Part 5

TWO LIFE PARTNERS AT ONCE. They do say an addiction is like a relationship. Or more to the point, a bad relationship. Think of domestic violence. Did you know that one in three victims is male? Now I'll tell you a fascinating reverse-statistic. Only one in three addicts is female. Go to a few methadone clinics or NA meetings and that truth will become self-evident.

Anyone can become an addict - addiction is a condition dormant in everyone alive. It only has to be awoken by the correct chemical "light"... then it begins to smoulder and burn, eventually raging like wildfire!

I hope I have made clear the fact that despite dabbling quite heavily I did resist addiction's wily clutches for as long as I possibly was able. But every day iwth Libra was a day that I used - all the way through our liaison except at the very end when she stopped and I went on. In fact, one of the very first questions I asked her mother (after she'd driven us to score) was "Have you got any kitchen foil?" I was still smoking at this point and couldn't bear the thought of Libra butchering herself. Also, the fact ath she could overdose at any time truly frightened me. Smoking £10 worth of heroin takes at least a quarter of an hour because the drug first melts then must be coaxed along the foil in lines; an intravenous injection - once the vein is correctly located - can be done in seconds. The difference to the brain is like the difference between taking a shower and jumping into a huge, deep, hot bath. Both get you soaking wet and the same amount of water may eventually go into each; but there is, at least initially, a matter of degrees of wetness. And that's the only analogy I can come up with, I'm afraid!

While we were at her's the drugs came, of course, from her dealer. Everything seemed easy. Addiction was laid out on a plate. I only had to cough up £10 for every day I used. When I didn't use heroin, a tiny does of methadone or a couple of DFs (dihydrocodeines) were enough to hold me.

When Libra came with me to London, I initially had to brek through the reticence I still had against scoring every day. (Even when I'd used every day in the past the bag had lasted at least into next afternoon on nearly all occasions.) Whereas her dealers were also users and addicts, in my metropolitan neck of the woods heroin was nearly always sold by professional drug dealers. Fair enough, they had to fit dealing beetween taking kids to school, shopping, cooking and watching EastEnders and to this end were often exasperatingly unprofessional. I mean, does dial-a-pizza ever take two hours because he has to sign on for unemployment benefits or fit in a trip to probation on his rounds? And then have the cheek to take maybe £50 or more from you expect you to be grateful that he bothered to show at all? Of course not! But that's part of the junkie life. As Lou Reed put it: "One thing you lern is you always gotta wait."

(Click here to see the psychedelic Velvet Underground version) of Waiting for The Man.

Continues ....

(so sorry I couldn't fit this into less postings and less space... but ho-hum ...)

When I Find* My Winning Scratch Card ....

*AND I DO FIND THINGS: Just found five Richmond Superkings cigarettes in a packet five minutes after posting this ...

DEEP AGAIN SLEEP AGAIN ... two thirty pm rising?? Seriously what is this. I've sat here plotting my life out. Not just the past that I've told you but the future.

There are, at present £77,777 lottery cards being sold everywhere. And every time I see a dropped ticket or scratchcard I have to pick it up and check it. Why? Because one time I was forlornly traipsing up the road in search of dropped money (admittedly if it's there to find I'm excellent at spotting it. But of course people just do not tend to drop £20 notes on London's pavements. And when they do, such notes don't stay undiscovered for very long. Also, Londoners are such litterbugs the streets must be swept several times a day with sit-on lawnmower sized great sucking, whirling cleaning devices, like the Teletubbies' NooNoo. Anyway this one Sunday eve I found a footprinted, creased and muddy lotto card. Checked the nine amounts of money ... hang on! £25 came up three times. So I ran straight to the corner shop. Got a very funny look (which somehow made it all the more worthwhile). The man had no discretion but to pay my £25. Of course within half an hour £20 of this was spent ...

Anyway if I won £77,777 tax-free what would I do with it? The question focused my mind on what I actually want to do with my life. And the answer was surprising. Far from go on another binge, I'd actually call the private clinic I know straight away. For just under £5000 they will take me to a semi-secret location where I will be knocked out under general anaesthesia for three days. During this time I will be dosed with naltrexone, which knocks all heroin and methadone off the brain's receptors. I will wake up feeling terrible but with the worst of withdrawals already gone through. And more to the point I'll already have been fitted with a subcutaneous naltrexone patch that blockades the effects of all opiates for over six weeks. (This is the treatment Pete Doherty went through.)

Unlike Pete Doherty, for me the drugs "don't work" ... or to put it another way, even when they do "work" they're somehow unsatisfactory. I'm rapidly approaching the point where "clean" is more exciting than using has been for a long time.

With the rest of the money I would pay off my debts (which come to less than £5000 in total), then fly off to pastures new across the world (have always wanted to see South East Asia. And you can be as cynical as you like on my motivations for going but I'll be opiate blockaded so it will have to be beaches, temples and elephants I pay my attentions to, not the local pharmaceuticals. Using other drugs whilst heroin-clean was so horrible in my last experience I never want to go there again ...

Then I will chose some place somewhere that I want to live, go live there. And inflict my writings on the international reading public because now I'm clean I'm desperate for some creative project ...

And ~ ta-daaa!! ~ that's my £77,777 (or more!) fantasy!!

***

RIGHTY-HO it's 2111hrs I'm just about to tap in today's installment. Good news: it is short. Bad news: it is not the last. Should be done within half an hour ...

***

OK this is something purloined from a comment at nicole's ... (stop press: and then edited bc I read thru and it was near-nonsense...

that £77,777 post did you get what i meant (thanks for the offer though! haha!!) ... that i actually checked myself in a daydream that i wanted to be clean... most daydreams upto now (also, daydreaming is something i pretty much stopped doing since i got addicted, which is odd, since i used to do it all the time)... most daydreams upto now involved having a million or more pounds and being able to use myself to death... see. not that i was necessarily suicidal but even in the daydream i acknowledged i'd get myself in a state. which kind of self-aborted the fantasy

yeah clean, how odd. i really want to be clean

but of course it never is as simple as that. i'm trying to urge the clinic to put me into anaesthetic detox which they probably won't do (never done it before)... but why not? oh & so on....

***

Southeast Asia? Here's my Debs answer

Southeast Asia bc I STILL ACTUALLY OWN (most of) a really expensive Linguaphone Thai course. It is FANTASTIC the best language course I've found anywhere. It was actually designed as the first year Thai coursebook for students at London's School of Oriental and African Studies which pretty much vouches for how good it is. And Burma/Myanmar... wow! That to me is the most mysterious place on earth

Part 4

WOW: AND TO THINK I WAS DETERMINED, when I started out with this tale of mine, to fit the entire thing in one posting! I'd have been here 24 hours! Telling this story, seriously, has been so knackering... It seems to go on and on, twists an dturns. Times I was nearly clean as a whistle. Times I was dirty as a sewerage treatment facility's inflow pipe ...

Anyway; just to flesh out a point I touched on yesterday. About whether addiction can occur in a day. No it cannot. Even crack they used to say it could hook you in three smokes (why three specifically?). A psychologist in one of the Sunday papers theorized that the high of crack is so intense (way more intense than heroin, because the cocaine "rush" is somehow super-compressed, hitting the brain in a whirling, swirling tidal wave). This, they said, leaves the brain with an "engram" (a kind of peak experience memory) so powerfully compelling that the desire is inevitably to go on repeating it over and over ...

I still say that if you can only resist these thoughts they will flee from you.

This is the hardest post in this story because here I'm meant to explain how on earth I managed to go from dead square and "straight" to heroin addicted and homeless. Just bear in mind that by now, as a casual user of heroin, I was approximately halfway along that road. But heroin doesn't tolerate "casual" users very readily. A week on heroin might well be followed by a weekend of upset and tears. Another thing I failed to realize until years later was how, for example, the afternoon I resolutely decided long sleeved teeshirts were not for me because I was always too hot or too cold in them... was actually an afternoon's culmination of five days' heroin smoking "chasing" the fumes from tinfoil. My discomfort was actually the very mildest of withdrawals.

Straightforward peer pressure was not really a factor. To my straight mates no drugs were really desirable. My clubbing friends despised heroin. The addicts I knew had no wish to see me get addicted. Some would lie to me "I don't know anyone here, I score at home" (several miles away) ... and so on... I'd always been someone to keep various groups of freinds separate from one anther - most especially where drugs were involved. Water and oil do not mix. So most of my using of heroin was done alone and in secret. From the very beginning I was taking introductions to the dealers rather than relying on others to score for me. Which gave me, of course, immediate access, eventually, to a host of names.

In my flirtation with hard drugs I'd already witnessed vididly the misery and squalor in which these addicts lived. I'd seen houses in which every door had been broken by police and the walls torn open. I'd seen the tantrums, tears and misery of junkies. Though I've mentioned the inverted kind of glamour kids might perceive somehow hovering around this grungy life, I knew the realities of loneliness and cold and insecurity these people fended on a daily basis. They really were no advertisment for addiction. The heroin itself did seem somehow glamorous, perhaps because it was forbidden fruit. Knowing it could kill only added to its allure. In fact, the first time I ever tried to buy it I was suicidal. Handed over £50. And two days later got my money back to great disappointment. Because the man couldn't find it. To get heroin you need the right connexions. I collected these contacts scupulously, making multiple copies of phone numbers in the back of books, et cetera. Merely being able to get my hands on this stuff made me feel somehow special. Heroin made me feel good and sometimes fantastic. Heroin addiction, on the other hand, was absolutely terrifying. I built up huge barriers against it, always willing to suffer agonies of depression and mental defeat for a few days rather than continue using in comfort. These defences took quite some knocking down. I was often in a nihilistic enough frame of mind to play with death. But addiction was another matter entirely. That was a living death; a fate worse than .... no way!

What changed was one sullen Sunday. I'd been debating whether or not to score. I had money, yet I resisted. I had been plotting where my life should be going and heroin had no part in that plan. Money, success and leaving the country, however, very much did. Despite this, I'd been fighting all day the urge to score. I had money; I held back. Eventually I went on a lonely, despairing walk up the locla high road and past all the darkened shops. Something caught my eye by the bus stop. It was actually lying right in the furthest corner of the side of the shop: a packet of something that looked like red sweets. I did a double take and picked it up. It was not a packet of sweets.

At home I unwrapped about three and a half grams of white heroin and another seven grams of brown. (I know the weights because I later wrapped the stash in envelopes and plonked it down on post office airmail scales!)

I kept my mouth firmly shut and, to cut a long story short, despite my every best intention to do otherwise ~ used up the entire lot in just over a month.

When all that stuff was gone, I was reduced to scoring on the street. I spent £10 one evening and £20 the next. This cannot go on, I told myself, and ofund a friend with a script who sold me descending daiy methadone: 20, 19, 18 mg and so on down to five. The night after five milligrams I went to a huge all-night party, and of course got EEE'd out. Afterwards I was so exhausted that I sweated out the dregs of my habit while I slept the party off. And that was that. Kicking the habit seemed easy. I didn't quite realize then how habits come by degrees.

After my first skirmish with addiction I kept heroin very much as a once-a-week treat. But I'd drink methadone ~ enough to get stoned ~ another once or twice a week.

When, at the end of a long, stoned summer, I went to stay with friends in Norfolk I was struck by a strange virus. The symptoms weren't altogether unfamiliar. Feeling too hot; too cold. Severe night sweats. Aches and pains. Diarrhoea. During this sickness I met a girl with a ten-year heroin habit and stayed over. I was ill all night. She insisted I was "sick" (ie in withdrawals). In Brit junk speak "ill" usually means unwell as it does to normal people, e.g. with an infection; whereas "sick" means "clucking" (a word that made me laugh my head off when I first heard it) or strung out ~ ie withdrawing. I didn't agree with her but went along with the diagnosis because it meant an excuse to use. Next morning, thanks to my £10 and her dealer's wares, all symptoms evaporated. "Gear does make you better," I reasoned. It is, after all, the best painkiller in the world.

To cut a long story short: I'd found myself two partners at once. Her name was Libra. Its name you're already familiar with ~ good old heroin.

Tiring Tale! :: Not the Weekend :: Squirrel's Satay

BEFORE I START LET ME ADD HERE :: I know it is not the weekend~!!! My brains have curdled. That is what exhaustion does to me. Remember I was talking about Brain Fog yesterday in "Part 3" ... that's what happens... cannot even remember what day it is... and no I am not stoned!

I SLEPT FOR NEARLY TWELVE HOURS last night from the sheer exhaustion of a. running to and from clinic appointments; b. scrawling out various autobiographical pieces (one for the clinic; the other being daily posted here. Part 4 is due later today) and c. probably cfs traces. I don't know. What I do know is that exhaustion knocked me out cold from midnight until midday today. And I wasn't trying to "lie in". That was my sleep. In one solid chunk. Sleep can be wonderful but it's also a waste of time that you could be doing something better with ...

Still, in my spare moments, I am reading The Godfather by Mario Puzo. The novel is far better than the film. Published in 1969, the book tells with authority the ways and wherewithalls of a great mafia family. Each scene featuring the "Don" he takes apart, explaining through their actions how the characters honour and disrespect one another in ever so subtle ways. From reading this book I now see it is surely the source of many of the mafia cliches and stereotypes that have become standard in television, movies and popular fiction. The ever so reasonable politeness with the undertone of threat. All that stuff. I remember seeing some photos of the LA mafia bosses from the era of Marilyn Monroe and the Hollywood greats. These men looked truly frightening. They had filmed many of the great female movie stars of the day in extremely compromising situations and used the bargaining power this gave them to force these poor women to do any favour they demanded from then on. That particular rumour I do believe. Though with the technology of the day, surely cameras took film, which limited the shooting time. And made a loud whirring noise? I don't know.

Anyhow I digress. I promised to post up my story and will do. As I said, part four is due later. I've had to scribble it down on paper first as typing straight into Blogger is too confusing. There are too many contrary facts to recall and fit in the right places ...

By the way I've submitted my blog to a couple of sites that will publish scathing reviews of it. So once these come out I will entertain everybody by linking to them ...

OK better go; it's 1318 hrs and I've writing to do...

L8Rs

G

***

Sorry I've not been in touch with so many of you for so long, as I say I am knackered out, truly. Also I've gone through the past few days comments (procrastinating basically) saying hi to some people... of course I've left loads of other people out... I really ought to get my links properly sorted ... right I've got to run to the pharmacy now, phone the dreaded local council, wait on a freind (it is a friend as well, not a dealer) ... and pen today's fascinating instalment of my drugs hell saga!! haha!

Have a great weekend everyone ....

***

What is all this thing about "great weekend" ... see that's where exhaustion gets you... I don't even know what day it is anymore

serious business!

and no i am not stoned!!

***

WANNA SEE SOME FANTASTIC SATAY cooking on the Malay griddle? Come to Lone Grey Squirrel's blog ...

***

OK: 2351hrs. I'm about to tap in part 4.

MATRAN POPPED THE FRONT DOOR LOCK IN this evening. Came back shouting about toilet paper (I assume that's what boomba-clot means? Boomba=bum. Clot=cloth in his hicksville argot.) Laundretta had done something terribly wrong in his eyes and two minutes later went running outside. Later on she was getting drunk on the stairs and holding her finger to her lips ("don't be heard talking to me"). How can she live with that monster?

Part 3

LONDON. CITY OF POSSIBILITIES. Arguably it is the Capital of Europe. When I came it was thee place to be in the entire world. London, to turn a phrase dropped by the Americans, was "swinging". Here they called it Cool Britannia.

Only I could play barely any part in this because I was ill. So badly run down I ahd to go to bed after a simple trip to the shops. And I could only buy one bag of shopping at a time, this I had to split in two, half in each hand, for the journey home.

I had a dull routine. As I say, of seemingly daily food shopping ... and that was about it. I did hit the West End a few times. But often, by the time I'd got there (it only took 20 minutes by tube!) I was too knackered out for any adventures or fun.

I battled on nonetheless and didn't even tell a lot of people I had "M.E." as they tehn iked to call it in this country. The M means myalgic ~ muscle pain; the E is encephalomyelitis ~ ie an inflamation ("itis") of the brain and nervous system. Basically it is exhaustion, (mental as well as physical), depression and constant low-grade flu-like symptoms; ie aching muscles, etc. At the worst times the "brain fog" as they call it, was so bad I felt like an old-style television when the aerial lead falls out the back. My brain was hissing with snow and all I could do was lie down, eyes closed, and let it ease up a bit.

Even when people did know (and they didn't really know how I felt. Actually nobody really asked) I rarely made an issue of it. Which caused problems with friendships. I remember someone having a go at me for cancelling a party (the party went on, only without my personal appearance. As if that was so important!) I felt more rough than usual ~ but as I say I was used to feeling rough. Only when I happened to take my temperature and saw it was 102F did I realize not only that I had the real flu but that somehow, on this occasion, my sickness was more justified. Because it was objectively real. Long ago I got my head round the fact that things that happen to me are not real when others fail to understand them. I think that is partially what is meant by the trippers' phrase "concensus reality"...

Anyway I had the flu and was very upset that I was ment to soldier on as I normally did. But when I chose not to a massive issue was made of it. Most people do not have to explain away not doing anything because they have flu. Being ill is enough. But not in my case. I'd handled the situation that badly that somehow my facts would not justify other people's matters.

Over the months I did go on a few big nights out. As I said: I soldiered on, did all I could to appear "normal" (I always thought it a bit sick to get a buzz from identifying oneself "sick" as some sick people seem to do. But that's another issue entirely. I remember being on the dancefloor, standing there as the party kicked off around me. Looking round at my generation ~ young, fit popel having the time of their lives. And yet, as I did so, I could actually feel the life and all my energy draining out of me.

One compliment I do recall receiving (if you want to call it that) was that I had never been seen drunk. Haha!! I always had the will, once I'd started drinking and felt the effects coming on, to check myself: "thus far; no further" and to keep to such self-appraisals. I hated being drunk. Associated it with the Toilet-Duck and crap smells of lavatory bowls as I puked my guts out. No way. Ukk. Drugs, when I took them, were always timed, dosed, planned. I took ecstasy maybe once over my entire first two years in London. Magic mushrooms a few times. Cannabis I vary rarely dabbled in ~ it just did not suit me any more.

This all changed one morning in spring 1998 when I opened the mail to find a free ticket to Escape From Samsara! Samsara means the Buddhist wheel of constant rebirth. But in this case it meant Friday night's trippy trancefest at the massive Fridge nightclub in Brixton, South London. My Australian cousin said she'd come with, couldn't make it; packed me off with a group of her friends anyhow. They were all cool people, my cousin's friends. They say a man (or woman) is known by his or her friends and I must say hers are a true credit to her. Nicest bunch of people I've met anywhere in my life and that's the honest truth ... Anyhow ... We went to this massive noisy cigarette smoke-filled club. I ddi take ecstasy again. Spent nearly the entire night in teh chill-out room feeling fantastic. met a girl called Lola from Melbourne who was about five years younger than me. Lola na dI went out for only ten weeks; but when the crux came ~ did I give up this sparkly new life of joy and celebration and go backwards or did I press on alone. I just resolutely went on. Queueing for massive parties on my own, yet knowing once I got inside there would be five, ten ... eventually twenty or more friends. A whole new life, as I say, but it came at a price. I was pretending to be OK when really I wasn't. When the pills wore off, when the wekend eneded, I'd have to spend days in bed, alone, recouperating. And often depressed and crying. These tears were a big part of the reality of the party life for a lot of people. Somehow they rarely got talked about.

AT EARLY EVENINGS MY LOCAL TUBE STATION became a gathering point for an entire alternative netherworld of crusties, drinkers and the misfits who roamed (and all too often lived on) the streets. Many appeared scruffy and rough yet somehow seemed free of some of society's constraints. They paid for this in poverty and pain. Gradually I got to known them because a prime source of nightly income came from sitting on the station steps and begging used one-day travelcards from the returning rush-hour, then selling these back to evening and night travellers for £1.50 to £2 each, depending on the time (there was an unofficial 9pm "watershed" when the price reduced. After 11pm it went down to £1.)

For one thing, the people I met on the station steps were far more personable than initially expected. Many were artists or "failed" musicians. Some were shockingly intelligent. (One guy in particular had messed up mid-PhD to become a homeless junkie. Drugs can affect anyone. Just don't take them!) I felt I fitted in with this crowd in a way I never had done anywhere else. For one thing I never pretended to be more knowledgeable or experienced in their way of life than I actually was, so they respected, I suppose that at least what they saw with me was what they got. Also it was OK among these people not to be feeling all right and not to be hapy. And yet to be accepted for how you did feel This, somehow, seemed a massive liberation.

I took up drinking on the station steps. At first it was nearly a joke: "I got drunk with the homeless 'crew'" (though I remained averse to actually being so intoxicated I was out of control). I began to dabble in their drugs. Valium, temazepam, the occasional Rohypnol; Dexedrine; crack and heroin. Gradually my useage increased in frequency from once a month or so, totally unplanned, to a couple of times a week. But never every day. And I thought I was being clever by avoiding drugs that were cross-tolerant on consecutive days ~ ie if I had heroin on Monday, Tuesday would be a Valium day ~ and so on. Heroin I was very scared of getting hooked on. Vivid proof of the worst kind was all around me of what the drug could do. One guy had lost one leg and was determinedly injecting right into the enormous rotting open sore on the other. When I first met him I thought he'd had an accident, unable to get to the loo on time because he was on cruches. No. This stench was the putrefaction of his own living flesh. It was disgusting. But once one leg had gone, so did his self-respect. Recently, after an absence of several years, he showed up again in my "manor". His remaining leg is still rotting, though it did used to get cleaned up periodically by doctors. I've not seen him for several months now and I've a nasty feeling he's dead.

As I say, I had reason to fear heroin addiction.

I did take a lot of Valium one long, hot summer. I enjoyed the muscle-relaxing effects they gave me. I was often in low-grade pain from the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Anyway ~

Heroin.

That's what people want to hear about, I guess.

I was daydreaming just now, before I put pen to paper, that if a poll could be gathered of users' private thoughts on first experimenting with heroin, ideas along the lies of "is that it?!?" and "is this what all the fuss is about?!?..." would top the list of reactions.

I felt peaceful, warm and sickly-sweet to the point of nausea. But I managed not to be sick, which was a small triumph. My first time with crack I did have my head down the toilet. You have to persist with these substances. They're not always user-friendly to start off with ...

Heroin is best compared to a big fluffy blanket. At first, because you don't actually need it, you might feel too hot and slightly uncomfortable. But as time goes on and you become inexorably acclimatized to the stuff, you eventually find, on throwing off the blanket, that the freezing cold world is unbearable. You hurry to wrap up warm again. Sometimes, perhaps if you got badly chilled, you might promise never to do without your blanket ever again~ which is what I have done. I'm far better at keeping promises to use than the ones I've made to clean up.

The process of addiction takes time and persistance. No way can anyone get addicted to any drug from one try. Admittedly, to the easily-impresed, the image of the junkie as a kind of anarchist or rebel with a cause (the cause is always to score more gear so you don't get sick!) can be just as intoxicating as the drug.

I am exhausted from scribbling pages and pages of this. It's dark outside and I've all this still to type in ... I do apologize but this will have to continue tomorrow when I can hopefully give at least some meaningful account of precisely what led on to what and how this heroin achieved the iron grip it has over me still to this day ...

Till tomorrow ...

Bloody Confessional/Worker Working: Personal Goals ... etc...

WRITING THIS BLOODY CONFESSIONAL tale of my drugs downfall is pretty exhausting I can tell you, honestly. Also I look back and just see the mistakes and bits that could have been phrased better. Loads of bits. Hmmm...

FINALLY I did get to see my worker at the clinic. The interim one I saw last week wanted my lifestory in brief. So I turned up with seven A5 sides of squiggles, saying "don't you want me to boil this down to a bulletpointed sheet of A4?" "No, no~ that's perfect," two of them said, salivating at the prospect of tucking into somebody's personal scandals for photocopied bedtime reading. I supervised the photocopying myself as I didn't want other pages "accidentally" getting copied and spiced all over the internet ... woo~hoo!!

We talked about my personal goals. And she tried to justify the head of department's fascistic decision not to allow people anaesthetic detoxes costing £4000 when actually six weeks in the Maudsley hospital South London might well cost that (as a local council-funded "private" patient, which is where you are with drugs, in a pecuniary no-man's land ...) So we've agreed that next time I return with details of this proposed detox of mine with full pricing. Then at least they can knock me back (as they're surely going to) in the full knowledge of what I actually do propose ...

I'VE NOT TOLD THEM AT THE CLINIC about this blog. That would be taken as evidence of goal-seeking behaviour and seen as a good sign. But it would also tempt them to keep trying different search-terms and urls to read my scandalous revelations and I'm not too keen on that at this point in time. (Not that they don't know the "scandal"~~ it's just kept somehow within a different frame of reference at the drugs clinic; that's all I can say ...

MY EVIL LANDLORD wanted me to produce by midday written proof of my continued extended warranty or whatever they call it~ some silly term like that~ to actually live where I'm living. I said yeah yeah, fully knowing that personal callers are no longer welcomed at the Housing's homelessness services. So he'll just have to telephone them himself or take a fax like other people do. When I left in the morning it was actually to go round the off-licence, collect mail from Mother Hubbs's and do more important things than satisfy his scummy ego.

THIS LIFE STORY, as I said earlier, is really exhausting me and I don't feel it's as well put as it might be. I churned a lot of it out quickly as I could to get the main points covered; there seem to be so many of them it's hard to keep a grip on it all sometimes. Also bear in mind that is a lifestory focused on drugs. If I'd told it via some other viewpoint it might sound very different indeed ...

If you're interested in reading times before that, go see my post From Depressed Acorns Miserable Oak Trees Grow ... (what a self-pitying title!!) ... anyway ... you might like it ... that is the story of my childhood....

OK I'm off to finalize my scribbling of today's magickal instalment of My Life On Drugs ... Coming to your computer screens very soon ...
All the best

Gleds

***

RIGHT, IT'S APPROACHING A QUARTER PAST ELEVEN and I'm just about to tap in the next part of my saga. Should be ready by ten to midnight London time ...

Story: Part 2

NOW BEAR IN MIND at this time everything about me screamed out "straight" or "square". Although you cannot, of course, tell whether somebody takes drugs merely from their appearance, first impressions are often correct. It's easier, actually, to tell who does not take drugs. And I did not back then. And it pretty much showed ...

My hair was short (and this was a good year or two before close cropped hair lurched into fashion). This was 1991, the era of the rave. Hair tied into stubby pony-tails. White gloves, whistles, fluorescent workmen's jackets. Sportswear. Hooded tops with fractals or puns on household products and foods. Especially "Coke". Cocaine at that time was often uttered in the same breath as "heroin"; "heroin and cocaine". Hardcore. Some of the posher students did do coke, but it was hush-0hush behind closed doors. Speed was way more popular. But the drug of choice at dance parties was a little white pill stamped with a little bird ("doves") or a love heart (because E was the love drug and the hug drug) and so on....

SO THEN - THIS SATRUDAY NIGHT PARTY was to be my kind of official introduction to drugs. I was to bring £15 and ask for "E". From a pitch-black strobe-flickering room emerged noises that sounded to me like aliens being slaughtered under a chainsaw. How anyone could actually enjoy this music was far beyond my comprehension. Anyway... the drug dealing seemed to be gonig on in a small side-room lit by a red light (how cliched can you get?) I asked for "E" - the man said he'd sold out. So I asked for "A" - acid, handed over £5 and received a torn-off piece of blotting paper the size of a postage stamp. I put the whole thing in my mouth and swallowd. Little did I realize how small (and cheap) an acid "trip" actually is. I had just swallowed four at once ...

My introduction to LSD wsa so mindblowingy intense that away from the party, during the peak of the trip in somebody's kitchen, I couldn't understand a word anybody was saying. Lips seemed to utter one thing; yet the most amazing fantstical remarks were over-dubbing everything with randomness about sausages, baked beans and gravy when actually people were supposedly asking me whether I was all right. (I was not.) At one point, crossing a grassy field between "blocks" of the student residences I came to believe I was in New York City. Yellow cabs drove past as plain as today as a crazed gnome juggled skittles in the middle of the street.

These are the amusing parts. It all went badly wrong when I returned to my room to look for something. Already by this stage - so I was told later - my eyes were about as wide as wide eyes can be. Glancing to the wall I realized the poster had turned into a gruesome long-fanged demon. I nearly jumpd out of my skin and for some reason ended up walking through bushes in pitch darkness with space aliens telling me they had been following me. I was running away because I believed they were coming from the sky to beam me up. At one point a lizard-like entity was actually riding my shoulders, laughing in my ear as long-clawed fingers tightened round my throat.

If you're tempted to say to me, "That never happened;" you're right. It didn't. As the Beatles sang in Strawberry Fields, nothing was real. But on such psychedelic drugs anything you imagine becomes "real". So I'd have to disagree because in subjective actuality it did indeed "happen" to me.

Thankfully, because I'd taken the drug in one single dose it did at least peak and taper off in fairly distinct stages and began to lose strength after three or four hours of this nonsense. I was then reduced to the more standard "trippiness" that most people associate with acid. I was still out of it: but the monsters had gone.

At the end of the night I found myself in a rom full of hippies skinning up spliffs as joss-sticks burned. This was the very first time in my life I'd been surrounded by such people. Up until this point they had been a total mystery to me. The room, I remember, was so crowded that there was literally no more leg room at all on the floor.

One girl, who had taken ecstasy, kept jumping up saying how happy she was and dancing to no music at all. She then took to turning the television on and off, to watch the white dot disappear exclaiming "ooo" and "aaa". (TVs with disappearing dots! Those were the days!)

Even though I was tripping, I found it sordid to watch someone so carried away by the experience of drugs.

When the music did come on it was a track specially for me and I still remember it to this day: Oceanic's Dream Tripper ...

So that was my introduction to drugs. Lost and depressed afterwards, I realized that none of the friends I'd met thus far had any experience of the drug I'd taken so I took to hanging out with the new crowd I'd met last weekend - more for the sense of solidarity than anything else. Also, in someone's room, somewhere, there was a big hash-smoking session every night which put me in my element. I quickly got a liking for being stoned, although it sometimes brought back the LSD experience. One night I was trying to run the tap: I remember standing transfixed as water droplets held still in mid-air like glittering spheres, then, as they hit the sink, burst into crown shapes ... Never before or since have I seen this phenomenon with my naked eyes.

As soon as they threw another party I was back there. This time I did get my hands on ecstasy. And when the music came out of the speakers in a vector-pointed sphere I thought, "Wow! This tune really is 3D!" - not realizing it was actually a first effect of the drug. The full effects really hit me under the strobe light in the middle of the dancefloor when I suddenly realized I was experiencing a vivid, rushing feeling of happiness. I had never felt joy so intensely before. The music was suddenly wonderful, and far from being self-conscious I actually fond myself dancing. Hours seemed to pass in a delirious dream of flashing lights and music. I felt like I was shimmering with pixie-dust from the inside. Somehow, somewhere, I managed to catch hold of one thought because suddenly a lot of things made sense: "Ah - this is why people take drugs!" And a lot of mentholated people were hugging me. Which kind of throws on its head for me that NA phrase "hugs not drugs" because as the saying went "Everything starts with an E" - it certainly did for me - E for Ecstasy, the Hug Drug.

For months afterwards I found myself living in a netherworld split between starry-eyed fantasy of rainbows, cosmic nebulae and friends across the universe in unity and a bleak and grey reality of a university course that did nothing for me. Compounding this it took me a long time to make many real friends, though I always had people to take drugs with. Plus I was haunted with an overwhelming feeling of wanting to be somewhere else all the time.

The one philosophy I knew (or the excuse I went with) said that if you fall off a horse the only thing to do is get right back on it. Which is why despite such a bad trip I did take acid again and again and again ... Ecstasy gave me horrific comedowns but I persisted with that, too. Speed I discovered I could take during the day on no special occasion and a bland afternoon seemed suddenly exciting. The downside of all this came afterwards. Payback time. A chemical overdraft that had to be worked off. Lying in bed so badly drained I could barely get across the room for a glass of water, let alone make it to seminars on time.

Eventually, following weeks of non-attendance and an exam where I simply scribbled an obscentiy across the paper and walked out, it became clear that the only thing I could do with this course was drop out of it.

I spent months in an unemployable stupor of depression. When I smoked cannabis I got so paranoid I felt the world was coming to an end. I gave up the spliffs when I got an office job. And there was neither time nor the chance to take anything else. My head had got so messed up I didn't realize it was unusual to spontaneously see visions of flowers springing up from the kitchen floor...

For a time, with cannabis put to one side and ony very occasional ecstasy, I almost managed to put life on track. One autumn a friend and I taught ourselves the art of magic mushroom picking, and so a new diversion was discovered. Mushrooms were indeed fun. Way more fun than acid had ever been, and much much easier to control the dose (one piece of paper, less than a cm square imprinted with how much LSD? You didn't know until it was too late sometimes ...) I must say, however, that I did use these mushrooms infrequently and in moderation. My system should have been pretty clean ...

But I became increasingly run down and tired. Eventually I realized I was not merely tied but ill. The doctor diagnosed "post-viral fatigue syndrome" a diagnosis later amended to "chronic fatigue syndrome" (CFS). In despair I upped sticks and moved to London.

London, of course, is where I eventually found heroin.

To be continued ...

Clinic Mix-Up (What's New) and other things ...

I'M EXHAUSTED AND MY LEGS ACHE I don't know why ... had to go to the clinic today, specifically told to come at half past the hour late because then we could have a longer session ... the little Hitlerette at the desk blankly informed me I shall have to come back tomorrow because my name's not down at all. What on earth's happening there?? And I came all prepared. I had to write out a brief version of my life story so my interim worker could at least make some kind of head or tail of my "case" ... I tried telling Hitlerette it was a special appointment but she looked at me with a fatigued "everyone's special in their own eyes" gaze ...

A DOUBLE PAGE article in today's Mirror about heroin-addicted identical twins, one of whom hanged himself most certainly grabbed my attention today. Their mother wrote a book called Mum, Can You Lend Me Twenty Quid? (by Elizabeth Burton-Philips) and does a website in memory of her dead son: www.nickmillsfoundation.com. It's already on my links and it looks quite good.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE ... no not dumplings (though I have used up an entire packet of self-raising flour in under a month, which is faintly worrying ...) I've found a new kind of blog! twominutesthirtyseconds.blogspot Instead of illustrating each day with photos, every post is a Youtube type screen. The true meaning of video blog!

AND FINALLY: next instalment of my drugs story will be ready and probably already posted by the time most of you read this. I've just got to finish up scribbling it down ....

***

SCRIBBLING IT DOWN? It took ages! Now I've got 1500-2000 words to tap in. It's 14 minutes past 8pm as I speak, hopefully it'll be all done by nine.

***

MY NEW READING BOOK BTW: Mario Puzo's The Godfather. Fantastic!

My Drug Story: Part 1: Genesis

BECAUSE A LOT OF PEOPLE HAVE ASKED this and because it's a complex tale to tell (with an extended flirtation in the beginning spanning several years until I ever became familiar enough with it ever to feel casual enough around heroin to become a daily user ... I have a lot of memories to sort through in my head, a lot of remeniscences I'd actually really rather forget. And a lot of explaining to do: to myself, really, not to you. but it's all a tangle and prising the bundled-up lot of it undone and laying it out in chronologial order let alone summoning the sense to explain half of it is going to take some doing. And though I may find myself doing this; I'm rather loathe to post in two or more parts (stop press: I'm going to have to...) unless so doing definitely makes sense ... (stop press: it does ...)

So please bear with me as I dig (it's a complicated history with all manner of stop-starts in the beginning) dig deep shovel my muck out and try to make at least some sense out of how the squarest boy in my class at school could wind up a decade later as an injecting heroin addict. Whilst the others are settled down, married homeowners with kids, careers and divorces under their belts: all the normal stuff. I must pause and ask the question: How did this happen to me~??

Actually (and think of how bizarre is this!?) I was an inpatient in a mental hospital when an item came on the evening news about drugs programmes in women's prisons. And who should they feature? But the same little girl (a grown woman now, of course) ~ hair dyed but definitely the same person and looking good considering ... who I used to walk to primary school with for a time ... Here she was, in prison for a three-year stretch. Why? Because of the same stuff that had pretty much put me in hospital: heroin. Just like me she was a junkie. They say at NA that addiction's an illness with a chronic course whose ends are always the same: jails, institutions and death... Death, the last of these, has taken too many people I've known. Jail I've avoided by stubbornly refusing to get involved in dodgy schemes. So it was the "institutions" that got me ... Living with a mad woman I'd met on the street it didn't take too long till I went crazy myself ...

*

GENESIS. HOW IT ALL BEGAN:
I FIRST HEARD OF "DRUGS" aged about 13. Leafind through a 1960s medical text I came across a write-up of the substances available at the time: " ... LSD, amphetamines, barbiturates, cocaine ... heroin ... " I don't remember reading about the dreaded "pot". But it must have been there. It was never around me and so never an issue.

In my teens drugs were taken by scruffy, rough people who I had nothing to do with. And the drugs of choice (this was 1980s rural Wales) seemed to be cannabis (back then ~ mosty hash I'd guess) and magic mushrooms. These grew in profusion in the Welsh countryside and hit the local "cat pu tree" newspapers when police raided scruffy hippies' caravans, pulling out hundred of the dried little "liberty caps" into daylight ...

Aparently the local cows and sheep graze these, standing wide-eyed at their water troughs and watching faeries dancing on top as the world goes paisley-patterned by (or whatever it is tripping livestock see ...) They get very territorial voer their mushroom patches and will aggressively shoo away hapless humans who come to pick their stashes ...

So anyway I took no drugs at all at school. Between tehn and university my one experience of drugs was watching some Dutch guitar-strumming musicians passing a herbal ciggie to and fro in France. I suppose I must have known what was in it, but cannabis never held any appeal to me. Unlike most people, I suppose, the idea that a drug was "weak" made it less appealing. If I was going to try anything, I wanted something strong!

When I went off to university everything changed when a girl form my course, who looked like Daryl Hannah, asked if I'd ever tried ecstasy. Just looking at me the answer was so obviousy "no" but she invited me to a party that weekend nonetheless.

A couple of days beforehand we made an appointment for me to try a spliff. I duly turned up armed with notebook and pen (such a student! I don't know why we didn't set up a reel-to-reel tape recording as well to really immortalize the experience! Seriously!!)

Cannabis, it transpired, was just a cigarette that made me dizzy. To try proper drugs, I'd have to wait till that weekend ...

***

And here endeth part one. Seriously: remembering ... You don't know how tiring this is!!

***

to be continued ...

Horrour Dreamings

JUST SCARED THE LIVING CRAP out of myself by waking from a nightmare speaking in a guttural horror-film voice "we'll dig them out from underneath" ... we were in caves under the world's deepest lake where Princess Diana was buried (??) I was about to bury my friend alive who had severely cheated me into this horrible dank dungeonous lake which was so deep you could fit Mount Everest upside down. Then I was riding the back engine of a train with my legs stuck inside but my entire body outside and a very close tunnel coming up. Eventually I struggled free. Only to to attacking somebody I know with an enormous pair of bolt-cutters. All this sounds farcical but trust me the atmosphere of the dream was dank and dark and horrible. (But farcical as well.) I woke up thinking of a film I saw in the picture-house called Jeepers Creepers or Jeepers Creepers II I don't remember which. Nasty! Ukk. Nightmares. No!

Slippery Saturday; Sullen Sunday

I HATE SUNDAYS! I SURELY DO!! ... So I stayed in bed as late as I possibly could, which involved sleeping about 12 or 13 hours till past two in the afternoon ... I know everyone's dissapointed with me because I "slipped" yesterday ... maybe it says something that I posted it quite unawares of the fact 1. that I had slipped or 2. what anyone would think about it... this situation has been ongoing for such a very long time with so many repetitions that it's no longer any surprise or letdown or shame to me to be doing what I always was doing despite the best intentions (at whatever point in time before hand) to change my ways, to be doing otherwise.

THAT is why they wanted me to think about rehab again. Though I'm not keen on the thought of going somewhere to do what I should be able to do for myself ... if I can't then rehab remains the only option ...

***

DIDN'T really do anything of interest except had Sunday lunch at my friend's house. It's got awfully nondrinking nonsmoking there (but still drugs on occasion, not that they had any there) ... I had to go in the back garden for a simple cigarette... I'd even like to give up those; but one thing at a time. I always thought it was best to give up cigarettes first if I could as I've seen so many clean addicts absolutely chained to the nicotine as their last vice and luxury (though I suppose "luxury" is an odd way of seeing it ...) And what exactly do cigarettes do for anyone anyhow? They're barely mood altering. The tiniest little lift ever accompanies dragging on a cig ... Well stopping is going to get easier as smoking is to be banned practically everywhere from this summer. Even phone boxes have signs in (that I originally took to be a joke) "it is illegal to smoke in these premises" ... (well it will be) ...

ho-hum ...

Whatever I do I will keep you updated ...

Sweating Conkers

WOKE UP MIDDAY: LATE, crawled up the high road into my local "town" (nobody goes shopping in Central London (at least not normally) unless they practically live there) ... I was sweating like a swine when I got there. I rang "da man": the first time it took my money ~ansafone, I got paranoid it was switched off;~ tried again from another box five mins later, a woman answered. Not a good sign. Piled more money into phone box as she summoned da man out of bed. A horror-film voice spoke to me. He'd been in deep sleep. (It was now long after one pm. Pathetic.) He said he'd call me and say where to come presently. I said this was not possible because my phone is so knackered it might well hang up on him mid call. So he said go to my friend's flat (who is now clean). I said I cannot do that; I'll meet you on the stairs. So I stayed there for ages scribbling in notebook and sweating horribly. Eventually, another two calls and over an hour later he did come. By which time I was in such a disgusting state I had to call on my friend Mother Hubbs to use her bathroom facilities (mine still aren't up to scratch.) She had kindly washed my clothes for me, so I did a complete change ... read the Saturday Mirror (full of crap) watched an amusing thing about ancient Rome being sacked by Barbarians (they looked like the old crusties we used to know from the park!) Got home. Got a vein (thankfully). Feel human again. And clean. Even though I'm (drugs-wise) dirty ... but that's the junkie life ... Ho-hum ...

***

THE BLOG I HAD HOPED was Madonna's I've now confirmed is not. If you click here it will take you back to the first week's posts on said blog. And you'll see beyond a doubt that it is a spoof that took off over the months into something a little bit more. Sorry to anyone who was taken in but I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt now that it is not Madonna's personal site at all!

Late Day Early Night

THIS IS LATE FOR ME. 11:26pm as I write. Because I foolishly lay down for "five minutes" haha! That turned into much more like five hours... Because the solstice was yesterday it remained light till something like ten thirty p.m. (surely not literally that long? But it felt like it. I know it can stay light till about ten because I remember staying out that late as a child.) ... Brains still not in gear... they want me to take hep C tests again ... I don't think I've got that anyway ... on a lighter note I've found these French bread rolls called briochettes. You get about eight for £1 and they're really yellow because they're full of sugar and egg, which makes them soft like bread should bee (crusty bread~ ukk!). See what happens when I force self to write yet with nothing to say. I'm going back to lalaland ... nightnight ...

... aa! But those bread rolls= the business!

***

Here's some words of wisdom purloined from Sit With Me Awhile ...

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in
front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large
and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then
asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the
jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas
between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was
full.

They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.
Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the
jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous "yes."

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and
poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space
between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to
recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the
important things--your family, your children, your health, your friends
and your favorite passions---and if everything else was lost and only they
remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house
and your car.

The sand is everything else---the small stuff. "If you put the sand
into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the
golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy
on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are
important to you.

"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play
with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your
spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to cl ean
the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first---the things
that really matter.
Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee
represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked.

It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem,
there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

Last Hit

LAST HIT:
FOR THE FIRST YEAR AND A HALF of my addiction I was so convinced I would be "stopping tomorrow" I must have had 365 x 1.5 (at least) "last hits".

Of course I look back now - not in anger, not in sadness. But I can barely smile at this. It is so pathetic. How can I possibly have been so naive?

Many times I recall meeting surly characters on the corners of streets - they always knew to pick me out; they even seemed to know what precisely I was on at the time (heroin, but not crack). I remember taking their numbers and saying thanks but thinking, No thanks. By this time next week I won't be needing this. Sometimes, when they spotted my hesitation, I explained I was intending to go away soon. Sometimes they smiled back knowingly. After all, a good dealer knows his business, and heroin is about the best business to be in because the drug brings the customers back. Contrary to some of the rumours of old, addicts don't need to be cajoled or threatened to continue purchasing their daily fixes. Withdrawal is a more powerful motivator than blackmail or violence could ever be. The drug takes you back every day. Hold your arms out, close your eyes. You'll walk unconsciously in the right direction. For that's what you are now - a zombie.

Night of the living junkie. Know what I mean?

***

IN THE CHEMIST'S JUST NOW: the one pharmacy this side of my "manor" that does exchange "works" I stepped in only to hear a too-familiar voice. It was Lynette, an old friend of mine. "The Mouth of the South" you might as well call her. She was right at the back pharmacy counter (where I'd have to go) waiting on her own prescription. I turned on my heel and vanished down the road to a charity shop where I browsed, ostensibly for Enid Blyton.

Then I saw what kids do read these days. Goosebumps by RL Stein, Awfully Unfortunate Adventures by Lemony Snicketts and the dreaded JK Rowling's Harry Potter. How many of the 180,000,000 sold have ended up on sale second hand down my highstreet? Too many. The final volume of the seven-part series: named something like Harry Potter and the Bird-Pecked Giblets is out soon. Kids dressed as wizards will hijack morning TV and JK herself will host a five-hour live reading at South Kensington's home of the dinosaurs, The Natural History Museum ...

Anyway after this un-asked-for children's books interlude (I wasn't in the mood for musty clothes, piece-missing puzzles or yellowing thrillers about conspiracy and the President of the United States. Because that's what else charity shops stock around here ...) I checked out the pavement both ways (no sign of her. Not a good sign as she's normally found someone to harangue on lazy afternoons like this) and snuck back to the pharmacy. And to my horror the woman was still there. Thankfully she seemed wrapped up in dialogue on her mobile phone. So I swept to the side of the counter (she noticed me at once) rapidly exchanged old for new, did the obligatory hello while her eyes fixed unflinchingly on the dark grey shadow inside the white chemists's carrier bag. But because she was talking she could not challenge me about its contents .... I gestured my wrist like I was pushed for time (she knew what I meant) and flew away up the high road ... That was a close scrape. Why shouldn't I keep my own business personal?

***

IT'S A CLASSIC NEWS DAY FOR The Sun, Britain's top-selling daily paper.

Little Madeleine McCann (the lost four year old)'s father had his wallet snatched (where else but in London, how typical) and has lost three "irreplaceable" shots of her. Of course with 24-hour hotlines ("Do you know the thief?") and a nation's fury ripe for a scapegoat, whoever does have them will now be far too scared to give the photos back.

Kate Moss fills up page five in an article heavy with suggestion on her "skeletal" figure.

The "pale and frail" model was "helped inside" Paul McCartney's 65th birthday "bash", so the newspaper reports.

Her "junkie boyfriend Pete Doherty" was not with her.

"'Stress, depression, drugs and alcoholism can often be behind not eating enough and losing weight,'" the paper points out, underlining in metaphorical red the otherwise unspoken suggestions of the suspected cause of this weight loss...

... And the rest of the paper's a melange of Big Brother, other celebs etc. To be honest I'm too tired to bother ploughing through it and I know you've heard enough. On that note I'd better go.

If you want to see something really entertaining, take a look at my Celebrity Blog clip of Naomi Campbell on a Japanese gameshow. It's hilarious!

See you tomorrow!

G

***

PS Come here for one of the best photo-blogs I've found: Maiylah's Cluster of Leaves

***

PPS Come and see this: Kate Moss in Pete Doherty's amateur homemade video. This is the one everybody's talking about. They're dressed in matching red soldier suits ... click here to see it.

Lost in Paper/Paper Lost

I JUST SPOKE TO ONE OF MY CREDITORS. They wanted proof of my income. Which involves sending in an "award letter". The letter I do have, which states how much I was paid in the last year, although it's from the same government department (it was issued for tax purposes) is somehow unacceptable. "Can't they divide it by 52 and work it out themselves?" I asked. Seemingly not. So now I've got to contact Jobcentre Plus or the Benefits Agency or the Department of Work and Pensions ~ don't ask me which one, they all seem to operate in tandem. I suspect Jobcentre Plus is the building you go to, the Department of Work and Pensions is the one that handles people's claims and the Benefit Agency actually pays people. So now I've to trek up the library and feed more money into a nongeographic phone number* (I hate them!) I'm in arrears (as per usual) which I can't really pay off. I didn't tell the guy I'd been living on the internet and on the floor for much of the time I could have been sorting this out. (I don't believe the papers they're demanding were ever sent to me. Or at least not received.) Oh well. I'm having another drink now and I'm going up the library. Sometimes you have to get off the floor and get on with your life. I turned back here just now to input this because I was just walking past my house to get to the library when my landlord's van came rumbling down the road. His face makes me want to be sick. I avoid thoughts of personal violence in case they escalate to murder. So rather than stabbing him or puking I tapped in this.

Healthy catharsis. Ha-ha!!

*Nongeographic numbers are one of the curses of the age. They cost everyone more money. Mobiles they charge typically 35p a minute instead of 5p, callboxes something like 10p a minute instead of 40p for 20 minutes, normal home phones something like 7p a minute instead of 1p. I'm so glad there's an orchestrated campaign against them. They stink. But nobody's going to do anything about them because (this is the big no-one tells you) companies and organizations can actually make a small income from using these numbers. Yes. BT and the number holder split the difference between the normal phone rates and the ones I just told you. And as I said, I think it stinks.

Cuboid Eyes

MY EYES ARE SQUARE, my brain is fried. Ziggies are zagging from retinal glare right back to the right back of my head. Why did I actually decide to post up a blog full of trash? Paris Hilton. Lindsay Lohan. That's what people wanna see. So in a moment of madness I posted it all up. If you wish to view it, press here.

As it is I am now tired and unsure. And hungry. And have to wait to get the money to eat. Which is so typical.

I did have a meeting with yet another drugs nurse today. She encouraged me to write out a brief sketch of my life so she at least has something to go on. This is a good sign. It means they may actually see the wood rather than just the rotten trees, know what I mean?

Also I did a wise thing and told her that if I am to get clean I wish to go abroad. Europe is suppsedly a single Union and I should have the same rights to training, housing &c as here. There are Members of the European Parliament supposed to protect these rights. And agencies through which millions of euros are funnelled who are supposed to inform me of these rights. At present I'm looking for an access point that will put me in touch. Google just has the obvious stuff for businessmen wanting to trade overseas.

Perhaps my earlier posts gave the impression that I want to travel. That isn't really it. I want to uproot myself and plant down somewhere else. Whoever came up with that idiot saying "Grow where you're planted" ... well plants can obey that little credo. I have legs for a reason. To get me out of places I've had enough of!

Basically, what I want to do is pick a town (not necessarily a large city but those are the places I gravitate to) and make that home. Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin would be the kind of place. Or somewhere hot by the sea ... Costa del Sol, Barcelona, Italy somewhere, Greece. I'm blessed that I do pick up foreign language pretty easily so that isn't the biggest barrier. But where I end up... eventually... wherever I like I want to stay. I hate feeling like an outsider. I'm willing to be one but only while adopting pastures new as home.

As I said the other day my family sometimes seem to think I'm assuming the grass is always greener. I know it is the same grass just a different field. I have a vision of being somewhere overseas with people babbling all around me feeling miserable, thinking what am I doing here. But I'd rather be thinking that any day than be stuck in middle-England feeling more isolated, let down and flabby because I never even made the effort to go anywhere to begin with. My family is scattered worldwide because of itchy feet in the past and now I've just posted my own daydream. Well... we'll see ...

Mad, BAD, Dangerous to Sing

I was watching my music video blog just now.

I hate singers who mangle their words:

Michael Jackson's BAD

I mean, do you hear the same nonsense as me?

Your word is mine
Don't make it right
Just show your face
In broad daylight
I'm telling you
Gonna go after you
Don't catch your mind
Don't shoot to kill

Sham-aou! Sham-aou!
Tell me! Alright

I'm telling you
Gonna count to three
Just show your stuff
Don't let it be
I'm telling you
Just watch your mouth
I know you're clean
What you're about

And they say it's like a band
And to me it's near the tube
And my friend you can't say nothing
That's where you are and who

Because I'm bad! I'm bad! Sham-aou
You know I'm bad! I'm bad!
You know it
You know I'm bad I'm bad
Sham-aou
And the whole world has
To answer right now
Because I tell you once again
Who's bad

The word is out
You're doing Moron
Gone lock you up
Before too long
Your lying eyes
Don't make it right
So listen girl
Don't make a fight
Your talk is cheap
You're Niles's man
You're throwing stones
And you're a lamb

When they say it's like a million
And your maid is merely dhoop*
And my friend you half say nothing
Cause a-wave your arm is through

Because I'm bad! I'm bad!
Sham-aou

You know I'm bad! I'm bad!
You know it!

You know I'm bad you know

And the whole world has to answer right now
Because I tell you once again
Who's bad

*dhoop sticks are tiny joss-sticks used by hardcore hippies and native Indians because they're much stronger than the vulgar twiggy long versions

Does anyone know a more plausible version?
I think not.
I rest my case.
Put your anti-crap-singers messages in the comments box please.

ps here's a fansite's >>fairly<< plausible rendition of what Bad could be ...
CLICK HERE

***

Hang on~... how come everyone seems to know about my secret Fabulous Celebrity Blog ... it's only been online an hour and already three people have found it.

OK if you wanna go there click here

Actually what the hell I'm adding it to my profile as well.

Just be aware (1) it's intentionally trashy and (2) there's hardly anything there yet!

***

O I found out where the "hits" were coming from ~ Technorati searches, aparently. Wow that was quick. One hour online and already people are viewing the rubbish I posted up there. (Hardly candidate for Thinking Blogger Awards, I can tell you!)

Bodily Functions

This is one of my favourite posts from my old blog: http://gledwood.blogspot.com

START TAKING HEROIN, it'll do little for you at first. Except for the unfortunate likelihood you'll end up with your head down the loo, you may well wonder (as you puke your guts up) what all the fuss is about. Heroin - the ultimate high?

Let me set one myth straight right there. Speaking as one who's tried everything going I can announce that heroin is not the ultimate high.
Heroin kills pain, so the more pain you're in the more it kills. (It might also kill you - so if you must experiment, go easy.)

One less well-publicized fact about heroin: it will only give you its full effects once it's got you hooked. Yep, there's a short-lived honeymoon phase when the drug is stealing your natural endorphins (the brain's feelgood chemicals) so you feel worse without it and without them. And yet every dose you do take fills you right up to the brim.

Then the law of diminishing returns kicks in. I barely noticed until it was too late, that everything it gave me with the one hand it was theiving back with the other.

I can't deny that heroin appeals to the susceptible with its inverse glamour. (It appealed to me as the one thing my druggie friends considered taboo. They said it was uncool: I just thought they were scared of it.)

Somehow, though, grainy photographs of mashed-up rockstars and hollow-eyed models can't quite capture the daily growing misery that no amount of drugs can ever quite cover up - or the bleak reality of withdrawals at dawn. (No-one ever seems to be around to photograph them.)

That's right - ten years on and your head is still down the toilet. Only now you're retching when the drugs aren't there!

The end result of heroin (not counting lost veins, abscesses, overdoses and half your friends having died over the years) is nothing more exciting than an added bodily function, one that costs money to relieve. Imagine waking up in the early morning busting for a pee. You are forced to wait till well past nine o'clock when the man has troubled to get himself out of bed, taken his kids to school (maybe - drug dealers breed like cockroaches, they're always laden down with babies), had breakfast, made himself feel okay, bothered to make his way to your neck of the woods - ie add another hour at least and cross your legs because it's probably going to take longer than that. Once the dealers realize a junkie will wait as long as it takes because they need their dealers (in the short-term) more than the dealers need them. Then imagine you're charged TEN POUNDS sterling (€15; US$20; Aussie $25; Rs Indian 700 etc etc) well I mean a lot of money - it's all relative.

Twelve hours later - tops - the entire situation repeats itself over again. So if you ain't got more money, you'd better think fast and smart and get moving...

So your happiness goes into the hands of criminals. As does every spare penny you've got.

Heroin? I don't recommend it.

Moneytime/Nighttime

THEY SAY TIME IS MONEY. CLICHE, CLICHE. So how come I seem to have so very much of the first commodity without ever getting paid very much of the second? Come on, somebody. Don't explain this limp load of verbal poppycock. Just pay me. A nice purple-factored £20 note would do the trick rather pleasantly. Provided there's somebody around to commit alchemy.

For that's all money means to junkies. Notes become magic passports to those tiny topknotted polythene bags of heroin.

***

NIGHT. No idea of the hour. Matran and Laundretta have been up and about for hours which tells me it's late. They are two of the most antisocial people I have ever met. Every time she returns home, which is often, (she's always popping out ofr drinks and cigarettes) - she comes stomping back upstairs and bursts into their room almost falling over (yet again). He has been periodically yelling and exclaiming "Don't f--- with me," (one of his catchphrases; the others are too disgusting to repeat). Both of them go stomping on the ceiling to a ridiculous degree. Laundretta says the guy downstairs from them has made a very vusial pass when "coming" out of the bathroom. Then again she says such stuff about most men. Earlier she was going nuts because she couldn't find her phone. Matran has sold her phones before to get more crack at five, six, seven in the morning - whatever time her whorehouse earnings run out.

Cars are whooshing across the horzon. Sometimes I think it's tyres on road I can hear.

Mother Hubbard's given up smoking! Well over a yer ago she knocked booze on the head and has not gone back. Which makes two out of three (in my mind). As for the third one: "why should I?" she said. For now she's happy swigging back meth(adone) all week and having heroin "hits" three or four days out of seven. Those hits are the highlight of her week.

Digger Dodge, her "old man" (partner) was out seeing his old man (father) in the old folks home where he now resides. Mother Hubbs makes a "home" sound like a fate worse then death. I don't see that it's too bad. It's a fully private facility. You're allowed pets. And all bedrooms have satellite TV. It's considerably more luxurious than here. But then again, so are some prisons, judging by what I've read in the papers.

Mother Hubbs has plans. I think, as soon as she's able, she wants to up sticks and leave these dismal shores for the brighter climate of Melbourne Aus, where her sister lives.

The travelling bug (or more to the point, the upping sticks and plonking down somewhere else blog - I'm not into moving around for the sake of it) has bitten me too as I reported a couple of posts ago. If and when and everything I can and do get it together to clean up and straighten out, I feel the call of European shores. Amsterdam has alwyas been an attraction (why does everyone associate the place with drugs. I'm not even going to argue this point. Drugs are everywhere and not everyone in Amsterdam is on them. Read Nicole's blog. Berlin I have always wanted to see. And I can easily speak German well enough to get by there. Then there's Paris. I've been there twice. YOu can wander the streets all day long without feeling you could be somewhere better. It's so cool and calm. Easy to forget you're in a city of equal size and stature to London and New York ...

One thing my family cannot (or will not) understand is my desire to travel. I just don't understand why. They cannot seem to grasp my viewpoint that a day lived abroad is a day full of tiny thrills that simply do not happen in one's own country. It's basically because things are just a little bit different. Different buses. Different trains. Different money. Different stamps. Different food. Different people to inflict my dreaded pingpongball dumplings upon ... just kidding (of course) ... It's ten times easier to make friends abroad. People want to speak to you because you're different. This is not idealism speaking, it's experience.

Another aspect my family wouldn't understand is that I spent years studying the French and German languages and this has given me an insight into their cultures that is simply out of reach to the average monoglot Brit. Of course I'm always swimming against the tide with this one. Our insular view is that "all foreigners speak English anyway, so why bother?" The best riposte to this argument would be something I once read in a travel guide. And it's simple: imagine staying in New York or London for three months and not speaking or understanding a single word of English. How much of the culture would you understand then?
- I rest my case.

Basically I feel that if I live out my life not having lived abroad when I have the chance, I will have failed myself.

What will I do with myself when I'm out there? This is a New Europe. Supposedly "Unified". Anything I can do here should be possible in France, Holland, Germany or Spain. I'd like to train up for a profession. And I'd like to write and get paid for it. You can do that anywhere these days. Which is precisely my point.

And that, my dear friends, is as simple as that ... And here endeth the present drivel!

Paper!

LAST NIGHT I WROTE OUT AN EXTENSIVE POST. Now, by clear light of day it seems exceedingly longwinded and I'm loath to sit here typing all that out. Today I've been sorting through rubbish (my possessions~ haha!!) in the search for the right paperwork with which to furnish one of my creditors. The task is now done. And I'm merely killing time? Relaxing? Procrastinating actually photocopying said piece of paper and sending it, with another with a couple of boxes ticked or exxed back to whatever company. Man ~paper! If only they could have seen ahead when we were still engraving replica birds' feet in cylinders of clay these mountainous avalanches of forestfellingly useless paper that trail us throughout our everyday existence uselessly mouldering in bags and cabinets and drawers ~some considered so valuable they're airlocked behind several inches of lead~ this is the stuff our very existence is made of. Even in this so-called age of the fibreoptic worldwide internet connexion paper still rules. And whoever predicted that with the rise of computers would come the fall of paper must be turning in his grave. Computers waste more paper than anything else in the world. And the records they store and create are almost invalid without a "hard copy" to back them up, prove that they are real. Anyone who's suffered a long period of drug dependency or mental illness will have noticed the bulk of files upon which their very existence is supposedly recorded. The KGB and Stazi archived enormous bulks of basically malicious gossip against anyone who seemed too individual for their totalitarian political system ... and so I could go on but this rant has to end somewhere.

Paper!

Aaarrghhh~kkk!

Amsterdam/Donner und Blitzen! ... & Relationship Wisdom ...

I HAD A VERY VIVID DREAM that I was living in Amsterdam and learning what I called (in the dream) my "Gibberish" (Dutch) with gusto so I could "do" the supermarket like a local ...

Ever since I was in Norwich, Norfolk, literally across the water and similarly flat with bikes everywhere and countryside full of windmills) I've had the yen to escape to Holland. Also as a child I spent a week there on family holiday. We saw plenty of the Dutch countryside. Dykes and ditches. So I have an accurate view, from experience, of what Holland is about. To me it's like England with a magic wand waved over it. I've always wanted to escape there.

Years studying German - a language so similar it is practically a dialect - mean Dutch is far from "gibberish" to me. I should still have coursebooks and tapes (somewhere) from my first "wanna be in Amsterdam" days. And I heartily disagreed with (and still do) everyone who proclaims the commonly held view that there's no point bothering with the language because "they all speak English" ...

My answer is: the newspaper and TV don't translate themselves, do they? And people only speak English when they're addressing you directly. Which means you'll get left out all the time with people talking over your head. Which I hate. But native English speakers are so used to abroad, I don't think many of them even notice it. My plan was to pretend to be Swedish with a poor command of English. That way they would have to speak to me in Dutch ...

Anyway all that was back in the days of dark depression. I was due to go to Berlin for a year as part of my uni course. Berlin! One city I've always wanted to go more than anywhere except for perhaps New York City (and Amsterdam, but Amsterdam kind of came along later ...) But I was in no fit state to go there. So why should Holland be any different?

Anyway, that was my dream. I somehow managed to sleep from about 9 at night till midday today. 15 hours. Now that is sleep!

***

IT'S WARM AND MUGGY today. Yesterday we had thunderstorms. Which I got stuck in. I had that strange feeling you get when lightning's in the air (if you are about to get struck, so I hear, you really feel it - your hair literally does stand on end). Monsoon-style rain beat the pavements and when the lightning came it was only a second away from us - a real tree-feller of a strike.

Unfortunately we don't get American or African-style storms where the lightning lights up the entire horizon like trees. Ours comes more in horror-film craggy forks.

Once, not long ago, a tree got struck about two roads from me. The thunder literally tore the air open and the lightning at the same time flickered in a bright streak through my closed eyelids and through closed curtains. The air, split in two, took ages to rumblingly roll back together amid grand electrical buzzings.

The best thunderstorm of my life I remember from Hatfield. We were in a modern townhouse with panoramic views of town from our first-floor livingroom. My Mum had left us by this time and I stayed up with my Dad watching this storm all night. One particular strike seemed to light up the entire sky in three sections then came down like the biggest stack of bricks you could ever imagine. Another one I actually saw hit the lightning conductor on an office block across the way. The entire horizon was flickering as if someone upstairs was trying to turn on a failed fluorescent tube.

Then it started hailing in golfball-sized lumps. The hail was even harder than my dumplings ... just kidding....

But it was one hell of a performance by the "Powers that Be" ...

***

Blog of the Day Awards say I have won! Wow!!

***

A WOMAN WILL TRY AND DOMINATE A MAN. She will try and get away with it. But realy, inside herself, she wants to be dominated. She wants the man to take her. If he does lean on her, everything goes slightly off key, like a bad chord. She hopes it will pass, that the guy will come through. When he doesn't she begins to needle him. If nothing happens she goes on needling - until he stops listening. At that moment she becomes bitter and he goes deaf. Finally there is no more dialogue, they have no rapport.

- Elizabeth Taylor

Saturday Early Morn ...

SATURDAY A.M. - 04:52hrs.
WITH MY WINDOW AJAR - as ever - and the world lit cyan-grey, birds a-chirping, the dawn of a new day seems friendly. And not despairing ("more of the same, same for ever"). I can hear the cars at the crossroads by the big park by my local tube station. Is it the sound of tyres on road? They are swooshing straight across the far horizon of my soundscape.

The alarm clock bird, here yesterday, is silent this morning. Or gone. Or dead.

But what an irony. For what I said above "more of the same - same for ever" shall indeed be true today. And true for the forseeable future.

But this no change no change same all the same. Such sameness! So much the same for me. This era has to end...

The only query is: when?

Of course I can't answer that. If making changes to my life were as easy as all that rest assured - I'd have made them long ago. I can be lilly-livered, shrinking violet and so on; but I'm not that bad ..!

One day, when I've decided, it shall all change indeed. It will probably be difficult to communicate, to stay in touch. I may have to move quickly. Decisive action can't always be intricately planned.

But if and when it happens, be assured: it will be a "happening".

I will rock my own world ...

And then, well and truly, all around me will know that a new day truly has dawned ...

***

I'm sorry. What else can I say about that? Eeewgghhkkhhkkttpkk! I wrote that, as I said, in the very early hours. Those were my thoughts. I know More than Just Thinking is Required for a Future.
I know that.
Don't even need to say Gimme Time
I just gotta make the right enquiries and
Go Ahead ...

Know what I mean ..?

Quick Hi

JUST SAYING HELLO QUICKLY. I know I nearly always post every day.
Woke up at 5am feeling wonderful. All the houses seemed to be polished in psychedelic fairydust - and I've taken no such psychedelics for about a decade so it can only have been a "memory", a "dream" or a "flashback". I don't know. Then eight a.m. came round and I didn't want to sleep but knew I should. Then eleven a.m. Then I was asleep by one a.m. and had to really force myself to get up and walk to the chemist at 6:30... and to cut a long story short I just got up at ten past midnight.
My Geri Spice Book is finished. Admittedly I only concentrated on the last third when she was famous. As I kind of said yesterday it did bring back a real blast from the past. The Spice Girls were reigning queens of pop the same time Tony Blair got in - I remember watching his motorcade driving through London on a sunny day from a helecopter-angle, crowds cheering. That seemed one of the happiest days in living history. (At least in politics.) And look how rotten it's all gone now. I loathe New Labour - I find them hypocritical, naive and blinkered in a way the Tories were not. But I won't go on about politics. We were on the blink of a new millennium and everything seemed possible. That's the affinity I feel with Geri. The affinity of an era - not long ago. That now feels utterly terminated. Since those towers were knocked down in New York - let's face it - the world has been a cold and different place. Maybe it's not a coincidence that I began having nightmares before that time about being locked out in an airport in a blizzard. So determined was I to get on an aircraft to somewhere, I climbed up the stepladder and wrenched the side of the plane off. Then I started dreaming of being in Kings Cross railway station as fighter jets roared overhead. Anyone who has lived near an airbase will know how they seem to scratch the very air itself in two. People were panicking and trying to run into the tube station because fire and pestilence was about to rain down from the sky. Well that dream has yet to come true.

Anyway the only thing I did today was experiment not merely with wholegrain, but with multigrain dumplings. Yeah, man. "Kibbled" wheat, rye etc. The flour mix was meant for making bread and was full of salt. Also - and I anticipated this might be a problem - it was yeast-based and not bicarb based. It didn't rise as well in the pot. So that's multigrain flour out the window. Not literally. (Yet.) But just wait till my landlord's standing underneath!!

Goodnight folks ...

Thinking Blogger Awards

I AM PROUD TO ANNOUNCE that I've been tagged, by Ruth, for a Thinking Blogger Award.

(If and when I ever get the hang of how to do this, I shall paste up their logo (my "medallion" as I took to calling it yesterday) in this space ...)

Rules are I have to give their link which is here (click).

And nominate five others:

OK here goes. Now this is for words, not visuals, we are talking thinking blogging here so:-

1. First comes Ivy. She blogs about everything and anything including her dreams and her enormous methadone habit. Plus she is doing an intellectual college degree.

2. Wayward Son of CrystalCleanPersuasion - he has done an amazing six months clean off of the dreadful crystal meth. Read his blog for the story of his recovery.

3. My Vancouverian friend Deb (though I nearly always call her Debs because I add an S to most names) keeps an ongoing blog-journal of her life that's always fascinating.

4. Sadgirl I have not known for very long. But her story of life with depression is enlightening and inspiring.

5. Edyta. Blogging from Lithuania. I didn't even realize English was not her mother tongue. (I thought she was somewhere like Chicago.) She posts modern poetry and gleaming prose.

Ta-daa!

Thinking About Tomorrow

REHAB: THE IDEA is still growing on me. After getting up early I nearly ran slap-bang into my loathesome landlord at five past eight this morning. His very presence is so disagreeable that instantly I was set to thinking, "Surely I cannot live out the rest of my life like this here ..." &c, &c, &c ...

Entering rehab just to get away from it all, I think, is a bad idea. Though the idea of retiring from the world seems unbelievably attractive to me at the minute.

If I did begin the process now, I could enter in August-September. And commence 2008 with a genuine fresh start ...

I have indeed been pondering this quite a lot. But I'm not going to make any rash remarks or implied promises here. And the vague idea of entering Treatment means nothing. You must make up your mind precisely WHERE you intend to go. And considering that place becomes home for 3-6 months (or more) an awful lot of seemingly petty things - like House Rules - must be given some thought. More thought than I gave them last time. (Which is why I get annoyed at being told I "think too much". All too frequently I don't!)

I suppose it would also be handy to have at least a vague view of where I want life to take me afterwards. That I can answer in two syllables: abroad. (But where? I don't know.)

OK. Oh well. We'll see ...

***

NO TV FOR A FORTNIGHT! What a terrible punishment. Am I "grounded" as well? I think that's the consequences Paris Hilton expected for driving without a valid licence. Though I hope she is not being abused by fellow inmates (it's not as if their lawyers wouldn't pull all the same stunts if roles were switched - is it?) I still think the message sent out by that soft-headed "Sheriff" was outrageous. Confirming at the highest level that there is indeed one law for the rich in America. The judge did right to overrule him. Justice and injustice should not boil down to how much you can pay. Hardly an original sentiment but I'm stewing like my lamb and margarine dumplings just thinking about it.

Want to see George Bush's phantom wristwatch theft in Albania?
The Evidence!
President Bush's Watch stolen - click here.
President Bush's watch not stolen - click here.

I have not watched any television for over two weeks. And more to the point I've not missed it. Five channels of 24-hour rubbish. Soon to be replaced by thirty for everyone once analogue transmissions are finally terminated in 2009 ... I hope I'm in a place where TV doesn't matter as much by then. Like busy doing something worthwhile!

***

BLAST FROM THE PAST: a book I saw at the clinic two weeks ago was still there last time I called. They can be borrowed by anyone as long as you do bring them back. Don't laugh: it's If Only by Ginger Spice, Geri Halliwell. I don't know how she's viewed elsewhere (if anyone really remembers her) but here she is seen a little bit as an annoying attention-grabber with an empty publicity-seeking existence.

Having said that, she always was my favourite Spice Girl and once she left my interest in them flew to the four winds. Yes - I liked the Spice Girls. As did so many others in this country and across the world in 1997 and 1998. Cast your mind back. They were the biggest pop phenomenon to come out of this country since the Beatles. Easy to turn back and laugh now. But there was a time when "who's your favourite Spice Girl" was on everyone's lips. In a recent poll (about 4 years ago) they got the dubious honour of most unpopular group. The anti-Spice backlash is probably the biggest in popular culture I've ever seen. One moment they were riding high. The next, Geri left, nobody was that interested anymore, the group disbanded and five irritating solo-careers were launched.

I'm just enjoying reading about youth and success and thinking back to a time when things seemed a lot rosier for me as well. In 1998 I wasn't "happy" but was at least doing things ... Sometimes I wish I could get some of my old self back again.

Hmm. I'm shutting up now. As for the future: we shall see ...

Visceral

THAT'S MY FEAR: cutting into me like scissors snagging my soul. I was thinking earlier. I get told - frequently - that I think too much. Those who say that are wrong. I think when I'm told to think. I think when I'm writing. I don't think when I don't have to. Not about what's important. And I thought just now ... if I go through all that clean thing - I WILL LOSE MY MIND.

Already during detoxes last two times I seemed to spend half my stay in the counselling room. Crying. Being put on antidepressants. Blah-dee-blah etcetera. Everyone says they feel the same as me in there. But they don't. Because if they did THEY WOULD BE CRYING TOO. THEY WOULD BE IN THE COUNSELLING ROOM. But they're not. Which pretty much speaks for itself. THEY DO NOT FEEL THE SAME AS ME. And what are my problems with feelings? That usually I do not feel them. And the thoughts associated with such feelings. They have gone UNTHOUGHT for far too long.

THINK TOO MUCH? Maybe I do - but most definitely about the wrong things.

But I felt that fear "viscerally" - fantasized of feeling it. And realized. There is only one way of handling fear. Providing it is standing in the way of something worthwhile you must face up to it. That is the only thing you can do. Only thing I have done all my life to fear. Face it. Because then you defeat it. If you can laugh fear down: well, then; metaphorically (sometimes literally) you are laughing !

But then the more familiar feeling swept over me and stayed, snagged across my soul where those scissors cut me. It's like cheap knitting wool and it's bundled my heart in unfathomable knots. Depression. Sinking. Deep. Derealizing. Depression. The Demon of my life. That is so much harder to face than fear because it does another D to everything: DEVALUES it. And you are what you feel. So if you feel you are and everything else is Devalued than Devalued it's become. Whether you try and think round the fact or not. Facts remain. You are what you feel. You feel what you think.

Why are all my circles so vicious?

Better leave it there: said what happened to me just now. Still I feel put down. But fear is losing out. The more I think about rehab and the more scared I become the more ready I accept I am to go there. So fear: you are fighting a losing battle. You may as well give in now. But I know you won't. You'll always be lurking. Nearby. Trying to drive me crazy.

These are feelings. Opiate addicts are expert at avoiding experiencing feelings of any kind. That is what the addiction's all about.

I was surprised when I switched to Subutex (buprenorphine) that my demons did not come accost me all at once the moment I was "clean" (Subutex clean: you're still addicted to that but it's reversed half the heroin-habit. It's an agonist-antagonist to the opiate receptors in the brain. So the addiction is kind of thrown so totally off kilter that the minute you switch onto this stuff you feel clean and cured. Amazing.

But I cannot go on Subutex until I'm down to about 30mg methadone. Which is a long way to go. If and when I do go to inpatient detox I want to switch to Subutex once I am at 30mg. It will make the process of finally coming off so much simpler. In fact, I won't accept any detox that won't do it that way. It's my way or the highway.

I know it's going to be messy with my feelings. This will be the last time I ever try and stop, so if it fails that's me for life. I can feel already how horrible it's going to be. How messy.

Feelings are just feelings. I can't say they can't hurt you though. Feelings are pain - mentally.

(I WAS BEING SARCASTIC/IRONIC WHEN I WROTE THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH. OF COURSE FEELINGS CAN HURT YOU. PAIN IS A FEELING!)

And here I must wind up. I leave myself ... drifting along the way ... and I'll leave you with this thought:

Feelings! Who'd have them, eh?