Little Trotter Donkey and Little Trotter Horse

MY NUMBER ONE FAN accosted me in Iceland this morning, asking what I was looking for. I said "not pizza; it makes me feel sick" and he ushered me up the isles to the Pakistani takeaway I ordinarily buy.

My head was banging with classical tunes: TOM TOM POM DIDDLY OM POM POM! And I was in a dearly good hyper mood pinging up and down.

Two cups of black coffee were to blam. So I'm drinking it in even MORE moderation from henceforth on!

Later on some friends were meant to be back with some gear but it took them six and a half hours to sort this. They had ongoing health troubles of their own. So I forgave them. I was in a very good mood when finally they pulled up outside my house and dished up a £20 baggie of heroin wrapped in a £10 note! (The money was owed from times past...)

The action of waiting on heroin all afternoon had wound me up into a nasty irritable, anxious mood. Anxiety! Beyond the pale! That's why I took Valium and it helped. Then I realized my head really has been racing. And I'm in irritable, expansive moods, and no longer a depressed one!

It's way better than depression so I'm barely complaining about my woes. They've mostly gone now. What I need back is my fully elevated mood!

No, Anna Grace, I don't actually desire to go crazy. I wrote my words in a fit of despair, believing psychosis and happiness were inexorably intertwined and I'd no choice but o accept one without the other. All my life, I've never been happy. Never truly happy. Never serene. I've been high from a thousand causes. But happy and high aren't the same thing at all ...

Eventually X and Y returned; I had some heroin and it's calmed me down a bit. I had some drink and it did almost nothing. What is pink nothingdust? See my mind keeps racing into irrelevant corners. Over and over it goes again..(!)

I hope y'all are OK. I'll cut y'al off and leave it all there. Take care everybody. NO DEPRESSION FOR TWO DAYS NOW. WHOOPEEEEEE!!!

Here's my half-asleep mind-wondering version from earlier. Reproduced here purely for your entertainment value!!

I had what appeared to be twelve hours' wondrous sleep last night and woke up feeling wonderfully NORMAL. Not depressed any longer! I ran into the sea and recognized... nothing. I keep thinking of nuclear things. Like the nuclei keeping me safe. Sorry my mind is running off in all directions.

This morning I had a wonderful section. If I did a bit of shopping in Iceland. 2 black coffees were enough to set me off into racing elevated mood with me pinging up and down the isles. Classical music was coarsing through my head POM POM POM TIDDLY-OM POM POM!! Variety.

I told myself "you better be careful, security will be on your arse". Sure enough...

Little Trotter Donkey and Little Trotter Horse are in a good mood also. Clopping around their furry fields. Cantering and neighing and saying "hello! Hello!!"

Little Trotter Donkey!
Little Trotter Horse!!

RALPH FRIDGE: PARADISE
j'adore!!

Nighttime Excitement

0307 Sanity. I'm lucky, I get a mood swing every day. Partially it's to do with my taking the antipsychotics at night so I'm dampened down by day and less dampened at night until I take the pill then whizz-bang. It doesn't put me to sleep but makes me sleep deeper and longer once I do get off.

I just found my £50 million Euromillions lottery ticket and I didn't win, not even the £1 million bonus prize.

I sleep a good ten hours minimum, sometimes past 12 hours. I don't like sleeping too long but apparently it's common amongst people on antipsychotic medication.

I feel way better than I did earlier. I was really depressed.

Somebody rang my doorbell 3 times earlier today but I thought it was someone persecuting me so I didn't answer. Nobody rings my who rings my doorbell gets answered unless they shout my name, phone or I know they're coming. Otherwise they're just a time-waster.

Deshane is coming tomorrow to check I'm doing OK. He is a mental health worker and my mental health is bad. My mood is cycling. Earlier I had suicidal ideation, now I feel vaguely excited, like I'm going into mild mania. This is just me. That's why they say I hae schizoaffective; my moods cycle quickly and I get "psychotic features". I couldn't handle depressive psychosis that is so horrible I won't even describe it to you, it is the worst most horrible type of mental illness going and really frightening just to think about. I'm lucky that my psychosis is "mood incongruent" so e.g. I heard a cockney flower girl saying "Aw darlin'! I've got some lovely roses down me stall. Come and 'ave a look at me roses babes..." really entertaining. Mood congruent hallucinations would tell me I was the dog's bollocks in mania and that I was shit in depression. I am finding out all I can about my illness as knowledge is power. But my shit attention span means I don't take too much in. I'm not sure I've even been correctly diagnosed. You can'treally tell whether you're psychotic so I can't know much about the schizo-bit in schozo-affective. I'm trying to be really grown up about it, but I feel like a small child and quite frightened by it all.

You have to understand this thing that happens to me gets ultra ultra powerful. If you imagine the noise of a road drill and the way it goes right through you, that's what acute mania does to me, it totally takes me over and goes through me with the intensity of a road drill and I'm floridly psychotic. What you read here is the toned down version because I cant post everything. If my shrinko read it I'd get sectioned.

I want to talk to my doctor about sectioning (that is involuntary commitment) because I do lose it sometimes. I want to make an agreement where I can go in voluntarily and agree to act as if sectioned (that is, I won't go outside without permission, I will stay in hospital etc etc etc but technically I will be a voluntary patient). This is a very real issue. If you think I'm going OTT remeember you haen't SEEN me going mad. I upset one friend so much he cried. It was horrible to see. There was me manic just being manic, feeling normal but a bit over-wrought and here is is CRYING over my behaviour. I was making whirring gargling noises like a car engine because my brain stopped thinking in English and turned into noise. I was going really psychotic that day.

Now I have some mania right now. We all know what anxiety feels like. Well imagine anxiety but really nice and when you move or click your fingers you get more excited and go with it. Music sounds lush in this state. It's like a drug. No specific drug I can think of but very similar to cocaine at the lower reaches and trippy E (ecstasy) at the higher levels. I literally see spirals everywhere when I'm tripping on mania.

Obviously I far prefer being manic to being depressed, but mania can get ultra ultra intense which makes Stephen Fry's flip comment about "bipolar being better than depression because you have the upside of mania" yeah MILD mania like type 2 bipolar he has. I'm type one my highs are higher than my lows ever were low and I go floridly psychotic in a way I don't go in depression and it gets so very intense I could have panicked on several occasions. Only strength of character prevented this.

You see this is what I'm trying to deal with but I don't know how to, except by taking meds as prescribed. Also heroin used to do a great deal to prevent my mood cycling. Seriously bad depression felt massively cushioned on heroin (bt never on methadone) and mania seemed to be blocked out. Looking back I can see manic symptoms I had over the years like racing thoughts, aggression and irritation and euphoria. i remember a few years ago I suddenly went from being all mousey and depressed to fantasizing about being Prime Minister (typical manic symptoms, you get ultra-ambitious) and I wanted to start my own HD 24-hour international news channel. I didn't think I was manic at the time, just normal. My normal self is highly ambitious and goal-oriented so it's impossible to tell the difference between mild mania and normality.

Now I feel this excitement coursing through me that I know is there because I had depression earlier. I feel like I'm doing something really exciting tomorrow and can't sleep for the sheer joy of this amazing stuff that's on my mind. Only I'm just seeing Deshane and the drug worker, which in my low state would stress me out big time. I get really stressed over little thigns. I neer thought of this as illness before but X and Y my friends say they've known I was ill for years. Everybody who knew me knew I was ill. Mother Hubbs said I was bipolar (how on earth did she know?) and everyone knew I was very thin skinned re stress. Not re people but re stress. Eg if I had an appointment it would really do my head in thinking about it. In the end I couldn't even score heroin it was too stressful and the dealer would keep phoning me asking where I was because I was late. I'm meant to phone him but the boot was on the other foot and I genuinely didn't care. O man I feel so excited! I'm going in the shower. My clothes are clean I feel so happy having clean clothes I want to be clean too. I love being squeaky clean.

0354 I'm outta the shower lovely and clean. I found a deodorant body spray on the street this evening named Tusk which is really nice so I'm covered in Tusk and feel really clean for a change. I used to so loathe being dirty thaat when we went to a 3-day rave d day's drive away in 1998 or 1999 the VERY first thing I did on returning, friends in tow was to sprint to my own shower and bathe and bathe and bathe luxuriating in the hot water.

I'm going to have to talk to my doctor as I think my pills are making me depressed. I haven't had one yet and I didn't have one last night as I thought I'd taken two (remember?) now I don't want one as I'm feeling excited again and I adore feelling manic. It's my mind and my life I know I "should" take the pill but I don't WANT to I love feeling that euphoria and it's NATURAL EUPHORIA nothing wrong with it. Why should I medicate it away? I have 2 cigarettes here that I want to smoke.

I disturb myself with my own behaviour. Earlier today I nearly described suicide as "lucisous". I make this point to say yeah I know I am mentally ill. How am I meant to "live with mental illness" it's like sharing a bed with a skeleton. Living with mental illness. I know there are far worse varieties (paranoid schizophrenia for one, depression-only schizoaffective for another, depressive psychosis particularly) see I know very well it could be worse but I have to look after myself like a child.

Sorry to go on this is a big issue I don't know how to deal with it. It's rubbish to believe that psychotic people don't know they're ill. Some have this luxury. I don't. I know that I am ill and I know the way I see things doesn't correspond with what you call reality. How do I deal with this? I know you can't answer that one. But I just don't know what to do.

I'm going to leave it there. Don't worry about me I'm on an upper not a downer but I feel very shiny and lucid so I can see how confused I sometimes get. It's like being trapped in a hall of mirrors; knowing you're in the hall of mirrors doesn't get you out of there, you still can't tell what way is out.

I don't even know how I'll be tomorrow. Deshane is coming round, as far as I know so I'm making a special effrt just for him. I need to borrow £20 of Paddadster or Valium Marilyn or Lynette. I'm lucky being a former heroin addict having 3 people who will lend me money. I lent Paddadadster £20 when he desperately needed it so he respects me for it. Bet I won't get that score though. That's Motherfucker's Law. Just when you need £20, it won't come. And I promise to spend it in Iceland on chicken saag and chicken dhansak with mushroom pilau rice, not on gear. Heroin I really don't need, not when I get a coke rush just from not taking meds. How much do people pay for coke? FAR too much!

I LOATHE DRUGS. Drugs stink. Let's leave it there. Me and drugs = DIVORCED. NEVER AGAIN.

A NICE, HEALTHY ATTITUDE. For once.


I thought my Incredible Journey Homeward Bound DVD seemed susipiciously NOT like the film I watched as a kid where the poor golden retriever got porkupine spikes in his boze, now I find out it's a grotty remake with human dialogue all over it. No wonder it's crap.


Anyway re mental health: comments please. I know you're not going through the same thing, I'd just appreciate any feedback.

You know what I find it weird that even my "depression" is counted as an "illness" I just didn't used to see it like that I saw it as me being miserable, not ill. I cant get my head round this "illness" thing. So I'm sick? I'm ill? I don't know. In a way I'd rather think I'm crazed and insane than "ill" and "diseased" mentally... know what I mean..??


0522 ~ O come on someone say something dont be scared. BUGGALUGZ where are you? BUGGALUGZ say something please LIZZYDRIPPING what's up? Come back!



Secret life of a manic-depressive
Getting into your car and thinking of gassing yourself is not a suicide attempt. That's coming near a suicide attempt. After a suicide attempt you wake up thinking you're dead. That's how you know it's a genuine attempt. Because you wake up thinking you're dead.
Stephen Fry has type 2 bipolar mild enough not to have to take meds. Lucky bastard






Open University: coping with depression
3 parts: includes diagnosis and drugs
http://gledwoodvideo.blogspot.com/2011/03/open-university-coping-with-depression.html<


Dr Kay Redfield Jamison (bipolar sufferer, head of a mood disorders clinic) talks about suicide. Half-hour interview
http://gledwoodvideo.blogspot.com/2011/03/dr-kay-redfield-jamison-suicide.html

Huge Food Shopping Expedition

I JUST BOUGHT A WEEK's dindins from my favourite shop, Iceland ~ where you can get all the components of a roastbeef dinner frozen ready to slam in the oven and take out ready with crispy battered diddly potatoes, gravy and all the trimmings, including cauliflower-and-broccoli cheese and Yorshire puddings within 40 minutes. Wonderful!

Provided you're no better than an average cook, the Iceland stuff actually comes out better than most people's from-scratch. It's the standard you'd expect from a pub lunch ~ right down to the thin-sliced roast beef that no-one ever serves at home (how'd you cut it that thin?)

Don't worry y'all I'm not back on the crack. I did have the urge to score more "just a £10 'rock'" this morning... but the memory of my head being full of so much noise put me off sufficiently... And crack is highly habituational, like druggie chocolate and I was glad to be rid of it (apart from just three occasions this year). It took nearly two years from properly trying to actually give it up, so I'm not undoing that in a hurry... Anyway I was so exhausted I didn't really get up till past midday. I do like the person I was with yesterday (he has a good heart). He can be "slightly" stressful, that's all... (ahem!)

And apart from that all is fine and I've an Italian stonebaked garlick chicken pizza ready to be slammed in the oven ~ yumm yummmmeeee!

Illustrated: Kerry "cokenose" Katona (former "face" of Iceland stores ~ sacked for being filmed snorting a line in her own bathroom); cheesy potato slices (I got these for the first time today ~ haven't tried 'em yet ~ these are what I consider trimmings to my RBD); cauliflower cheese ~ I go for the cauliflower and broccoli variety but couldn't find a pic of the pack; they do lovely chocolate caramel slices like this "2 slices extra free" at £1 a pack; cauliflower-broccoli cheese as it's meant to look (ie when I haven't burnt it!); and last but not least the whole shebang put together; prefilled black pepper grater ~ used to be £5 in Sainsbury's! I got mine for £1 from Iceland...