Relapse

EVERYTHING'S gone pear-shaped this past week. I completely lost my Mojo thanks to depression. Depression turned me to heroin. Heroin made me "happy" for a while. I want the clinic to reduce my methadone dose so I can get off off off all these opiates. As long as I'm on a level dose the itch to use is there. When the dose is declining I feel galvanized towards getting clean. That's how my psychology works. I can't see any life any future. I asked a friend who's on Subutex after 35 years plus on heroin whether he feels his life is over now and he said of course it's over that's why I'm seeing a psychiatrist. I would like to see some examples of people who come off opiates and actually live as productive members of society instead of committing suicide. I would have thought suicide was the more popular option. There's not much to say I'm crowding in here in a bad mood shopping bags and all. Food shopping. Not interesting shopping. I've got to go now.

Wombats

FURRY FRIDAY ON SATURDAY




arguably Australia's cutest marsupial...


they love to be held...


...and stroked...


"wombat in a hat"

... and the babies are very cute too




WISHING Y'ALL A VERY FURRY WEEKEND INDEED!

I'VE FOUND a new internet cafe that hopefully lets you publish posts after posting them. The one I had been using before had something ikky about their computers. So, a 20 minute walk later... and I'm here. Just around from crack corner. But I'm feeling strong. I'm truly fed up of all drugs; the last time was "the last time". I am resolved.

There's not a lot to say today. I hadn't had much sleep and had woken up early when I posted the last thing, which is why I was so chirpy. Later that day I came down with a crash-bang of gross proportions. That was the last time I tried drugs to raise my mood and it didn't work, they don't work, I'm fed up with it all so I'm now as clean as you can be on 80mg of methadone.

[I took the drugs after, not before the crash. The good mood was a natural high.]

Next week I have a dr's appointment about getting back to normal consumption. I only have to drink my methadone supervised because I was transferred to a new clinic and they do that with all their "clients". Last appointment I ranted on about how much of a drudge it is trudging to the chemist every day at your lowest point. I always used to drink the juice BEFORE setting out. So I started the day with it working full-on. Hopefully they will hear me on this point. And reduce me down down down again.

Arghkh I feel like a stuck record, there isn't much else to say. My computer is still sick I don't know whether it will ever be OK again or whether I will have to buy a new one. I'm saving as we speak.

I would like to get a hamster. I would like to move house. All these things are supposed to be happening, but they don't. There was supposed to be some meeting with my housing manager this week. I'm not sure whether I was supposed to be there or whether it has been and gone... who knows? I have to dash off now in case I get disconnected.

Good Morning

GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING. Finally I have got on a (public) computer that works because the mad woman who's always hogging it isn't here today. That kebab I had yesterday had way more salad than in the picture by the way. I woke up at 7am-ish so I'm already craving a lie-down. But no! Dishes have to be washed. I have purchased brand new Alpine flavour washing up liquid just for the occasion. Also I am dead set on FINALLY EMPTYING OUT THE COLLECTED ASSORTED RUBBISH MY HOUSE IS FULL OF. I have found out I am a compulsive hoarder of spectacular proportions. Eg I have at least 4 if not 5 televisions. I haven't a clue whether any bar the one I use actually work. I threw out 3 dining chairs earlier in the year. Clutter clutter. Endless pears of jeans with busted pockets. Or huge holes in them. Or too small. Or too big. Or just wrong. Endless clothes with fag burns and holes and motorbike-repair-style oil stains upon them. No! Life is going out of control. And I missed Jeremy Kyle (stuck record talk show host who "resolves" loud lower class people's problems and is 100% likely to criticize anybody who dares not to have a job!) because I was glugging my methadone. I did drink a can of cyder this morning, but my alcohol is less than half the govt's recommended weekly limits, meaning NO DOCTORLY PERSON CAN CRITICIZE ME for the odd drink. I was never into AA type meetings because everybody seems to say "I'd have one drink then I couldn't stop" whereas I always could stop after one. I'd space my drinks throughout the day to achieve a mild but constant intoxication. I never liked the taste of booze. And I never liked feeling drunk and out of control. Ironically it was a feeling of being IN control that hard drugs, specifically heroin, gave me. Confidence. Energy. Antidepressant effect. My problems were over! (So it seeeeeemed, ahem.) Oh cripes I had better ping off now else I'll only get terminated mid-sentence. Take care y'all!


Illustrated: A a hearty breakfast; B Jeremy Kyle (looks just like my brother!!!)

Lamb Shish With All Salad And Garlic Sauce

THAT'S WHAT I had for tea tonight.

I'm OK, not much to tell. The methadone is back on a level dose. That's 80mg more than I want to be on. It is level because I cannot handle hauling myself to that chemist every single day, freezing cold and sweat running down my back, only to have to deal with a long wait in fierce heat when I get in plus a two hour wait for the juice to come on and make me feel OK. By that time I'm so peed off I stay annoyed all day and sleep all afternoon in depression. My friend came in with me to point out this is all down to Supervised Consumption and being forced to take methadone to times suiting someone else's convenience. When I had my methadone at home I nearly always took it in the early hours, so that I got up with the full dose going full-on. I never had any problems with sweats etc. I did my sweating when I was asleep and it wasn't bothering me.

So I've supposedly got a dr's appointment in a week's time to review this situation. Then I want to go back to reducing the dose because I'm not one of these people who seems to want the maximum methadone for the maximum possible time: if I'm not using on top I see no need for flat dosing I want it taken down down down to OFF OFF OFF THAT CRAP FOR GOOD!

The only good news is that I'm getting 2 take home days: Saturday and Sunday. So I get the weekend off the grinding routine that is a life on methadone!

There's no other news really: I'm no longer in a raging mood with the clinic. Just endless irritation now. I got the anger off my chest last appointment. Lots of words like patronizing, coercive and a hindrance. Talk about making something that's difficult already as hard as humanly possible. That's why I'm not interested in rehab. Every steep detox I've tried has had me breaking down and put on extra meds. Both times I was put on extra meds. Extra methadone at City Roads crisis detox centre and antidepressants and tranquillizers at the proper rehab. When I went to proper rehab I cut down my using so tiny that when I left (still unable to tolerate the reduction) my habit was less than half what it had been 2 weeks before I came in.

I hope y'all are OK. Still no computer. Massive troubles posting. Take care everyone.

Macaws

Feathery Friday on Saturday


Ordinary blue and yellow macaws...


With green severe macaws


Hyacinth macaws, the largest parrots in the world...

Wishing a raucous weekend to you all..!

Hello again

I HAVEN'T BEEN BY because I could not get access to a computer. I have not been feeling well. My methadone is down to 80mg and I feel sick whenever I have to move myself to get to that overheated chemist's shop. Strangely, apart from feeling cold, I feel fine at home. As I say, it's only when I start moving myself that I get a disgusting sweat on that only evaporates a good couple of hours after sipping the noxious gunk I am prescribed. I feel my life is over now I'm no longer taking drugs. OK I do indulge about once a fortnight but I never feel the gear. I've had the odd bit of crack but I don't even like that. So I'm stuck in sobriety and hating it because I'm so unmotivated and down.

I got a letter through because they are turning off the old analogue TV signal in London next April and I'm eligable for a Freesat dish and box, fully installed for just £67 ~ about $100 ~ giving me over 100 channels without any need to subscribe. So I'm thinking of going for it.

Apart from that no news. Just missed doctor's appointments (I felt to ill to go). And poor sleep. Up all night, in bed all day not wanting to get up. Then the dreaded trek to the methadone chemist and having to remove half my clothes in that ridiculously tropical shop. I stink because I have not had a shower in over a week, just half hearted attempts at washing over the sink. I don't want to be dirty but I just feel like a block of ice when I wake up. I need my methadone AT HOME so I can take it IN BED a good couple of hours before I get up. THEN I will be able to stomach showers, changing clothes, washing hair all the things normal people do. All the things addicts on methadone supposedly start doing again but cannot when the methadone is not in their hands. The longer this poisoning goes on the worse things will get. I just want off that noxious rubbish as quickly as possible. There is no earthly reason why I should experience any withdrawal whatsoever. If I reduced a dose of heroin by 5mg per week I wouldn't feel anything at all. So why should I feel the reduction in methadone? I'm fine once I've drunk it and waited the infernal amount of time that rubbish takes to come on (over two hours). But I'm not OK when I wake up in the morning. Unless the clinic give me control over drinking my own dose at home I'm launching a formal complaint and/or simply scoring my own methadone on the street so I can walk to the chemist without hot and cold flashes and flushing half the dose they give me. They probably wouldn't notice if I did that. I don't want to play around with my dosing but I'm getting more and more wound up on this point. I got advised to issue a formal complaint some weeks ago. Everyone else I know gets good treatment apart from me. It's almost as if they were deliberately eroding my mental health. Example: by insisting I go to group therapy which is only compulsory for convicted petty criminals. I went to two groups very reluctantly just so I could say I'd tried it. Then very happily turned my back on that complete waste of time. 90 minutes of patronizing rubbish I have heard a million times before. No thanks.

I'm not in the mood for NA because I don't go anywhere these days. I feel very run down and mentally exhausted. My mother did not seem to like the letter I wrote her explaining my past. She doesn't want to face my point of view. But she did tell some very interesting stories of her own which I'm sure she considers true. Viewpoint, viewpoint. It's all in the viewpoint.

Well I have to dash I'm on a public computer yet again. I will be back sooner if I can get to a computer that actually works, which many in this shop don't. Take care everyone and have a charming weekend...

Wednesday and Sunday

THIS IS what I wrote on Sunday, but the (public) computer wouldn't let me publish...

THE CLOCKS went back last night so it's 7pm where it would have been 8pm before. I've taken my pill. There's nothing doing tonight except Downton Abbey in an hour or two.

My computer is kaputt! The hard drive has gone so I'm *****d; only God can help me now. I believe in God. All things are possible. I suspect it's actually the cable not the drive that's gone but that still necessitates a change of drive at £50 for 160GB + £60 workmanship ie £110 or about $170 US.

The stopping smoking is going crap basically. I am cutting down on my ciggies before switching to that gum. The gum does work but I smoked near-constantly without really realizing it... I need to cut down to 12 a day then 8 a day and then 4. I was on about 25 (own rolled) before I tried to quit on Friday things swiftly went pear shaped. Maybe I'm trying to cut down too many things but I don't think so...

I have to go now before I get terminated. Hope you all had a good weekend!

PS I've been watching some horrible films: I didn't know La Reine Margot was so "lusty" or disgusting, Elizabeth shows folks being burned at the stake; Hell lived up to its name... ukh.

Viper: Hard Techno Anthem



This poor mouse doesn't know quite where to go so he just settles down and washes his ears...



OK it's now Wednesday and I'm still coughing and spluttering thanks to the Common Cold. I'm thinking of purchasing an electronic cigarette, you know, the type that light up then you suck in pure nicotine vapour minus any tar. You even see "smoke" that is actually water vapour, a vehicle for the nicotine.

I've been watching Elizabeth The Golden Age, it's much nicer than the first film about Elizabeth, far less gory. The director said he filmed inside cathedrals because stone is permanent blah blah going down the generations etc. But Elizabethan houses were wooden! So I kept wondering why the Queen was at church... I would love to be able to go back in time and tell her "m'lady you shouldn't worry too much about that Spanish Armada ~ they'll get beaten back by the weather"... etc.

I'm wearing Opium perfume that I got at £25 for 50mls about a month ago and I've already used half a bottle. I don't think I'll be getting that one again. One person told me I "smell like a French tart's boudoir" ~ and this is the pour homme version... My favourite fragrance is Chanel's Antaeus it smells like incence...

Now I have to go else I'll get terminated. Take care everyone...

PS I JUST READ THIS BACK. BOY WHAT A BORING POST!!

Sunshine

IT'S A HOT DAY TODAY. I had to take off a layer of clothing because of over-zealous central heating in the methadone pharmacy. The sun is shining; it's actually quite hot. I know I should have done this weeks ago but I'm about to take my computer to hospital today. I just couldn't face doing it before as I thought I'd fused it. Turns out it does turn on after all ~ but then it says something about a cable disconnection and won't do anything further.

I didn't get stop smoking stuff yesterday as it turns out yesterday was "preparation day" they wanted to make quit day a week yesterday but I insisted on giving up today. I can't handle the stress of so many cigarettes knowing I'm on a slow countdown to the very last...

You have to pick one type of nicotine replacement therapy and I think they do most types but not those electronic cigarettes you smoke cartridges in... So I'm going for gum. I couldn't deal with a patch unless I had absolutely no choice: that would be too much like a nicotine version of methadone! If only drug cessation clinics gave a wider choice of therapies I might have cleaned up years ago. (I am still on prescribed methadone now, so I don't count myself as "clean".)

I've actually forgotten the password to one of my emails. How stupid can you get?

I have to go now; I have an appointment with Smoking Cessation in just over 2 hours...

O I've just remembered my password; I'm signed in.

Gotta run; take care everyone......

It Only Hurts When I Cough

MY THROAT has been colonized by alien spawn I have been sleeping half the time. Why my throat should affect the man in the moon I've no idea but it does. I'm really tired.

The bug killers came by today. We still have cockroaches in our house. The extermination man came at about 10:45 when I had just woken up. He puts this gel down that kills nearly all of them.

I don't feel as depressed as I did before. I've seen some light.

Tonight I have a stop smoking appointment at 5, so I should come out of it with a free prescription for nicotine gum. You have to choose what kind of NRT you would like and I decided the gums would be best: you use it only when you feel you need it; and chewing gives you something to do which might substitute for the action of smoking.

I'm kind of dreading giving up but I don't want to be an old smoker. I'm scared of hospitals more because of the thought of being forced to give up than anything else. I need a new life and I don't envisage cigarettes in that life.

I have to go now and buy a cream tart from Morrissons.

Things I Am Supposed To Do

AKH THERE'S so many things I'm supposed to do; I don't feel up to doing any of them. It's only because I'm such a misery, no real reason, no real excuse. And where does self-esteem come from? If anyone knows of any for sale I want to buy some. I think I was left with a short supply at birth

CHAMPAGNE SONG ~ ANGELIKA MANN: CHAMPUS LIED
this is genuine East German pop music from the early 80s



This is the film I got that song from. Doesn't this tune start like an evil flower opening stealthily in the dark...? Then it sounds deadly sad.



I can't stay on long. I have been watching a film called The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) about the Staasi secret police. I have a thing about the cold war. I would have loved to visit East Berlin or Soviet Russia...

Illustrated: Martina Gedeck "the German Meryl Streep"...

Acrobatic Mice

I WAS LOOKING for the Jordans advert with two harvest mice talking in posh accents and kissing. My robos never spoke but I'm sure they would have been posh if they did. Roborovski hamsters are like the aristocracy: a rare breed. My robbies did used to kiss hello though the way French people kiss on both cheeks. One day Itchy was running the wheel with Spherical sitting next to her on the ground. Itchy kept stopping to kiss-kiss Spherical hello. Spherical was highest in pecking order and so got the most kisses... Anyway aren't these harvest mice tiny?



I have been staying off drugs which made me very miserable yesterday when I really wanted some heroin. Somebody offered me some crack today but I turned it down outright that stuff doesn't agree with me. All these drugs affect my mood. Heroin by flatttening it; crack by switching it sometimes. Some days when I was on heroin and crack, I could stay high all afternoon just off of one pipe on the crack. It just seemed to keep going. When I smoked too much I got paranoid and my life became more miserable than ever.

I'm finding it hard not to take heroin as a life without it seems like a life devoid of meaning. Some days like today it's easy. Other days like yesterday when I ordinarily would have used it, it seems far far harder. I can't remember when I did last use it. Over a week ago. I've been using it probably once every two weeks on average so it's more and more infrequent. Luckily they're testing me each time I come into the clinic so they can see the tests are negative. Heroin stays in your system for about 4 days; crack is a bit longer, I think. I was never interested in giving clean tests before so I barely know anything about the issue. Last time they tested me using a lollypop you pass around your mouth he ticked just about everything in the "please test" boxes including stuff I'd never use in a million years like cannabis.

I think the reason I find it hard without heroin is that I was relying on it as an antidepressant mood stabilizer and without it I get far more depressed. Up until about nearly a year ago, I just couldn't handle doing any more than a day off heroin and even that one day was hard. The methadone just didn't seem to work the way it was supposed to. So I'm fighting through unfamiliar territory with methadone declining by 5mg per week at the moment. I don't feel withdrawals from that reduction as the dose is still 95mg; quite high.

Well I have to dash time is running out I hope y'all are well...!

Hummingbirds

FEATHERY FRIDAY ON SATURDAY


Psychedelic


Colourful ...


... and cute


With precision beaks that suck nectar from flowers...


... they fly amazingly; but look just as good perching.

WISHING Y'ALL A CHIRPY WEEKEND!

Better ...

I AM MUCH BETTER TODAY than I was yesterday and far better than all last week. Akh I hate to admit this but I had genuinely forgotten to take my medication and that was part of the problem. I wish I could find a doctor who would prescribe what I WANT only a small change to a different type of the same thing. As it is I HAVE NO DOCTOR. (No psychiatrist, only a GP outside whose catchment area I actually live). Thank you London Borough of Evil for messing up my life in yet one more aspect. I am housed by one borough yet live in another. I would rather live in the (more innercity) borough I am housed by. At least inner cities are funky and full of life. As for drugs they are never more than a bus ride away so it's just as druggy here. I don't happen to know the local dealers as I never bothered getting introductions to any bar two. One who seemed to have forgotten me last time and another who sells crap. I don't care about drugs now anyhow. I'm spending my money on foreign DVDs and a book. The DVDs I bought were I Have Loved You So Long (French, starring Kirsten Scott Thomas); The Lives of Others (German ~ about the East German secret police and with the same female lead who played Ulrike Meinhof in The Baader Meinhof Complex and Michael Jackson This Is It this last one was on offer for £3 or I wouldn't have bothered and frankly although I do like Michael Jackson I think for even that money they could have done better. The first two were on a two for £10 deal and it took so long to find the Kirsten (or Kristen) Scott Thomas film to make up the deal.

Tomorrow morning I take the tube into town to pay for a book I have already ordered over the phone from Waterstones. There is no Waterstones, the nation's biggest bookseller by far, anywhere close to me and I'm not saying anything about the locals. I tried WH Smith, which sells magazines and stationery as well as a selection of the most obvious titles in each genre and the man rather ridiculously said of Piaf: la verité (which means Piaf: the Truth) "it's not a book we stock on our shelves". The fact that WH Smith do not stock French language titles is painfully obvious. Can you order it specially? No. So I rang this other shop who took the ISBN and said yes for £25 and a 3-week wait you can have it. I have a thing about Edith Piaf after watching that film about her La Vie En Rose.

Now I have to go else I will get cut off; my computer is still in hospital.

Here is a high quality pop video of Edith Piaf singing la vie en rose...



Milord

thank you Buggerlugz for this one... this and la vie en rose sont les deux chansons that have been going round my head...

Dentists Done

SORRY I HAVE BEEN AWAY. My computer got briefly restored, then fused. So it's totally dead now and has to go in the repair shop down the road.

I have been feeling very depressed. I was hypomanic for just two days. Of course the second of these had to be when I was seeing the doctor at the druggie service plus my worker. My worker was visually backing off from me, I was talking so much and probably too loudly about the ins and outs of my long term heroin addiction in the waiting room. Then the next day I crashed!

I have been tempted to use heroin but only through sheer desperation. When I was still in a good mood I bought three good films in French, German and Spanish: La Vie En Rose; The Baader Meinhof Complex and Dark Habits by Pedro Amodovar (whatever his name is). La Vie En Rose, which is the life story of Edith Piaf, who grew up between a brothel and a circus, earned a living busking and was discovered by a nightclub owner named Louis Leplée. I love that film so much I have seen it four or five times already. It has been the only thing that brought meaning to my last days that have been so miserable.

I did see my Mum yesterday and I wrote her a letter explaining the past. I don't know if she liked what she read. I was beating myself up afterwards for being too frank. I didn't look at the letter in the five days between writing it and handing it over. I think I have a problem with over-frankness, the opposite of most people. I felt ill all day though it was really nice to see her. By ill I mean like a crotchety 108 year old who can't do anything without getting tired easily. My Mum seemed OK I hope she didn't notice my poor health. I really feel ill and I'm only calling it "depression" because I know from experience that's what it probably is, but I've been feeling physically sick, exhausted and as if my life is over.

I went to the dentist today for the second of two appointments and got my upper teeth cleaned (the lower ones were done last week) and had two fillings. The lignocaine took over twenty minutes to work and had to be injected twice into my lower gums until it froze me up so good I can still barely speak!

I think/hope I am starting to feel better. I am dreading next having to see a psychiatrist (whenever I get one) and having to explain my dreadful mental health. Ukh. Oh well not worth worrying about now. I have to ping off as I'm about to be terminated I will try and get in touch with some of you tomorrow.

I have to go; I'm feeling bad already.

Ordinary People Having Extraordinary Experiences

ECSTASY, as longterm readers of my blog will know, is the only drug I ever considered truly AMAZING. It was the brightest light in a trinity of MDMA, mushrooms and ketamine. But I loved MDMA the most because on MDMA you can dance for hours. Forget the touchy-feely stuff. I danced on E. I had experiences like the one Ruth has here by wandering outside house parties on my own and finding myself in grasslands at dawn, haloed by rainbows. At one such party a white Barbadian girl named Summer Rain was meditating 6 feet high on a wall.



Nate on Ecstasy (screen 2: Nate): yes this is the sort of rubbish I have twaddled too.

I think we all have.

Mania reminded me of ecstasy because of the bright lights, enhanced appreciation of sound and colour, hallucinations (which you get at high doses) and the rushing feeling, leading to "peak experiences". I got higher on E than I ever did on cocaine, including crack. Yes crack was more intense, but Ecstasy was several clouds higher (cloud 9, 10, 11, 12 and counting...) The most intense high known to man is said to be that of heroin and cocaine taken intravenously together, the socalled snowball or speedball. This reminded me of MDMA. On Ecastasy I was frequently the highest person in the room. When I danced I would come out of my trance now and then to realize I was surrounded by people vibing off my energy. On my best nights I was constantly pestered by people wanting to know if I had pills to sell. To use the NA phrase "they wanted what I had".

If you're wondering how Ruth got E'd up on a camping trip and how Nate got there at a family dinner, it's because his brother David idiotically dumped some Ecstasy pills in the aspirin bottle. Excellent TV if not entirely believable.

If I could take ecstasy once more I'd get ten good pills and do a session with my mother.

Thanks Bimbimbie

THIS PICTURE is courtesy of my Aussie friend Bimbimbie, whose name means "birdie-wirdie" or "place of the birds" in the local aboriginal dialect. She knows red king parrots or "king reds" as I call them are my favourites and this is what flapped down from the trees only a few hours ago.

If you go to Bimbimbie's blog you'll find endless snapshots of rainbow lorrikeets, sulphur-crested cockatoos and other delicacies direct from her garden.

So this is my feathery Friday on Saturday. Thanks Bimbimbie!

As y'all may have noticed I have been feeling down and flat for nearly a month now. I'm hoping the mood swing is petering out. Because that's all it is, a mood swing. Just as my OTT excitements are mood swings too. It's hard to accept that how I feel is labelled and illness. The "sickness" part lies not in the undulations but in the extremity of the the highs and lows. I have been "high" enough to be hallucinating voices from the walls, have seen spirals everywhere, especially in ceilings, which I stared at a lot, seeeing as I was going "up". I once saw a purple face appear in a man's neck at the Nutter Club I used to attend before it was disbanded due to lack of funding (my one lifeline snatched from me ~ thanks NHS) so I have had extremes. I've also had weird ideas when I was low but am too paranoid to describe them in any detail. Not because they're real to me now. More that they're too embarrassingly nutty.

Well I wanted to ask y'all who've followed this space for a long time, do I really seem nuttier now than I was before the last year when I knew I was labelled "schizoaffective"? I'm not sure I'm any madder than I ever was (between the extremes). Just that there's a name to it. I am, I believe, what is known as a cyclothymic personality. That just means someone whose moods swing up and down, in and out, like high and low tides. You could say we're all cyclothymic then, but it's a matter of degree. I'm rarely on a truly even keel for very much more than a week. In bad periods I seem to have been up down left and right all the time for weeks and weeks on end. I am not claiming to have been at the very extreme of how up down left right it is possible to be. Merely that I was to some degree in some such direction.

Well this is solipsistic twaddle yet again. I am trying to heal. I am doing my Spanish every single day for at least half an hour if not 90 minutes or more. Every single day. Without fail. Everything else has been half-cocked as my sleep has increased in line with my depressed mood and low energy. I think some days I must have been sleeping 16 hours. Not in one single go, but endless dozes, then ultra long periods in bed. I haven't timed myself as i'm no longer interested.

There was a time when I knew something was wrong, didn't know what it was, knew most of the doctors were barking up the wrong tree by calling it depression triggered by drug abuse (when actually I abused heroin because I never felt truly well and heroin did make me feel truly well. At least for the first couple of years. Thereafter I was truly addicted. So take from that what you will but don't take this as my blessing that anybody young, lost and vulnerable ought to experiment with hard drugs. I would be horrified if anybody got themselves a habit because of me. I'm anti drugs yet still a drug addict (on 99% methadone; 1% heroin ~ it's that 1% I'm fighting against). Hence the shifting sands of viewpoint you'll encounter here.

Now I must go it's getting late. Have a marvellous weekend everybody thanks again Bimbimbie, and don't get pecked by a king red!

8 Days a Week

I JUST REALIZED it's been over a week since I posted. In that week I have been eating, sleeping and feeling down. Today I went to the clinic where I was supposed to see a doctor. I would have given in a dirty test, like an idiot and the dr wasn't around. So I asked my worker, can't I come in this time next week when I'll be clean and he said OK. My dose is going down by 5mg. I have to come in on Thursday to collect the reduced script.

A friend lent me a the Three Colours movie trilogy. It's in French so I thought I might better myself by watching it.

I'm still learning Spanish every day. Playing those CDs over and over. £35 for 2400 words vocab is not at all bad. 2400 words is enough to start leafing through magazines and simple books. I've always wanted to speak Spanish, since childhood. I haven't dropped my Oriental goals, I just got fed up of substandard teaching materials eg books that printed Chinese characters in such heavy type you could not work out what on earth was there.

Well that's me for this week. Boring as ever. I hope you all are OK and better than I am.

I wonder how Anna Grace is out there in Wisconsin. Been a LONG time since that one commented here....

Clearly Unclear

LAST NIGHT I had about 7 hours' sleep; that's not very much for me. I've been feeling headfucked and down of late; precisely how I feel when I'm about to become hyped up and hyper. Maybe I'm just depressed though.

I made a call today. I'm half interested in going back into counselling. But there are provisos: person-centred is out. I only did well in psychodynamic deeper counselling. No time limit. The 2 year time limit the time before last got extended by 6 months but 2.5 years was barely enough to scratch the surface. And lastly no fees. And I'm not getting into anything longterm in the London Borough of Evil where I presently and resentfully reside. I want to Go Home Again. Back Home Where I Belong.

I wish I could have some manic energy back. Darkness and winter are closing down around us.

I just wish I could feel OK again. I'm taking the pills; I'm taking the methadone. The methadone is doing my head in; dose is far too high. I want off that crap as fast as possible.

I try to structure my days with books in different languages but I have no drive. I want to curl into a ball. I'm too far gone to be OK again ~ maybe. Maybe that's my problem... Too far gone. Do you think so? I don't know any more. I've turned my attention back to my house and the giant clear-out session I still need to do. So that is where I am now. Clearing, clearing, clearing!

Better Already

I REALIZED while rushing to the chemist that I feel WAY BETTER than I have in days. Not so paranoid. More to the point, not so depressed.

I'm only 28 pages from the end of my French novel. That and 6 Feet Under, an everyday tale of folks living above a funeral home, have been soundtracks to my life.

No I don't think 6 Feet Under has depressed me. It's the best TV series I've ever seen. I like Billy the bipolar brother who keeps coming off my meds. People who do that are shockingly irresponsible and should be institutionalized!

I hope you like the furry chinchilla picture? I really would love a chinchilla or three (as long as they had huge wheels to ramble upon). They need a special "marble" which is a stone chopping board you slam in the freezer to be lovely and cold in summer. As dwellers of the high Andes, chinchillas find summer captivity unbearable ~ sometimes to the point of death.



I can't really keep a chinchilla. The nearest tiny equivalent is the Russian or Djungarian hamster also known as a "winter white" because its winter fur tones with the snow. They also have thick luxuriant fur, with fur on the soles of their feet; they also take dust baths and like chinchillas probably do need a "marble". Mine looked close to death one summer's day (thanks guidebook for giving no warning of this). They perked up immeasurably rambling on a tray of ice-cubes. Before y'all call me an animal-torturer, remember these are Siberian hamsters. And if they didn't want to be on the ice, they'd have walked off it.

Anyway I have to go have a charming weekend everybody.

PS has anyone else seen Made In Chelsea? Docusoap. One character is heir to the McVite's biscuit empire. I like the blonde girl with the kind eyes. I don't know her name yet. She went on the fishing trip where the other girl put a live maggot on her tongue. That's a true sign of class ~ not being afraid of dung and wiggly things. If you don't believe me, observe the reactions of lower class people around dirt. They act like they're too perfect to get dirty. True upper class people never do. I met the upper classes at university. They're OK.
I try to be classless (which makes me middle-class). How about you...?


Illustrated: chinchilla in ball with cat looking on; winter white hamsters in summer; winter white hamsters in winter...