% for normal depression.
That's because on top of the depression, manic-depressives are suffering from something akin to hangover syndrome: when you look back to things you did in the exalted state and ask yourself: what on eart was I thinking? My Mum knows someone who lost her house because she gambled everything by hiring out an enormous warehouse with nothing at all to put in it. The woman had thought she was on the way to becoming a multibillionaire business success. She knows someone else who got manic and randomly went calling on people up the street, inviting himself into their houses for Teletubby tea and trotterdonkey Sunday roast. See that's what people do. Then they come down and have to face the consequences of being high: bad debts, malaria, repatriation costs, veneareal diseases and it's all too much. No wonder they want to commit suicide. Talking of malaria, I know someone who pretended to have schizophrenia so he didn't have to work (which annoys me, because it makes me think I should be living in a cardboard box. The government keep saying they want to cut all sick scroungers off benefits. So what are they going to do? If the government get their way, there will be over a million sick and disabled people living on the streets. When that does happen, I hope they feel proud of themselves.
Anyway, this person who pretended to have schizophrenia had a brother who was indeed a manic depressive, who married a Thai bride, not by looking in a catalogue, but by actually flying to Thailand and falling in love in a remote village where he and his wife lived happily in a thatched hut. Until malaria swept through the village and nearly killed everyone.
Strange thing about Pretending to have Schizophrenia Guy was: he most definitely WAS extremely neurotic. He just wasn't psychic-psychotic the way schizophrenics are.
I had a tired day. Got up. Went chemist. Scored an ineffectual tiny bit of heroin.
Waste of time. I've only the last dregs of a habit remaining.
I bumped into someone this morning with a carrier bag full of chocolate. He'd shoplifted from a supermarket ~ an entire sehf-load and was about to sell it on. How dumbfoundingly naive I used to be! Not realizing that when a small shop mysteriously stocked up out of the blue on brand-name headache pills, batteries or fairly traded chocolate it often meant they'd bought it from somebody who had pillaged Sainsbury's!
HERE are some pictures of a cute 可愛い柴犬 shiba-inu ~ a "brushwood dog" the tiniest traditional Japanese dog breed.
I would quite like to get one of these. If I didn't get a giant wolf-like Akita. I love Akita-inus, the furry swines!
Aren't they furry 毛皮 and entertaining 面白く and cute 可愛い?
Well I was in a bad mood and a half when I last posted, wasn't I? It probably doesn't show as I was trying to squeeze as much entertainment value from it as I possibly could. If I didn't, I probably would have gone out and shot somebody between the eyes.
I didn't really sleep last night, so I'm quite tired today. My sleep has started going all over the place
I've learned the Japanese characters for reiki 霊気 as in 私は霊気で元気を癒した。I used to get reiki every week from a friend of mine who was very attuned to the energy. I turned up the first time extremely cynnical, having heard that reiki was something anybody could pick up overnight. How wrong I was. You can really feel it: hot energy. spirit hands reaching inside me. At one point the therapist's hands got so hot they were burning; then she said "feel my hands then!" And they were cold. I was told I was especially receptive to the psychic emanations.
The 気 ki in the Japanese reiki is the same as Chinese chi.
When I still had my 3 little hamster gnomes Bashful, Itchy and Spherical, bashful's name in Japanese was 内気 uchiki "an indoor spirit". The Japanese word for electricity is 電気 denki "the spirit of lightning"... isn't that amazing! Vandalized in Chinese to 电. How vulgar.
Itchy in Japanese was 痒がって Kayugatte, Spherical's name 丸 Maru meant "round". I used to call them my little 速歩馬; my Chiisai Hayaashi-ba ~ my little Trotters.
Ukkkh: it's 10 minutes to 2. EastEnders is on. The omnibus edition: 2 hours or so of nonstop cockney accents and misery in houses furnished direct from the Argos catalogue (like (posh versions of) mine). I'm exhausted and I keep nodding off in front of the computer screen. I've a packet of chicken & veg cup-a-soups I'd love to eat as quick as they're made so the croutons have no time to go soggy). My opinion on cup-a-soups without croutons involves a bullet between the eyes!
I'd really like to get a tubby hammy. There's a hammyhouse you can get that consists of a giant wheel, so huge it resembles a washing machine drum. The tiny tubby lives in this drum and scurries away in it night after night. ButI know what hamsters are like. They'll try and build a nest on the drum, do a pooze on it, wash their ears for half an hour and then unpack their bulging pouches. And then look all surprised when they start to ramble and the wheel is clattering with flying bedding, seeds and pooings.
Onscreen, Albert Square's alkie crackhead, Phil Mitchell is going to NA following a one week crack binge half a year ago with a girl called Rainie. Watch the full entertainment of the "hardman of Albert Square" high on crack here.
小さい驢馬速歩馬; 小さい速歩驢馬 Chīsai roba hayaashi-ba; chīsai hayaashi roba Little Trotter Donkey; Little Trotter Horse
LOVING ANGELS INSTEAD. This man's bipolar tuned him into a different level of reality and he says he's all the better off for it. Have a look at his mangled leg from a botched suicide attempt. He says two broken legs from being hit head-on by a truck hurt considerably less than the bipolar depression he was setting out to cure...
Here's Stephen Fry discossing the issue of mood swings. He calls his own disorder "cyclothymia" (actually bipolar II) because it's constant mood swings that never go to psychotic extremes. From what I've heard type 2 bipolar can often be more inconvenient than bipolar 1 because generally speaking, more depression's involved and mere flashes of hypomania. Type 1 bipolars often have to put up with very extreme mania that can be more dangerous than the depression: a different kettle of fish. Type II bipolar patients get depressed for longer, but type 1s can get psychosis with the depression (and more especially the mania).
On the one hand I'm trying to get my head around this so-called "illness" of mine; on the other I'm just tired of the entire issue. I know I can get a bit obsessive. On the other hand you have to bear in mind how badly my head got addled up. I need to pick together the fragments of sense ~ and to piece them together again. It wasn't hearing voices or paranoia or conventional "psychosis" that drove me mad: it was going into a clanking centrifuge of a mental state so intense that my mind broke into smithereens while I was wide awake leaving me a verbigerating vegetable. I desperately looked up the otherworldliness that happened to me at the height of my malady; I think I was having "catatonic symptoms". Lovely business.
Never mind. I'm better now than I was. Yeah I'm depressed, but I'm sorting my life out. Slowly. One day at a time. In baby steps.
And even though I can't have a hammy now (because the nut-house risk is still there ~ and who would look after the tubby swine while I was in there)... I can still be entertained by Hammy in Tales of the Riverbank. I love his turnip accent. I love the way Hammy Hamster and Roderick the Rat can't resist nibbling the props. And how Hammy breaks into a massive ear-wash at every opportunity. And I love Hammy's surprised expression as he floats down the river in his motor boat..!
I'M STILL SLEEPING hours and hours: all night then half the day as well. I'm fighting against depression. When I wake up my head is full of horror: I cannot imagine anything that would make life worth living. I keep telling myself to take one thing at a time. My house is more of a mess for my attempts to clean it. Recently I lost an important piece of paper and tore the place apart searching for it. I still have no idea where my old passport has gone. I need that passport. Even though it's out of date, it's the only proper form of ID I have.
I keep telling myself I ought to get off my arse and get a job. There was a programme on telly only the other night telling how all the sick and disabled are to be thrown off benefits and forced to work. What job could I possibly do? I'm qualified for nothing. I used to enjoy working with people but that would be very hard now. Ever since I went psycho I can't bear to be in crowds, can't handle looking into people's eyes. They make me too paranoid. Sometimes I feel the government is trying to hound me into suicide. Nothing makes me want to live more than knowing somebody wants me to die! Yeah: sheer bloodymindedness will see me through!
I tried to do some research on whether or not methadone works as a mood stabilizer. I suspect that in many people it does. Heroin certainly does on me and far more than methadone ever did. And this is where I ran into problems. With methadone not stabilizing me, my mood plummeted. During the worst period I couldn't even handle my fortnightly appointments at the methadone clinic without first dosing myself up on heroin. I couldn't handle the pain.
When I feel the way I do now, there's almost no subject that doesn't put me in an angry or negative mood. Even the Chinese language annoys me, because they simplified their characters after World War II. The whole joy of Asian langauges is that they are complicated. So simplified Chinese is a sheeer offence against nature! The Japanese simplified many of their characters too, but they strayed nowhere near the vulgar excesses of the Chinese who, for example, hacked horse from 馬 into 马. Whoever's responsible for that travesty should be shot between the eyes.
Anything that remotely impinges on politics annoys the living crap out of me. London annoys me because it is too small, underpopulated with irritating compromise-skyscrapers: tall enough to be a blot on the landscape and totally out of character with traditional London; nowhere near tall enough to be internationally impressive. Anything to do with addiction treatment annoys me beyond the pale because addicts should be offered injectable diamorphine prescription (or else shot dead). Something drastic should be done and methadone is just a toxic compromise. Blah blah blah everything's bad. It should all be done differently and the laxness, the mediocrity, the uncaringness of everyone in society appals me.
My only joy in life, apart from Hammy from Tales in the Riverbank, is the Japanese langauge. The people who write the textbooks should be shot between the eyes, because they teach you to read in European characters! It took me MONTHS to figure out how Japanese sentences are actually composed in Japanese script (which is not entirely phonetic). By learning the script I now have a vocabulary far in excess of anything I ever knew in French or German at this stage. I know the names of 25 animals. I can talk about atomic bombs, volcanos and elements. Traditionally Japanese formed its technical vocabulary by compounding Chinese characters, so manifold new words can be formed just by slamming them together. Even there you have the issue of irritating homophonous words. Example the syllable shi し can be represented by no fewer than 56 Chinese characters: 市,詩,氏,詩,師,死,史 and so on. Sushi is written 寿司 but you could spell it out phonetically すし in hiragana or スシ in katakana.
I can't explain why I find the Japanese langauge such a source of enduring fascination, but I do. Somedays I have found myself thinking: I wonder how you say this? And I wonder how you say that? Which is how I learned the words for bee 花蜂, wasp ワスプ and hornet 雀蜂. A hornet is onomatapoeically named a soo-zoom!
Bugerlugs, here are some proposed Hammynames. Not sure about Samantha and Mary, but I think any the other ones would suit any furry pinger down to the ground:~~~~~~~
ANNA GRACE YOUNG'S book has come out! It's called I Hate Myself And I Want To Die. It's available from the publishers now; from Barnes and Noble and Amazon next week.
I've found a website that shows the stroke-order of Chinese characters. The one we see here says mouse, rat or rodent.
Prescription Heroin in the UK: an addict's success story. (Erin O'Mara, editor of Black Poppy magazine.) Annie read this: the first heroin script she mentions came from the Chelsea and Westminster where they had the 210mg limit.
With British heroin having a supposed 40% average purity, that would be about half a gram a day: the very bare minimum I was ever able to get away with when I really had a habit.
(I've still got a habit now; a methadone habit!)
Last night I slept "only" 10 hours; I remember thinking, as I realized Iceland have terminated their £1.50 sweet chili chicken pizzas (grrr!) "that's good" only to find myself dozing to oblivion in front of Midsomer Murders, crawling to bed and sleeping flat out from 4:30 to 11:30pm, making 15 hours in the last 24, which is not at all good.
Last time I started sleeping a lot less I went a bit manic. That was about 2 weeks ago. I scored 17 on the Young Mania Rating Scale, using it very conservatively a fortnight after the fact. Really I should probably have scored more. Example: uproarious laughter gives you a 3 or a 4, depending on whether it is or is not "appropriate" (how am I meant to know that?) but I only scored myself a 2, because my mood was definitely higher than the bassline. In fact if I hadn't done so much laughing I think I'd probably not have noticed the other "symptoms" and would have considered myself an insomniac not a maniac. I still find it very odd that there can be a supposed "mental illness" where you're TOO happy and TOO excited. (And TOO IRRITABLE: that's the downside.) ... I have just pondered whether or not my laughter was appropriate and at the peak it was not. I ended up walking the streets at 2 or 3 in the morning laughing my head off for no particular reason. And feeling uncomfortably paranoid whenever anybody passed me by. I never noticed them till they were right there which made me jump out of my skin.
I did some pondering on "what situation am I meant to be in? I don't know" because I'm meant to have schizoaffective disorder and yet I've gone mostly sane. Well I think I'm sane. I know I still have experiences that are considered symptoms eg I woke up only yesterday with words surrounding me in the air, which is the lightest version I know of "hearing voices". But none of this really bothers me. But the upshot is even if I prove to the doctors and the world that I'm sane and "normal" I cannot wriggle out of a diagnosis of bipolar I disorder, because I had one full-blown manic episode. That alone is enough to saddle me with a lifelong diagnosis of bipolar, whether or not I ever go full-on manic ever again. (I wouldn't mind being a bit manic though.) Then there's the uncomfortable fact that whether or not I would be miserable enough to get granted access to a Victorian lunatic asylum, I most definitely do get depressed quite a lot and have been depressed to a greater or lesser extent for years and years. Even my Mum said to me "I know why you took heroin: it's because the antidepressants didn't work".
This is Emil Kraepelin's description of "delusional mania". I was never delusional, apart from when I became convinced people were coming round to kidnap me (it was then that I decided to walk to France). I didn't walk anywhere but thought if I posted online that I'd gone outside that would be enough to put the fearsome kidnappers off! Though I was only raving mad for about 5 days, the mania took weeks and weeks to wear off. And I still get low grade hallucinations.
His surroundings appear to the patient to be changed ; he sees St Augustine, Joseph with the shepherd's crook, the angel Gabriel, apostles, the Kaiser, spirits, God, the Virgin Mary. Statues salute him by nodding ; the moon falls down from the sky ; the trumpets of the day of judgment are sounding. He hears the voice of Jesus, speaks with God and the poor souls, is called by God dear son. There are voices in his ears ; the creaking of the floor, the sound of the bells take on the form of words. The patient has telepathic connection with an aristocratic fiancee, feels the electric current in the walls, feels himself hypnotized ; transference of thought takes place.
This is "delirious mania", where you go at the very peak of the attack. It becomes very hard to make sense. People complained about how difficult I was to understand, seemingly unaware THEY were talking more crap than I ever did!
Their linguistic utterances alternate between inarticulate sounds, praying, abusing, entreating, stammering, disconnected talk, in which clang-associations, senseless rhyming, diversion by external impressions, persistence of individual phrases, are recognised. Other patients only display a slight restlessness, whisper flights of ideas to themselves, when addressed look up astonished and without comprehension, obey simple requests, give irrelevant answers, smile, weep, cling to people, suddenly begin to sing a song or scream. A female patient called out abruptly,
"I am justice ; do not touch me ; I am omniscient ; away from me !"
These extracts are from Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia by Emil Kraepelin. It's by far the best book on bipolar disorder and recurrent depression I've ever come across. The modern resources tend to use one another as references, so they all write the same thing, referring back constantly to the DSM IV diagnostic criteria which never were meant to be a description of the condition, merely a device by which all psychiatrists might diagnose the same conditions in the same patients. Grrr.
How paradoxical that a book last published in 1921 should bring to life the experience of bipolar mood swings so very much more vividly than anything written since!
Extraordinary Distractibility of Attention certainly plays an essential part in defective perception. The patients gradually lose the capacity for the choice and arrangement of impressions ; each striking sense-stimulus obtrudes itself on them with a certain force, so that they usually attend to it at once. Accordingly, if their attention can for the most part be quickly attracted by the exhibition of objects or by the calling out of words, yet it digresses again with uncommon case to any fresh stimulus. The picture of their surroundings and of events remains, therefore, for them more disconnected and more incomplete than it would be, if it suffered merely from encroachment on the process of perception.
The outside world appears slowed down while the thought process speeds up. So that life becomes a series of disconnected impressions, like a mixed-up slide show.
I want to take drug addiction and write a text as groundbreaking as Emil Kraepelin's. That's quite a high ambition. I don't know how successful I'll be; but I will try...
I've just discovered a celebratory methadone bottle. One I forgot to drink. Which explains why I felt so ILL yesterday: dur! Well I drank it about 20 hours too late and I feel perfect now. The sweats have gone.
If I can stomach it, I'm thinking of posting something on the benefits of prescription heroin for addicts. I won't go on, but will clear up a few myths here and now:
1. if you give addicts heroin they'll just use more and more of it, not less and less not true. providing the dose is high enough, you don't WANT more once you've had a certain amount ~ If this were true then methadone users would want more and more, people on opiate bachache tablets would take them more and more and cancer patients couldn't be trusted with their own morphine (which they are: they take it home in a massive bottle of linctus)
2. people on a prescription heroin programme will just go on and on using street heroin on top and you won't be able to test for this (because it's all heroin). Pharmaceutical heroin comes in freeze-dried ampoules containing 100% pure diamorphine hydrochloride; street heroin always contains other opium alkaloids: thebaine, codeine, narcotine etc. Testing for these will reveal whether somebody has used "on top" of their script. In official trials conducted in the UK just under 80% of patients managed to stop using ANY drugs on top of their script ~ not just heroin
3. prescription heroin will just get "diverted" to the illicit market. This happend in the 1960s, when a small number of private drs prescribed heroin over-liberally to anybody claiming to be an addict. Most schemes today insist that the empty ampoules are handed back to the clinic, thus limiting the chances of "diversion".
OK those are the 3 main points covered. If only I'd been given a script that WORKED FOR ME I might have cleaned myself up years ago. Until very recently I just couldn't handle the depressed mood methadone left me in. I was a raging needle freak, so drinking a bottle of gloop just didn't satisfy me. I only managed to stick to methadone for weeks on end because I was in a manic state of elevated mood and thought heroin would bring this down. In fact I can only tolerate methadone now because something seems to have changed in me. I still feel depressed, but heroin seems not to make the difference it once did...
... I don't believe prescribed heroin would be a solution for everyone, I just believe it should be an option for everyone. Subutex is an amazing drug ~ far more appropriate for most people intent on detoxing. As I said I WOULD have wanted prescription diamorphine, if only it had been available. Now I'm more intent on getting myself CLEAN. I find taking methadone very depressing because on methadone I'm dirtier than I am on heroin! (Methadone is more toxic than heroin by a long way.) If anything has changed for me, it's probably more that heroin has stopped working than methadone has started working. When I stuck to methadone for weeks on end I was in no way more "together" than I'd been on heroin ~ probably a lot less so. My clothes were dirty and I couldn't face the procedure of washing them because I was hallucinating in the laundrette. I ate the same food for days on end and just did not engage with life the way you're seemingly supposed miraculously to do as soon as you stick to your methadone. I've heard that when you do clean up off opiates the feelings you've damped down leap up vividly. My ex said she used to watch nature programmes and cry. She was a lot less whimsical over furry animals than I. Lots of people at NA say in the first year off heroin you feel shit. The rehab I emailed told me the methadone I'm on may well be acting as a mood stabilizer. So the best result I can expect from going Clean would be a really Elevated Mood. I feel I've been depressed enough On Opiates (even though I was using them as antidepressants) so I'm hoping going clean might kick some life into me.
My big project while I'm still on methadone has to be to write this book about drug addiction. Strangely my motivation has changed from making loads of money (I probably won't make anything) to Explaining Myself. It's not what I did I want to tell the world, it's WHY. Now that might be helpful.
Is this post really badly written. Probably. Am I gonna post it? Definitely.
HAMMY GOES FISHING I just love the way he can't resist nibbling his fishing rod, the furry swine!
THE WORLD'S GONE MAD This has been on my random blog for some time. Listen closely to what Peter is saying. He makes about as much sense as YOU all did when I was supposedly "mad"!!! Anna said this is what some of my comments sounded like at the time. You wonder why I have the troubles I do? My mind somehow got really addled! I don't know how, but it most certainly did....
EARLY TO BED EARLY TO RISE makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise! I got up nice and early today and now I'm feeling healthy.
Didn't I go into a right downer yesterday? While I was actually posting it as well.
Today I went to my methadone chemist then got waylaid seeking out good misery memoirs. WH Smiths has a stingy selection of books at best, so expecting them to stock what I want is like expecting an industrial chain-pub to serve up Real Ale They just won't do it.
I searched the charity shops for The Quiet Room by Lori Schiller and Andy Behrman's Electroboy. I couldn't help wondering how on earth anybody managed not only to take crystal meth and cocaine but to nose them up in copious amounts during repeated bipolar manic episodes. When I was manic a mere couple of mugs o black cofee appeared to amp up my racing mind so very fast that my flimsy thoughts fractured and fell apart as they streamed letter by exploding letter into the warp-speed vortex of my delirium. During the peak of it all I don't think I was in any state to take an international flight, let alone set up and run businesses in art forgery the way Andy Behrman says he did. I have this suspicion that if he was compulsively drugging all the time then his mania might well be as much a drug-induced high as a natural one. What I remember of mania is not NEEDING drugs ~I felt high enough anyhow! Different strokes for different folks. I always had a wonky tolerance to uppers.
My friend Pinky (Perky's ex) still wants me to write her life for her. She says she's gone as low as you can do in depression and this is most definitely true. She spent weeks on end withdrawn into a catatonic stupor unable to speak or even move without prompting. I'm not surprised she has "mental health difficulties" considering the life she's had. Her story is the saddest life story I have ever heard. I don't know how she survived it. The last blow was when her best friend went and committed suicide last year ~ that was Perky. Perky had been messing about with that 4-methylmethcathinone crap. Its street names are mepherdrone and meow.
Pinky tells me I'm crazy because I once kept my washing up in the shower for 6 months showering it instead of wiping it clean. And she describes me as "excitable". Bloody hell. I don't think she's ever seen me in a true state of excitement. I did go a bit manic a couple of weeks ago and find myself cackling uncontrollably down the phone. This was around the same time I ended up running around in circles in the middle of the night laughing. I was bouncig those bouncy balls like crazy! Then the lovely hypomania wore off and I was all boringly depressed again I only knew I was manic because if, say, I glanced at a book which said "house" on the cover, I'd start seeing words following on from house that weren't actually there: housekeeping, house work, housewives, full house, house of ill repute... &c, &c, &c! Even today just now my brainbox was picking random words out of the air. I don't know whether that "means" anything. My own book was supposed to be a search for meaning in a morass of self-induced confusion. More to the point, it was supposed to explain why I did what I did. Which would explain how I got where I am today.
In the library I had a good flick through a Mental Misery Memoir titled Sectioned. I know the nomenclature varies around the world: being sectioned here means being placed under involuntary commitment ~ banged up in a nuthouse! The publishers don't even mention what manner of madness he suffered from, which is rather remiss in this day and age of cod psychiatry. I soon figured out he was manic-depressive. He was orphaned at 14, ECTd at 16. But his life seems to be a blur. Maybe I was flicking through it far too fast, maybe he just doesn't want to remember. He talks of a "delusional mist". But there's nothing misty about delusions, which aren't just false beliefs ~ they have a brilliant, compelling quality. The only thing indistinct about such a state would be one's memory of it afterwards. With time, the bright swirl of the moment does fade into the mists.
My favourite drug memoir, by the way, is Anna Grace's I Hate Myself And I Want To Die. Gone is the bleary mush you come to expect of such books. Her writing is crystal-sharp and focused. She thinks her writing isn't good enough, but I tell her again and again it's not about being clever, it's about putting your point across. Which she does perfectly. Which is why she is so readable. Authors who spend more energy trying to be witty and itelligent than telling a rattling good read... I'm sure y'all have encountered that type of tome. As far as the drugs go, of course my own misery was self-inflicted, though it doesn't feel that way at the time. Addiction isn't self-inflicted in the ordinary sense of the word, because addicts take drugs automatically. I once heard a lady police officer saying "nobody puts a gun to their head and forces them to take heroin". But that's the point: they do! She phrased it perfectly: heroin IS a chemical gun to the head! It that forces you to use it more and more ~ and if you don't you'll pay for it. Of course you pay a heavy price to use the drug as well, and that's the main reason addiction is such a misery. Marianne Faithfull once said you only stop using when the pain of being on drugs exceeds the pain of being clean. I'm not sure that's exactly true. Pain has never ever made me want to stop taking the world's best painkiller. What does make me wanna stop is being fed up a substance that never made me feel good enough for long enough, has never been strong enough for long enough. One that seemed to make me feel better but in the end probably made me feel worse. I've grown tired and intolerant of the whole scene. All the best people have died. I can't stand the baby gangsters who deal in the stuff. I feel old and tired. I never intended to be the heroin addict I turned into. I only continued taking heroin because I felt a lot worse off it than on it. But I'm now getting to the stage where I want more from life. I don't know what more is on offer, but I'm willing to give it a try. In a way I don't care how much life without heroin might hurt, because the life I had on it was intolerable too. I feel like I'm on a ride to nowhere. If there is some point to it all, I'm sure I'll find it sooner if not later.
Of course, drug addiction is a type of self-inflicted misery, but I was miserable before I ever took drugs. Mood-altering substances were especially tempting when your mood is so low. Even when I didn't think moods were the root of my difficulties I've had counsellors telling me to see doctors, and doctors telling me I was depressed. Only when I got addicted to heroin, strangely enough, did my drug habit become a be-all and end-all in the eyes of the medical "experts". My own drug addiction has been a gigantic exercise in self-harm. I never managed to die. So the issue now is learning how to live. I wonder I wonder what life has in store next. I'm bored sick of life lived between methadone and heroin. Now I want to see what's next...
6:54pm I've run out of online Tales of the Riverbank, so here's the Russian version of the Canadian original, Hammy Hamster
Escaping hamster. This one's obviously well practised in the art of getting out of a boring plastic tank:~
FINALLY I have got the computer to write Japanese 日本語の表記体系. There are 2 main ways of inputting Japanese. The main system requires knowledge of the Japanese keyboard layout because when you tap out QWERTY, you get タテイスカン (ta, te, i, su, ka, n). So I use the version for foreigners. If I want to write "mouse" I spell out nezumi I see ねずみ on screen; then I press space and the Chinese character for "mouse" appears: 鼠; finally I can highlight and F7 to get the phonetic katakana spelling for nezumi, ネズミ which is what most young children would write as the character 鼠 doesn't appear on the Japanese government's 常用漢字 official 1945-character list. So it's lots of fun typing. Far more involved than trying to find the accented e at the end of cafe.
There's no other news. All I've done re this memoir is ponder whether to start at the very beginning or go straight into the action where I OD on heroin ~ second time anyone ever injected me I ended up in hospital for 2 or 3 days. I cannot remember how many; I was too out of it.
I've wasted money on gear that was just too weak for words. I keep wondering 1: why I continue to take it and 2: why I want to stop. I do want to stop but I don't even know why. Best reason I can give is that I'm bored of it and want to try life without it once more. I lived 2/3 of my life without heroin so I'm sure I can live that way again. My biggest problem is with methadone. It's so demotivational. Knowing I'm taking something more addictive, more poisonous does nothing for the self-esteem. I don't think once they've tasted a life on heroin most people will ever find any meaning in life again. For this reason I still think the kindest treatment for junkies would be to line them up and machine gun them all down.
I don't know why I am bothering with any of this. They say a problem is just something you haven't solved yet, which means I have no problem except life. When I was little a paeophile tried to pick me up. It's a shame that didn't happen because if he'd had half an ounce of wherewithall about him, wouldn't be here now. I wanted to see my memoir as a cautionary tale, but that's missing the point and implying my problem is rooted in drugs when it's not. The drugs were just my attempt at a cure. Since birth there has been something wrong with me. People seem to assume because I'm humanoid I'm human, but even that's not necessarily true. Maybe I'm a totally different species. By human standards, there's something badly wrong I'm not willing to fix it I know I will only get blame blame blame when I do. So I do nothing, not knowing what to do...
There might be an answer. Maybe I haven't found it; maybe I have. Croutons. I need more croutons.
I SLEPT AND SLEPT and slept and slept and slept in really lake, till past 3pm. My phone was chirping and chirrupping like crazy, but I turned it down so I could dream some more. I dreamt I was on a long train journey, where I accidentally dropped my methadone bottle down the side where it smashed; then I was up in the woods with exotic birds hopping towards me; then I woke up and supped cup-a-soup in front of the telly, wondering how I was ever going to engage with the day.
I made such a hash of trying to explain why I wanted to write my memoir didn't I? All I was trying to say was the idea came to me when I was feeling really negative; but I still wanted to go for it. Making lemons into lemonade type of thing.
I need to keep my story as short and sweet as I possibly can. Apart from Anna Grace's, the only drug memoir I know is Kate Holden's In My Skin. The tale of a middle class girl, very similar to me, who gets drawn into the seedy world of heroin, eventually takes to prostitution to fund her habit. Rather than feeling exploited, she talks about prostitution as a process of self-realization. I never went that route; I begged money off strangers. Heroin was a lot cheaper in London than Sydney so you could fund a habit of over a gram a day on £30 or £40. That's $48 to $64 a day in American money.
I've decided to continue with the NA. They talk about the same issues that bugged me: resentment at life not being set up to cater for the needs of the opiate addict. Which makes me want to throw in the towel all together. I don't think there's anything wrong with taking heroin, but I'm fed up of going against the flow. Something's making me want to stop. I cannot put my finger one what it is, but whatever it is, it niggles and niggles away and now I want out.
If I did get any money from my memoirs, I want to use it to clean myself up and leave the country. Burma, the most fascinating foreign land on earth for their mysterious beautifully scripted language, fried hornet cuisine and opium farming tradition is of course completely out of the window. Burma is the world's foremost supplier of high grade 97% purity white heroin. So I can't go there. Fortunately I've had a fascination for all things Japanese for about as long as I can remember, so I would go there instead. Japan is really expensive travel-wise, so I'd need an international bestseller to afford a trip there.
The other country I can see myself visiting is Morocco, where I've been before. It's like an African India. Very exotic. Very cheap. Yes they do happen to be one of the world's foremost producers of hashish, but I loathe cannabis more than any other psychotropic substance, so that's no temptation. I'd use Morocco as my personal alternative to rehab. Instead of talk talk talking about drugs I'm no longer taking, I'd take the opposite tack and let my wounds heal by leaving alone. I do think excessive counselling can be a psychological equivalent of scab-picking. Not good for you. There's research that shows that disaster victims who go in for talk therapies are more likely to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder and to suffer worse than people who are allowed to heal in quiet. "Least said, soonest mended." This is why I want to write my story BEFORE I leave the drugs behind. And to me, methadone is every bit as much a drug as heroin. It might be legal, but it's more addictive and less effectual. And I just want away from it. If they're going to insist on giving that to addicts they should at least give injectable amps. But you need a private doctor to get those. So a private doctor is what I intend to get. I'd need to write a book to pay for one.
My head has gone resonant yet again. That means I'm hearing words in the air. Not voices as such, but psychic emanations. This gives me a fear of going mad abroad. I need to make my own money so I can get away from mental health services. No travel insurance I know of covers mental health. If I had to pay doctors' bills myself I just wouldn't see any doctors. So that's nice and straightforward.
Hey this naturalist on the telly has picked up a tubby little vole. It's rambling about on his hand. Fully wild, yet strangely tame. Tamer than a roborovski hamster, that's for sure. Now some naughty baby short-eared owls are gobbling dead voles. They're on the island of Skomer in Wales.
Well I'd better go; it's nearly half past nine already...
TALES OF THE RIVERBANK
THE RIVERBANK CLOCK "What can Hammy and Roderick possibly be doing?" asks Johnny Morris, the narrator. As Hammy patently obviously sits there washing his ears (again...!)
HAMMY THE FLYING POSTMAN A terrible thing has happened; the post-boat has sunk. And now Hammy is trying to get the letters back... in the diving bell. Then Hammy goes flying. And looks really entertaining doing it...
NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS was packed out. I kept my ears open and my mouth shut. I heard a lot about Resentments. I have realized from reading the AA Big Book that I'm full of Resentment. The more depressed I feel, the angrier I feel; the more resentful I feel towards nearly everything. Then I start to wonder whether I'm clinically depressed at all and not just a plain old Junkie, mired in self-deception, overflowing with Resentment in all directions. Now I realize I'm probably resentful and depressed at the same time. If I am self-deluded, I cannot by definition know that, can I?
What Resentment do drug addicts cultivate? Resentment at not being able to live life on life's terms. That phrase came up a lot tonight. Life on life's terms. Not something I'm at all good at.
One reason I'm keeping my mouth shut at meetings is that I'm afraid that anything I do say may be half listened to and used against me.
Example: self-medication.
Warning: to avoid yet another Junkie Rant, skip the italicized section... If it seems badly written, btw, it's because not even I am willing to read it back. So it stays as it was...
On a bad week people will assume I'm on drugs when I'm not. Then when I do use, they would seem pretty taken in if I claimed to be drug-free. Because when I use heroin I feel happier, calmer, less paranoid and my mood doesn't swing all over the place quite so much. To me this is the meaning of self-medication. It means using nonprescribed drugs as medication. It doesn't mean using drugs to chase a euphoria; it means using drugs to cope. Totally different thing. When I mentioned self-medication, a concept I took a long time to accept, at Intuitive Recovery, the group leader said "yeah I self-medicated with crack after my sister died". And that annoyed me. I've never ever seen anybody self-medicate with crack because crack doesn't have the effect of any medication. People who abuse uppers tend to burn themselves out pretty early. What goes up must come down; so they're chasing an impossibility, and most addicts realize this pretty quickly. Heroin always made me feel better all day, even when I just took a tiny bit on top of my methadone. It stabilized my mood for a long time. It doesn't seem to do that any more, which is why I think I'm wasting my time by taking it. There's a mood stabiizer called lamotrigine (Lamictal) which works better against depression than mania. That's the one I'd be willing to try. A mild state of mania isn't a mental illness at all. I need the energy of mania without psychosis or uncontrollable excitement it gets to at its extreme. Then I'd be OK.
The phrase "self-medication" by the way came from the same nut-nut-nurse who seemed to think I had some sort of personality disorder. I told her, eventually, how lousy I felt on methadone and she said "maybe you're self-medicating" ~ then did absolutely nothing to try and rectify the problem. The way she nurtured the idea I was somehow an anxious-avoidant or dependent personality is ridiculous. That's mistaking me for somebody who gives a shit. People with those types of personality tend to be unduly hung up on others' view of them. If I were like that, I'd hardly be keeping a blog like this now, would I?
I'm still in 2 minds whether or not to write an autobiography. I never wanted to be a memoirist. I don't really want my experience published. I suppose I'd be willing to prostitute myself in a literary way for the money. And to put into the world a cautionary tale that might hopefully put off at least one impressionable unhappy person from ever following in my footsteps. It's true the idea only came to me in a fit of despair. I wanted to leave behind a suicide note that might make my family some cash, and of course if I were to die, the manuscript would be many times more saleable. If I don't die [oh bloody hell shut up will you. I'm not intending to die! I won't die. I won't!} then I'll use any cash I get to pay for private treatment. That means an injectable script, tapering down down down to Subutex. I wouldn't go to rehab, I'd go travelling instead. I'm not at all convinced that whittering on and on about my drugs problem is any way of staying clean (which is why I'd write the memoir while still dirty (methadone-dirty, at least). If I did ever manage to come off all opiates I think once I got 100% clean, I would want to stay as far away from them as possible ~ in thought as well as deed. Anyway maybe I should write my own misery memoir: I can't think of any other constructive thing to do...
Another reason I want to write my own memoir: I'm not convinced there are that many good ones. Certainly not drug-memoirs. I couldn't sell mine on the strength of my nutter credentials because my nutter-credentials are weak. While there's no question I'm a full-blown heroin addict I barely score a 2 on the nut-nut richter scale. I think in publishers' terms (and publishers do like to put things in categories) I'm more of a drug-addicted lost soul than a proper madman.
I did have all manner of ideas of how to promote my book, which I can't give away here because nobody's ever done them. But couldn't do them now. Because if I did try and publish my story I'd most definitely want to remain anonymous. Some of the worst details are just too awful to put my name to. I mean, at one point I just gave up on life so completely I was like a walking shadow. All I wished for was that I might die in the night, and I never did. Which angers me to this day when I think about it. There's so much that I don't want to think about that I'm going to have to, simply to be able to put it down in roughly chronological order, one self-inflicted misery and misfortune flowing from the next. But I'm willing to torture myself if I can get some cash out of it. I honestly can't see what proper job I'm ever going to be fit enough to do. So I'm willing to try my hand at writing. I always wanted to be a novelist when I was younger. Maybe I should write Valerie's memoirs too... Now we come back to the issue of drugs. I don't want to make a name for myself as a drug author or drug addict. Which is why I think I'd wish to remain anonymous. For a long time I didn't want to write a drug-memoir at all... Then I realized I wanted to leave behind at least one thing after I died... So maybe I should just write the fucking thing and leave the reasoning-out till afterwards.
TALES OF THE RIVERBANK To any of you of Christian bent, I do apologize for the Drought story yesterday btw, in which Hammy consults a wicked guinea pig witch in order to bring downpour to the riverbank....
LITTER BUGS A hamster, a rat and a guinea swine go off in a hot air balloon...
GP'S MEDICINE
Monday, June 06, 2011
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...
MY LAST post is annoying me so much I'm writing another one at 4:14am just to obscure it.
I wasn't in a very good mood when I posted that.
I'm not in a very good mood now. A few hours ago I seemed to get high on 3 cups of coffee. The 1st 2 were separated by about 4 hours, yet I still got all excitable and OTT.
Maybe I have what you call "mood swings". I can't sleep, won't sleep. Keep thinking about using 'eroin but I know that's not the answer. Maybe I ought to go back to NA. Maybe I ought to ask for a mood stabilizer. Maybe maybe maybe. I'm sick of thinking.
I owe all sorts of debts that I would like to clear but I don't even know who I owe the money TO. They get passed over to new people. I also owe council tax and my lawyer person wanted to get me declared Severely Mentally Impaired. I don't think I am anything bar misdiagnosed, I don't think there's anything wrong with me except "should have been drowned at birth" syndrome.
O wow see I try and say something new and the same old crap comes out time and again. I think I should perhaps start up a false blog full of cheery thoughts of nothingness that people with Alzheimers could swiftly forget. I am too pissed off for words.
私は流暢な日本語を話せるようになりたい。 Watashi wa ryūchō na nihongo o hanaseru yō ni naritai.
There: that says "I wanna be able to speak fluent Japanese".
Here is one thing that distracted me: a bouncing smiley:
This post's title is a random thought I picked up in my ears... no we have not done yet.
BUGGERLUGZ sent me this... thanks so much xxxxxxx i really love Hammy; so tubby and furry with poppy eyes... not to mention the turnip accent... "soon Hammy really gets the hang of firing the canon"... Hammy you furry swine!
I AM IN A SOUR MOOD. I'm sitting here, flicking through lists of Japanese characters, thinking about food I would like to eat (except I don't really wanna eat any). Wondering what I'm doing alive.
Do you know I only need learn 2100 characters to be fluent in Japanese. Kanji are about as difficult to remember and to distinguish one from another as highway code signs. If you know nothing about far eastern writing, you'd assume Chinese characters are uniquely bizarre, each and every one. But they're not. A small number of elements corresponding to the sun 日, the moon 月, women 女, mouths 口, water 水, fire 火, trees 木 and mountains 山, etc crop up again and again combinging together eg as two moons under a mountain 崩 kuzu(su す) (kuzusu) 崩す "to demolish", so it's possible for Chinese and Japanese people to dictate unfamiliar characters to one another over the phone by spelling out the radicals. A character's radical is the unit of meaning, usually on the left hand side, under which it's looked up in a Chinese dictionary. I used my Japanese dictionary to look up the sign outside my local Chinese takeaway. They were most surprised when I came in telling them what it meant (it means a tower of wealth and prestige: in fact you'll see the sign 金 ~ "gold" or money again and again. 金魚 (goldfish) appear in Chinese takeaways time and again, because they're supposed to draw money into the shop. 鮭 this sign says "salmon" in Japanese. Note the fish radical 魚 down the lefthand side. The character is pronounced sake, like the drink 酒 sake. The three drops down the left side are the water radical. Anything with those three droplets down the side is watery, fluid or drink.
I really wish I hadn't slept last night. I slept all day as well and lay there with the telly booming, wishing I didn't have to get up for methadone before 6pm.
I did some research into sleep that confirmed what I already know. Now this only applies to people with bipolar and bipolar-type disorders (as far as I know) ~ because in normal depression people tend to complain of insomnia. But when I'm depressed I nearly always oversleep ~ once it gets going I can easily do 16 hours or more a day, every day. Not sleeping is said to be both a symptom and a cause of mania. In the past when I've really got going I would stay awake for over 40 hours, then sleep for a mere 5. Then carry on going higher and higher, more and more irritable, more and more excitable and so on. I wish I was dead when I think about this. I would rather be hyper than depressed, but I'd rather be happy than hyper. I'm not surprised I turned to drugs, namely heroin. It's by far the most reliable thing I've ever encountered in life. The problems surrounding heroin are problems in getting the stuff and enough of it. Even the Australian nurse down the druggyclinic told me "people feel better on heroin than off it, which is why people go on and on taking it once they start" so I said, why not sell it with the cigarettes in corner shops, and she just smiled wryly. I am thinking of going back on heroin until I die. Heroin is the only thing that ever made sense in my life.
I wouldn't need to kill myself until every vein in my body is done in and I can't take it any more (I wouldn't smoke it; I can't feel anything at all from smoking it and no it's not bad technique: I take heroin for the intravenous rush; the residual high, that lasts all day, is just a bargainacious by product. If I did want to take heroin for another 10 years I'd need to inject in the femoral, which I don't want to do. Most people I know who inject there walk with limps and/or have holes big enough to stick fingers in up the crook of their thighs. I only know 2 people who actually lost legs. It's all nasty.
Well this is miserable crap. Does anyone read this any more? I doubt it. I think my blog has degenerated to a series of protracted death-bed rantings.
Whenever I think about life in former times I think how lucky people were. Half of all people died before reaching a year of age, so the true horror of life was never revealed to them. Those who lived longer knew however healthy they were, they need only catch an infectious disease to die away. Now those illnesses are wiped out and only nasty ones remain.
The modern concept of mental illness, by the way, has expanded immensely. I read a book by the head doctor at a Victorian lunatic asylum. It's titled Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia by Emil Kraepelin. The descriptions of my "school report" were also by Emil Kraepelin, but they come from Dementia Praecox and Paraphrenia.
Back to Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia, almost nobody I know would qualify as depressed under Kraepelin's descriptions of profound melancholic psychosis. To be hospitalzed for depression in the 19th century you needed to be in depressive stupor, which means you had lost, or nearly lost the power of speech. Most depressives hallucinated and were delusional, believing they had committed trecherous crimes and brought poverty on their families. The worst depression was the agitated type where patients were reduced to screaming and banging their heads on the wall.
I asked somebody I know whether she had ever been so depressed her head was literally devoid of any thought at all (as the book describes) and she said yes, for weeks on end. That was when they ECTd her. I've only been severely depressed for a very short time. I remember afterwards realizing I had gone beyond suicidal. To be suicidal you need a life to terminate. Once you get to the very end, no life is left. Hey but I did come back.
Then I got to the descriptions of mania which were an exact match of mine. Thoughts flying through the head in vast numbers only to evaporate as quickly as they appeared. Walls and floor talking. Fantastical sights everywhere. Great excitement. Yeah I matched that one all right.
And just like drugs, it leaves you with nothing. From what I see the choics in life are: to have happiness without foundation through drugs and/or insanity. Or money without happiness.
To have everything you want in life you need only adjust what you want.
Anyway how did I get on this subject? Who cares.
When I think of all the suffering in the world I wonder whether anyone wants to live at all. I think most people are just conning themselves that their lives mean anything at all. Most people are arrogant, puffed up with emptiness. Think back to the times you were wonderful. In actuality you probably looked shit and people were laughing at you. When I was younger all I wanted was to take a great big bite out of the world. Now I know how sick the world actually is I'm almost glad I didn't. I only regret not making loads of money when I might have done. Because I would use that money to lock myself away from the world. If I were a multi-billionaire I'd live behind 40ft high walls and never ever go outside. I used to want to be clean, but I don't think there's any chance of that now. Darkness surrounds us.
Akkkh I'm starving. I've got to go. If I read this back I know I won't post it.
... Robert Miles reminded me of my favourite ambient artist of all time...
ROBERT LEINER: VISIONS OF THE PAST
ROBERT LEINER: TO PLACES YOU'VE NEVER BEEN
EastLondonGirl was trying to find me a track called The Sensation 1993 Part 2. Nearest I came to it was this donked up thing: JURGEN VRIES: THE THEME (DJ QUICKSILVER DONKED UP) do you get donk clubs~~??~~~where you go in and it's donk donk donk allnight? my kinda club!
VERY RATTY TODAY. Ratty as a rats' nest. I started sorting through my books. The main reason had to do with hoping at least £10 might be lurking somewhere between those 1000s of unread pages on my shelves.
I separated out all the Japanese books and my Finnish dictionary. I don't speak a word of Finnish but like the idea of all those glacial lakes and pine trees and the fact that it's hurdy-gurdy yet totally non-European. Finnish is said to be closer to Siberian languages than European ones.
Also I'd quite like to go reindeer herding so Finnish should come in useful. I found this dictionary in a carpark one morning, so of course it came home with me.
Well I slept all day. I couldn't sleep properly last night. Not at all. Then I felt irritable, ragged... the kind of feeling I used to get when I'd been out raving and taken stimulants that hadn't worn off, yet I wasn't really in a good mood any more. That feeling. Except I can't remember the last time I took any uppers stronger than 2 cups of black coffee and some cigarettes. Maybe I've got nicotine poisoning, who knows.
I'm rapidly going off bouncy balls. And I went out to get some bread and bumped into one of my bastard drug dealers spening MY money down the kebab shop. I say MY money: if he invested it, he might happen to have drawn one of my £20s out of the bank. I haven't rung this bastard in weeks.
Well there's not much else to say. I wish I was asleep again. Maybe I should be taking some kind of meds because I feel crap.
Liza Minelli is on Graham Norton. Have I lost my sense of humour or is the current state of television yet another sign that the endof the world is nigh? Earthquakes in diverse places... wars and rumours of wars... Graham Norton. Matthew 24. See it all fits.
I've got nothing to watch. Yesterday I found a Dutch edition of the Gosford Park DVD though it plays in English (I checked). But I didn't really have the £2 spare.
Well I've gotta go. One last complaint: all you people with weird blogs, the sort that have an integral comments page that won't accept anonymous or name/url comments ~ I CANNOT TALK ON YOUR BLOGS. Sweden, Dad & Mom. Unless I've been blockaded for being too boring, Google thinks I'm not signed in and asks me to select a profile. Then won't accept the profile I've picked (my own). Yet all normal blogs let me speak as much crap as I like... so what's that all about?
CYGNUS X: ORANGE THEME (FERRY CORSTEN) I love this tune; it sounds mystical and reminds me of being happy on MDMA
2010 PhaniaX this one's even better; in a clonky abstract way............
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THE ORANGE TRIBUTE: VITAMIN C VERSION this is better. more uplifting. the background vocal reminds me of a techno good the bad and the ugly
I WANT OFF METHADONE AS QUICK AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!
METHADONE ~ A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH
Heroin Shortage: News
If you are looking for the British Heroin Drought post, click here; the latest word is in the comments.
Christiane F
"Wir, Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo" by "Christiane F", memoir of a teenage heroin addict and prostitute, was a massive bestseller in Europe and is now a set text in German schools.
Bahnhoff Zoo was, until recently, Berlin's central railway station. A kind of equivalent (in more ways than one) to London's King's Cross...
Of course my local library doesn't have it. So I'm going to have to order it through a bookshop and plough through the text in German. I asked my druggieworker Maple Syrup, who is Italiana how she learned English and she said reading books is the best way.CHRISTIANE F:
TRAILER
You can watch the entire 120-min movie in 12 parts at my Random blog. Every section EXCEPT part one is subtitled in English (sorry: but if you skip past you still get the gist) ~ to watch it all click HERE.
To See Gledwood's Entire Blog...
DID you find my blog via a Google or other search? Are you stuck on a post dated some time ago? Do you want to read Gledwood Volume 2 right from "the top" ~ ie from today? If so click here and you'll get to the most recent post immediately!
Drugs Videos
Most of these come from my Random blog, which is an electronic scrapbook of stuff I thought I might like to view at some time or other. For those who want to view stuff on drugs I've collected the very best links here. Unless otherwise stated these are full-length features, usually an hour or more.
If you have a slow connexion and are unused to viewing multiscreen films on Youtube here's what to do: click the first one and play on mute, stopping and starting as it does. Then, when it's done, click on Repeat Play and you get the full entertainment without interruption. While you watch screen one, do the same to screens 2, 3 and so on. So as each bit finishes, the next part's ready and waiting.
Khun Sa, whose name meant Prince Prosperous, had been, before his death in the mid 2000s, the world's biggest dealer in China White Heroin: "Lord of the Golden Triangle"
In-depth portrait of the Afghan heroin trade at its very height. Includes heroin-lab bust. "Afghanistan's Fateful Harvest"
Classic miniseries whose title became a catchphrase for the misery of life in East Asian prison. Nicole Kidman plays a privileged middle-class girl set up to mule heroin through Thai customs with the inevitable consequences. This is so long it had to be posted in two parts. "Bangkok Hilton 1" (first 2 hours or so); "Bangkok Hilton 2" (last couple of hours).
Short film: from tapwater-clear H4 in the USA to murky black Afghan brown in Norway: "Heroin Addicts Speak"
Before his untimely death this guy kept a video diary. Here's the hour-long highlights as broadcast on BBC TV: "Ben: Diary of a Heroin Addict". Thanks to Noah for the original link.
Some of the most entertaining scenes from Britain's top soap (as much for the poor research as anything else). Not even Phil Mitchell would go from nought to multi-hundred pound binges this fast: "Phil Mitchell on Crack" (just over 5 minutes).
Scientist lady shows us how to cook up gear: "How Much Citric?" Lucky cow: her brown is 70% purity! Oddly we never see her actually do her hit... maybe she got camera shy...
And lastly:
German documentary following a life from teenage addiction to untimely death before the age of 30. The decline in this girl's appearance is truly shocking. "Süchtig: Protokoll einer Hilflosigkeit". Sorry no subtitles; this is here for anyone learning German who's after practice material a little more gripping than Lindenstraße!
Nosey Quiz! Have you ever heard voices when you weren't high on drugs?
Here's the 4-methylmethcathinone molecule. This is the "cocaine plus ecstasy"-style "legal high" I took that time and didn't even know what it was... After a brief but intense craze for meow, it was eventually banned in the UK in April 2010
If you wanna see what manic looks like, watch this. If this is the mood she stayed in all day she'd be moderately manic (severely manic is literally all over the place verging into complete incoherence)... I have been known to yell the same stuff over and over, which is why I like this:
Ferry Corsten remix. William Orbit performance. Samuel Barber's Adagio
DJ Seduction: Starlight August 1992
I love this style of music and WHY do kidz today call it OLD SCHOOL? MAKE ME FEEL ANCIENT WHY DONCHA! I really like that ting-ting-tong tune that comes into it about 3 mins in "release the spirit" yeah....! Respect goin' out LizzyD Yeah ;-)
Angelina Joelie: Crazy Chic
Girl Interrupted: best scenes
Mozart's Requiem Tranced Up
I like danced-up tunes now that I'm "OLD". Like this one... The actual name of the tune is "lacrimosa" which means sad. Which is weird it actually sounds uplifting. but there ya go:~~~~~~~~
Click herefor the Drought Post, news is in the comments.
Because there's more than 200 comments, look closely at the bottom of the form for for "Newer/Newest" - THAT is where you click to find most recent comments.
PETITION THE GOVT FOR PROPER PRESCRIBING TO ADDICTS: CLICK HERE
This is what I've been missing
-
I needed to make a birthday cake for Zac's tomorrow so Syd was in the
kitchen with me as I made it. I said, "Pay attention, Syd. You could be the
first coo...
BOOK REVIEW - "LA ZOLFATARA" BY IRENE DI LIBERTO
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THE SULPHUR MINE
At the beginning of the 20th century, in the imaginary Sicilian village of
Castellatani, we meet Teresa, whose ambition is to become a ...
After Writer's Block by Janice Seagraves
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After I experienced writer's block a few years ago, I decided to be nicer
to myself.
But so far this year, I have been having the worst time writing. ...
HODGEPODGE DECEMBER 18
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1. What's one thing on your to-do list that you want to get done, need to
get done, or that must get done before the year ends?
*Youpee, my "To do li...
Cancer Update
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Dear Readers,
I need to apologize to you all. I have not provided any updates from my
last post about my cancer diagnosis. So here we go.
(if you are ...
Blogging Break
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I'm taking a break from blogging, for two major reasons :a. I find it
hard to concentrate on chosen topics, while there's war and tragedy going
on in m...
Just a Thought for the HBO Execs
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I want to rename Game of Thrones, “Two Crazy-Assed Bitches.” Mail me my
check, motherfuckers! Actually three crazy-assed bitches if you count
Sansa. The me...
Souls of the Goldhawk Road
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It was one of those tawdry summer evenings and all I could think about was
the heat. It was everywhere, stuffy and humid and crucifying even at that
late...
Yeah
-
No, I am not returning, just updating out of boredom. Plus writing on my
phone sucks, so it won't be a long post.
Yep my book sucks, makes close to no mon...
The (complete) rainbowrain
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Today is the last time I'll post blog-photos from my work as tomorrow, the
last day of this blog is a Saturday. So you can enjoy this view one more
time ...
Twelve Months
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I can't believe it's almost 12 months since I posted anything on my blog!
I confess I've been spending a lot of time on Facebook - I know you think
I'm a t...
Graphic Wisdom to Begin 2016
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*By three methods we may learn wisdom: *
*First, by reflection, which is noblest; *
*Second, by imitation, which is easiest; *
*and third by experience, wh...
Obat Herbal Stroke Berat dan Ringan
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*Obat Herbal Stroke* - Penyakit ini terjadi karena peredaran darah didalam
organ otak mengalami penyumbatan atau gangguan. Penyakit Stroke ini adalah
adany...
Iboga- A Magic Bullet?
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Thoughts and random musings
I get the feeling, that this blog and therefore, my own thoughts and
behaviours are, to the average reader, quite controversi...
The People You Meet
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Not saying this is a come back of any type, but after farewelling my
darling friend Jeffrey today, I felt the overwhelming need to blog. Met a
weird Japan...
Despair and Dissolution
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I haven't written partly because I was confused by the new setup. Took me
ages just to get to my blog. Frustration.
Everyone can say "I told you so". Hate...
A long time coming....
-
I cannot believe I have neglected this blog for so long.
Just to let you know I will be uploading a post in the next couple of days.
Things are good.
My hea...
Gone but never forgotten
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Hello everyone....
Saturday the 24th May would of been Merle's 80th birthday...
Unfortunately she is gone, but never forgotten...
I just thought I would...
Everything in it's place
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Yum.That people are reading this in Israel and Indonesia, as well as so
many other places around the world that I never would've expected is pretty
fuckin...
How to Negotiate With Used Cars Dealers
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Car traders have excellent discussing abilities. They know how to deal with
their clients with their methods and methods to make sure that they shop.
Amazi...
starry starry night…
-
Ho Ho Ho! Hope everyone had a merry fucking Christmas and will enjoy a
drunken orgy of pleasure on New Years Eve. I had a nice Christmas Day with
Melinda(a...
byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
-
.....I think the time has come to acknowledge that I'm not actually
blogging any more.....
PLUS
I'm off on Sunday for a Big Adventure Down Under, with L...
Drug Law Reform - NZ Show Australia How it's Done
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It seems that our New Zealand cousins are finally taking some much needed
action on drug law reform. Australia should take note of this and consider
caref...
Daze of Summer
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Her mentor is one of the most gentle people on the planet. He catches flies
in his hands and sets them free outside his studio, and he flicks
mosquitoes a...
Musings
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A week has passed since my last post and it's been a week of contrasts.
Right smack bang in the middle of week, Wednesday, was Australia Day, a
public holi...
Who buys CRACK without Brown ?
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See these F.cking dealers up here they cant get the brown sold cause its
shite so lots of people are just buying Whisky and im thinking to myself No
For Me...
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Would you trust someone who was never sure if they loved you?
I want to be held (or posses a large amount of drugs)
I want to be skinny and pretty
I want...
The Neighbour's Gun
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I remember those lazy summer nights. In my light, light dress, I would open
the window and gaze at the moon in the night. I would look and almost feel
th...
THIS is classic slice-of-life video; filmed from a sushibar conveyor belt in Japan. You don't need sound for this one (unless you speak Japanese...)
Never Mind The Balearics...
LOST WEEKENDS... Lost weeks... Lost lives...
THE SPANISH ISLE of Ibiza is the "spiritual home" of much British dance music...
Eva Cassidy: Autumn Leaves
I wonder if Autumn is as miserable your end as it is here..? This song wonderfully reinterpreted by Eva Cassidy (I think) brought tears to my eyes when I first heard it. See what you think ...
Christiane F
Christiane F
("Wir Kinder vom Bahnhoff Zoo")
Berlin has long been a centre of "alternative" living, attracting the artistic and dejected. And of course heroin rushes into such a void:
You can see the film in its entirety by clicking HERE.
These are my 3 roborovski hamsters!
(And now there is one...) Itchy, Bashful and Spherical... Itchy, the scruffy, dopey (and tamest one) died a few weeks ago. I was very ****** off (no swearing on this blog (or I'd be effing and blinding all the time...)). Spherical and Bashful were the remaining "Trotters" aka Hamsta MCs, Carrot Nose and Trotter Donkey ... until Trotterdonkey died and now poor Spherical Carrot Nose remains alone ...
What name should I give to my fictional slavering English mastiff hellhound..??
Name the Uncooth Doggie...
NOW I'M PUTTING UP A NEW POLL...My forthcoming fiction shall feature a giant, ill-tempered slavering hellhound of an English Mastiff who spends her time savaging pram wheels, dolls, etc; pulling soft toys apart... growling at houseguests, baying at the light fittings etc etc. She has a total personality change, however, when she gets "raped" down the park by a local rottweiler... leading to a howling, baying, snaggle-toothed litter of puppies!Anyway, which of these three names do you think fits best?(In alphabetical order)GwendolinaPansyTinkerbelle???Vote now ...!!
London Time
GMT (aka "Universal Standard Time"):
ahead of the Americas; behind everywhere else...
Trisch & Jen on the phone
Real life spooky phone call. Trisch Li is speaking to her friend Jen, who has a stalker sneaking round the side of her house. I Love the film exposure. I love the funky background. And I love Trisch. She had bipolar. She died. She left some amazing stuff behind ...You can see Trisch manic here.
Moby: Go
Anyone who was a Twin Peaks fan will know this tune: the in-sequence floaty tune played in-episode (not the theme tune) that made that tellyprog so dreamy.
This tune is something else:~~~~~~~
Future Sound of London: Papua New Guinea
THIS tune is transcendently beautiful.
Thank you to Lizzy who reminded me:~~~~~~~
The Orb: Little Fluffy Clouds (Danny Tengalia)
Archetypal triphead/herb-tokers' tune ...
Urban Shakedown: Some Justice
One of my all time favourite "hardcore" rave tunes. The "woman" singing "we live as one family" is actually a man speeded up. The primal line "Now eeeee-yeah-oh-eeeee-yeah we live as one family," sounded to me like the sun rising at psychedelic dawn. For a long time there was forever a part of me left from this 1991-1992 era, still out there, tripping in a certain corn-on-the-cob field at dawn...
Praga Khan: Injected with a Poison
Sums up what my attitude used to be and is once again to gear. That because, "There's a rainbow inside your mind ... Injected with a poison.... we don't need that any more."
Scott McKenzie: San Francisco
I really used to believe all this crap with all my heart. Peace and love and chemical dreams. If you've ever tripped out high upon higher and sublime upon sublime there is no way of bringing the beauty of the experience back with you... I once had a friend down who brought some cocaine. I did some lines and was soon stuck to the ceiling. I had tickets for a rave in south London. He was too wasted to go. So I had to negotiate an hour and a half nightbus ride all the way down. By Trafalgar Square I was eeing out on 2 pills as well and my eyes such massive discs I couldn't read the bus time tables and had to tell passers-by I'd "forgotten my reading glasses" (how embarrassing)... then I arrived around 3pm. DUR! Not pm (wasn't THAT late 3AM): though these pills didn't wear off till well after 11am which made them superstrong... anyhow... Security let me straight in I'd obviously taken all my drugs (indeed I had: felt like I was flying by this point)... first person I encountered was a middle-aged woman in a ball gown swaying back and forth in the foyer (Brixton Academy: a venue for 5000) I told her: "you are so cool". We subsequently made friends. Watching this video and seeing how stuck in the neverending moment of bliss some "flower kids" are I remember this lady having to tell me: "there's the party. Then the party's over. You have to accept that." But I never could. I wanted happiness to last for ever...
SCOTT MACKENZIE HAS GONE (copyright reasons)
HERE'S JOE BELTRAM 1990 ENERGY FLASH
Who is the superior writer? (From... in no particular order...)
Itchy's "Windy" Face
Not because she has the "farts" but because she "runs like the wind on a windy day" this is Itchy's look when she is nervous...
Bashful and Spherical look like this
(Itchy is a bit smaller)
Bashful's Lookie-Lykie
Hello you Tiny Tubby! Roborovskis are the tiniest of all hamsters, being a mere 5cm/2" fully grown... "Bashful" is pulling a bit of a grumpy face here; but hey!
Should my daily videos stay giant on the top or go mini on my sidebar? (You can only vote once.)
Doggie or Kittie?
You Are: 50% Dog, 50% Cat
You are a nice blend of cat and dog.
You're playful but not too needy. And you're friendly but careful.
And while you have your moody moments, you're too happy to stay upset for long.
38 year-old guy, 6 blogs (the main one is gledwood vol 2 so go there for new postings: blogs are linked via my sidebars), I also have 3 video blogs. One mainly music vids, the other random "novelty" clips from Youtube/etc. The third is my Fabulous Celebrity Blog for fans of trash culture. Unfortunately addicted to drugs - yes it was my own fault but what can I do about it now? Addicted means trapped & can't stop. That's how addicted I am. But that's not ALL I blog about. Apart from drugs I love drink. Apart from drink I'm into little furry animals like Pingpong, my Chinese hamster, and my 3 roborovski hamsters: Itchy, Bashful and Spherical... and ... er, food. Lately there has been a drought of the substance that enslaved me for so long. Will I clean up? Only time will tell...
Fun, comforting, and friendly.
You are a true classic, and while you're not super cutting edge, you're high quality.
People love your company - and have even been known to get addicted to you.
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