Ideas

I SLEPT AND SLEPT and slept and slept and slept in really lake, till past 3pm. My phone was chirping and chirrupping like crazy, but I turned it down so I could dream some more. I dreamt I was on a long train journey, where I accidentally dropped my methadone bottle down the side where it smashed; then I was up in the woods with exotic birds hopping towards me; then I woke up and supped cup-a-soup in front of the telly, wondering how I was ever going to engage with the day.

I made such a hash of trying to explain why I wanted to write my memoir didn't I? All I was trying to say was the idea came to me when I was feeling really negative; but I still wanted to go for it. Making lemons into lemonade type of thing.

I need to keep my story as short and sweet as I possibly can. Apart from Anna Grace's, the only drug memoir I know is Kate Holden's In My Skin. The tale of a middle class girl, very similar to me, who gets drawn into the seedy world of heroin, eventually takes to prostitution to fund her habit. Rather than feeling exploited, she talks about prostitution as a process of self-realization. I never went that route; I begged money off strangers. Heroin was a lot cheaper in London than Sydney so you could fund a habit of over a gram a day on £30 or £40. That's $48 to $64 a day in American money.

I've decided to continue with the NA. They talk about the same issues that bugged me: resentment at life not being set up to cater for the needs of the opiate addict. Which makes me want to throw in the towel all together. I don't think there's anything wrong with taking heroin, but I'm fed up of going against the flow. Something's making me want to stop. I cannot put my finger one what it is, but whatever it is, it niggles and niggles away and now I want out.

If I did get any money from my memoirs, I want to use it to clean myself up and leave the country. Burma, the most fascinating foreign land on earth for their mysterious beautifully scripted language, fried hornet cuisine and opium farming tradition is of course completely out of the window. Burma is the world's foremost supplier of high grade 97% purity white heroin. So I can't go there. Fortunately I've had a fascination for all things Japanese for about as long as I can remember, so I would go there instead. Japan is really expensive travel-wise, so I'd need an international bestseller to afford a trip there.

The other country I can see myself visiting is Morocco, where I've been before. It's like an African India. Very exotic. Very cheap. Yes they do happen to be one of the world's foremost producers of hashish, but I loathe cannabis more than any other psychotropic substance, so that's no temptation. I'd use Morocco as my personal alternative to rehab. Instead of talk talk talking about drugs I'm no longer taking, I'd take the opposite tack and let my wounds heal by leaving alone. I do think excessive counselling can be a psychological equivalent of scab-picking. Not good for you. There's research that shows that disaster victims who go in for talk therapies are more likely to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder and to suffer worse than people who are allowed to heal in quiet. "Least said, soonest mended." This is why I want to write my story BEFORE I leave the drugs behind. And to me, methadone is every bit as much a drug as heroin. It might be legal, but it's more addictive and less effectual. And I just want away from it. If they're going to insist on giving that to addicts they should at least give injectable amps. But you need a private doctor to get those. So a private doctor is what I intend to get. I'd need to write a book to pay for one.

My head has gone resonant yet again. That means I'm hearing words in the air. Not voices as such, but psychic emanations. This gives me a fear of going mad abroad. I need to make my own money so I can get away from mental health services. No travel insurance I know of covers mental health. If I had to pay doctors' bills myself I just wouldn't see any doctors. So that's nice and straightforward.

Hey this naturalist on the telly has picked up a tubby little vole. It's rambling about on his hand. Fully wild, yet strangely tame. Tamer than a roborovski hamster, that's for sure. Now some naughty baby short-eared owls are gobbling dead voles. They're on the island of Skomer in Wales.

Well I'd better go; it's nearly half past nine already...

TALES OF THE RIVERBANK

THE RIVERBANK CLOCK
"What can Hammy and Roderick possibly be doing?" asks Johnny Morris, the narrator. As Hammy patently obviously sits there washing his ears (again...!)



HAMMY THE FLYING POSTMAN
A terrible thing has happened; the post-boat has sunk. And now Hammy is trying to get the letters back... in the diving bell.
Then Hammy goes flying. And looks really entertaining doing it...

What's really happening in Burma?

BURMESE POLITICAL DISSIDENT Aung San Suu Kyi, as we all know, has been released from over 15 years' house arrest.

This event has been widely been viewed as a publicity stunt.

I'm not entirely sure. If they'd really wanted to, Burma's "ruling military junta" could have got rid of her forever. Poisoned her coffee.

But they didn't. They let her out.

Perhaps, like another key Burmese figure, Khun Sa, who ended his days in a luxury flat in Burma's capital Rangoon aka Yangon, having lived in luxury flats in Bangkok (before Thai police got on his case), as well as country estates in Laos, as well as his (adopted) home, Shan State in Burma, Burma's generals plan to retire in style, living out their days in assured opulence.

Khun Sa was born in China's Yunnan province to a Chinese father and Shan mother from the highlands of Burma's Shan State, key area of the infamous Golden Triangle where, before Afghanistan took the narco-crown, most of the world's opium was grown.

At one point, so it's rumoured, Khun Sa had at least ten brands of China White winging, floating and trundling their ways to international narcotics markets. The most infamous were 999 Brand, Lucky Strike (in 700g packets printed with same logo as the cigarettes!) and so-called "Double UOGlobe". This heroin was reputedly up to 99% pure.

Opium was, and still is, also grown by the Wa, another people fighting a resistance movement up in those there highlands. Poppies are still cultivated in Thailand, albeit on a small scale, and more significantly in Laos. Laos produces about as much heroin (so it is claimed ~ and I've looked into world opium/heroin production figures and find them highly spurious. I think they're massively underestimated in some countries) as Pakistan (1-5 tons heroin annually). Opium/heroin is actually sourced from at least 17 countries, including North Korea, Lebanon, Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, India, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala and Mexico AS WELL as Afghanistan.

Khun Sa died in 2007 and Burma's trade in methamphetamine as well as heroin has since increased. The Burmese government would have us believe that the drug trade is all down to these troublesome border tribes, but expert observers are not convinced. Huge amounts of money are reputedly laundered through Yangon's banks. Anybody willing to pay a 40% "tax" can wash as much cash as they like through a Burmese account and have it officially declared legal. A huge boost to drug dealers and international criminals of all varieties.

My point being that the Nice Lady's release into notoriously unstable Burma may not necessarily be the best thing for her country, or the world.

Look at the former Soviet Union. Countries not used to freedom and democracy don't know how to handle it. That's how figures like Vladimir Putin arise.

As I say, perhaps Burma's generals, like Khun Sa before them, feel they've made their money and the time has come to retire in style? In their own country, in complete safety. If they do retire and indications arise that they are not safe, I'm sure they'd find safe haven in adjoining lands.

Perhaps they intend to go on as normal. Perhaps intend to be puppet-masters, directing future ceremonies from behind the scenes... who knows their real agenda?

In my view, the potential problems come not necessarily from the Burmans, the Burmese-speaking majority, but from Burma's massively unstable border regions. Here (for political, as well as cultural and linguistic reasons) many local tribes claim not to consider themselves "Burmese". They are fighting for what the media call "various degrees of autonomy". They also grow opium poppies.

Vast amounts of methamphetamine are also produced in Burma or Myanmar, as the current "junta" would have us call it. Myanmar is pronounced Mee-YAN-mar. Not MY (rhyming with high, as on China White + methamphetamine) -an-mar.

Opium production dipped so low at one point that even local peasants, many of whom were/are addicted couldn't get it in the early 2000s. Australia, which is primarily supplied by Burmese heroin, went through a 5-year heroin drought from 2001-2006. Purity plummeted while prices soared. Vancouver and Western Canada, which are also fed on China White, also experienced upheaval. But bordering the enormous US drug market, no heroin shortage there was likely to last for long.

In recent years opium production has increased in all major growing regions bar (so it is claimed) the South American Andes. The world market for heroin is bigger than at any point in history. Burma has the experience and expertise to fulfil this demand.

Burmese methamphetamine is usually stamped into pills and exported primarily to Thailand, where it is known as yaba ยาบ้า, the "crazy drug", after the psychosis "repeated administration" provokes. From Thailand it is exported to Cambodia and Vietnam, which also have significant drug problems. But this too could change. Burma is already suspected of being the world's biggest producer of methamphetamine. What would happen if they suddenly started shipping this drug to Europe, which traditionally hasn't been into "meth"? MDMA and similar Ecstasy-type substances and simple (and far weaker) amphetamine sulphate (as well as, of course cocaine and crack) have traditionally been the stimulants of choice here, but Europeans, especially the British, Germans and Dutch, have been notoriously willing to experiment with new uppers en masse, which is why Ecstasy made such inroads into the popular culture. Bored of low-purity coke, the populace may well turn to this far cheaper and longer-lasting stimulant, if it were made more widely available.

I did used to have a crystal ball, but I lost it when I got made homeless. So I'm afraid I've not a clue what the future might hold.

Yes change is afoot in Burma, but it's not necessarily all good.