Far better than earlier

MY ACCIDENTAL "OVER" DOSE IS WEARING OFF. I am 90% sure I took 8mg risperidone instead of the prescribed 4mg. 8mg is the maximum ordinary dose for bipolar; 10mg the maximum ordinary dose for schizophrenia. Some patients (exceptionally) take up to 16mg but not being used to 8mg it knocked the crap outta me. And it WAS accidental. Not every day I didn't take it was accidental but no way would I deliberately take too much. I put the pill on the side ready for me to take and thought I'd lost it. In actual fact I'd almost certainly taken it. I feel such an idiot. So that drivel you got earlier is just how I feel on too many pills I'm afraid. Sorry I can't come up with something more positive when I'm in a negative state of mind. I took heroin again today and again it was rubbish. This on borrowed money as the DSS have messed up my claim. They're paying 2 weekly and thoughtfully inormed me of this when I was in a manic psychosis so of course none sank in. I vaguely knew the spacing was changing from weekly to fortnightly; what I didn't grasp was that I'd have to do a week on NOTHING. Thanks so much DSS. You wanna know my change in my medical condition GET FUCKED. I'm not telling them nothing.

If I inform them I'm diagnosed schiz-affective they'll only use it to play mindgames against me. No I do not trust them.

Thank y'all for finding so many links. Michael David Crawford's Living With Schizoaffective Disorder geometricvisions link was particularly good. Like me he tells people he's bipolar. It is easier to understand than schizoaffective wheich means bipolar with sparkly knobs on. Like MDC I hallucinate too much to be bipolar eg when I'm ill (not all the time) one time I bought a cyder and my change jingled "fuck off!" at me. My psychiatrist said that is schizoaffective not bipolar. I didn't bang on about the weirder stuff, more the more ordinary stuff to do with mood swings. Yet still he recognized schizoaffective when he saw it. My coping mechanisms are low for bipolar, which is again schizoaffective. So I accept what is wrong with me.

Seaneen at the secret life of a manic depressive says to me congratulations you're the top rung of the psychiatric ladder. Which means I'm less likely to be deliberately mucked around like a person with anxiety disorder would be, so I'm glad to be taken seriously even if it is in a way I wouldn't like. Seaneen is only joking. She's a brave girl who has had severe bipolar disorder since her teens. If you didn't laugh, as they say, you'd cry. And in most circumstances laughter outdoes tears. She got a big knock back when the Kings College, London nursing course she'd set her heart on turned her down, but like I told her, she's only so upset because she WILL make a difference, WILL put her heart into whatever she does. Just by reading her I can tell she would be a credit to whatever institution, company, team she joined.

Somehow she manages to handle her illness without being childish. I know I am being childish when I mention suicidal ideation and everything being pointless and worthless. That's how I feel, but how can I express it in a grown up way? I have absolutely no idea. Most people don't blog their actual breakdowns the way I did, so maybe it's par for the course. I don't know.

Well I'm here on my own with Michael Jackson singing. I looked EVERYWHERE for some music I could tolerate on repeat play and Michael Jackson was all I could find. Bear in mind I'm talking DVDs not CDs so it must have good videos. A lot of music I like has no videos at all. So Michael Jackson it was, along with Abba (Mama Mia) and Varied Contemporary (Moulin Rouge). HMV seem to have a thing against Madonna. Not one single disc of any description. Madonna's collected videos I would have gone for but they weren't there.

Thanks again for all the links; I'm going to look through them more carefully. No link any of you came up with was one I'd already read and I have googled away. I still don't get what illness I'm meant to have. Is it bipolar plus schizophrenia (the implication is NO). Is it a cross between the two (the implication is yes). In ordinary people's terms I'd say schizoaffectives I've met were the most messed up of all psychiatric patients. They get ultra-floridly psychotic: manic with even more psychosis. In psychiatric terms disorganized or hebephrenic schizophrenia (that strikes in the mid to late teens and strikes HARD) is probably the worst psychosis you can get. Most people's idea of psychotic apperas to be paranoid schizophrenia. You have to bear in mind there's also depressive psychosis, manic psychosis and schizophrenic psychosis as well as paranoid psychosis. Each of these has a very distinctive flavour, which is why I say being in a madhouse is FAR more interesting than being in a drug detox. Heroin/crack addiction bends unique people the same way. While nutters go mad after their own fashion. I mean I went into a space where I was the centre of a tornado universe my head so frazzled I had no English thoughts just Noise. Now I didn't even know it was possible to go mad like that. But I did. That is severe mania. See I learned something from my experience. I hope one day I would be able to help another person. As it is I need help to help myself and I do need it. I'm tired and I don't know what to do. It's confusing being ill and dull being less ill (a psychiatrist would say I was still unwell, I know the way they think now) so I'm stuck between a frying pan and a fire all the time. How the hell I find my way to sanity I've absolutely no idea.

And thanks again DSS for making me have to go begging on the street, something I only did for tube fares, food and drugs when I needed heroin money. Now I need to do it just to survive. So thanks DSS for accepting how fucked up I am on paper then treating me like I'm able to negotiate beaurocracy only someone in a paid job should be expected to deal with. I'm putting this to Deshane on Thursday. This week there is a special nutter club because it's ENDING and I don't want to go. I went last week as a gesture of support more than anything and nearly had a panic attack over it so I just don't know what to do. I'm fed up of forcing myself into things in the name of "being grown up" and just suffering, gaining nothing from it.

I learned from the schizoaffective write up that of the 3 personality types: weird (eccentric); avoidant (anxious) and antisocial (don't-care) I'm the first yeah a weirdo so no wonder I have schizophrenia!

Right I have to go I'm dying for a cigarette. I hope y'all are well and thanks again for the links they were very handy.


PS Didn't someone recommend the film Bucket List to me? I looked and looked but cannot find the comment, but thanks whoever gave it. I've got that already on DVD, I bought it during my manic DVD shopping-spree!

Illustrated: see how tiny my robo-hammies actually were. These are fully grown specimens! They're very flighty and like nothing more than pinging onto the floor and vanishing for days at a time. Itchy (the only one of my 3 who was remotely hand-tame)spent more than a week of her life AWOL on 3 separate occasions, the swine!

Bipolar?

I HAVE just been scanning the internet to find out what on earth is supposed to be wrong with me. What I found out is not very reassuring.

~ It can't be drug-induced psychosis. That is a paranoid-schizophrenia type condition. I do get paranoia but the other stuff I get is way more extreme. I don't have the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia or drug psychosis

~ I thought there was a condition called "substance-induced mood disorder (bipolar)" but there is not. Substance-induced mood disorder is mania, hypomania (mild mania), depression or a mixed state, all of which I've had in the past 2 months. What doesn't seem to happen in substance-induced mood disorder is that the mood switches poles eg from depressed to manic (as mine did about 3 or 4 weeks ago) and if symptoms last more than a month from last drug use it's generally NOT considered substance-induced

~ Drugs can worsen bipolar disorder (a phenomenon known as kindling) but this doesn't mean they necessarily caused it. Bipolar has a strong genetic component. If you have one parent with type 1* bipolar or recurrent depression, you have up to a 40% chance of getting bipolar i disorder [my mother "can tell by the calendar" when she's going to be depressed and it happens every year. Recurrent clinical depression]

~ Heroin flattened out my moods markedly. That was the first change I noticed in my life: no more mood swings. In fact I had practically no depression in the first 2 or 3 years, so to me heroin was a mood-stabilizer, a mood stabilizer that has now been taken away

~ heroin is not generally associated with drug induced mood disorders; the culprits tend to be crack, speed, ecstasy (uppers); cannabis; psychedelics and benzodiazepine withdrawal

~ at least 50% of people with bipolar disorder abuse drugs and even more abuse drink

~ I have had literally every symptom in the diagnostic criteria for both mania and depression in the last 2 months

~ the hallucinations I had were actually more extreme than is normal. Apparently when most bipolars hear voices they just hear murmuring sounds and can't make out the words, or hear their name. This stuff was going on with me years ago in depression. Now it's clear words, sometimes sentences, and one time a half-hour monologue; I also have seen visions that is I can stare at a blank wall and a movie appears (this only happened a couple of times when I was extremely hyper)

~ I don't have all symptoms at all times. Nobody does. It's impossible to hear voices in the most intense mania as my head is full of just a roaring noise and I make a roaring noise, think a roaring noise and am a roaring noise. This is what happens when you go so incredibly fast you can no longer think

~ Naomi at the drugs clinic who is a dual diagnosis professional thinks I'm bipolar

~ I have the same symptoms and experience as everyone at Nutter Club who is bipolar. But not the schizophrenics. Since I've been coming we've only had bipolar and schizophrenia in the room

~ I have had bipolar symptoms going back 15 years; in the beginning they were mild and transitory (first triggered by antidepressants); over time they have grown more extreme. And now look at me

~ I am not diagnosed bipolar. I just have all the symptoms.

~ And if you want my opinion: when I'm high I think it's fantastic and don't care what it's called; when I'm low the idea of actually being a real life manic depressive is equal to having no life at all

Comment if you like but don't call me a hypochondriac. You haven't seen me, you've only read me. Nobody who sees me doubts I have severe mental problems. I was so out of it one time a couple of weeks or so ago that one of my friends, a 50 year old man, cried

And if you believe I'm being negative, just bear in mind that telling myself I'm sick is the one thread of reality I have left when I lose it and I do lose it. If you think I exaggerate my experience do us both a favour and drop reading this blog. I tell it as it is

Yes I still feel hyper now but have barely any psychosis (yes you can be psychotic and know it: read Kay Redfield Jamison's memoir. She's type 1 bipolar and a clinical psychologist. Knowing the terminology didn't save her from utter madness. It saves nobody)

My situation is not as extreme as it was previously. It's 4:20 I'll do 5 mins in bed but if I don't sleep in that time I'm getting back up. And that's it.

I am not saying I'm bipolar. I'm saying I have all the symptoms. There's still a chance I could somehow get off the hook on this drug-induced thing but nothing I've heard seems to back this possibility up. So this is the situation. I still don't know, but I need to know. I'm fed up of not knowing.

One last thing: yes I think too much. That's another symptom of a manic episode. "Flight of ideas" (racing thoughts).

Night all. I'm doing that 5 mins in bed in a sec. I fully intend not to sleep. (Why waste the time?)

PS I've had ONE drink today a White Ace cyder at 3.75 units alcohol (at 10mls alcohol in a unit).

*type 1 bipolar is more severe than type 2, which involves depression (which may be severe) and mild mania. Type 2 never has psychotic features; type 1 involves full mania and 70% of sufferers become psychotic at some time or other. Hearing voices or seeing visions qualifies as psychosis, whether or not you're also "delusional"

For those who are interested, BipolarAbout.com probably has the best info on the condition.

I JUST SPOKE TO MY MUM i rang her yesterday when i was in a really good mood but she was out, now i'm feeling better i went to bed for ten minutes it's not good to sleep during the day i was feeling ILL physically SICK and EXHAUSTED i'm on tea and ProPlus I took 6x50mg caffeine that's no more than 2 Starbucks coffees and it did f-all to me. Personally i think TEA is stronger than pro-plus.

I don't know what's happening. I feel like an idiot for buying endless films endless endless enough to watch constant movies for days on end because it seemed like a good idea at the time and I kept thinking it's only 4x20B (£70) then another £10 then another £10 then I spent all the rent money and bought more thinking well fuck 'em.

What a diseased world we live in where I'm not even allowed to be in a good mood without it being labelled an illness. Fair enough I was a bit aggressive, confrontational and disinhibited to the point of calling Naomi's colleagues "cunts" but that's just the real me coming out. I spent YEARS depressed, just wanting to curl up and die. Now I'm not depressed and they want me to medicate my energy DOWN DOWN DOWN.

I could go on an alcohol bender because they tried that verbal trick on me where they say "alcohol is a depressant so it makes you depressed" which is actually a semantic trick. Does that mean because I'm hyper I can drink like a fish then? Well no. But it means their trickery is exposed as another druggie service con. Like "methadone stabilizes you" yeah pull the other one. That one has bells, whistles and the keys to Buckingham Palace jangling off it.

Methadone stabilizes you! Methadone stabilizes you! So that's why EVERYONE I have ever known on methadone uses HEAVILY on top. They use heroin because that makes you feel OK, methadone makes you feel suicidally depressed, well it did me. Nursey said it must be my "underlying mood". And promptly did nothing whatsoever to remedy this or help me. Nothing at all. Only when it gets so bad I think we're in 2012 and the walls are talking to me only then do they actually accept I was telling them something was wrong and telling the truth. Oh yeah and I waved and yelled at her last time she skulked past me into their little office where they hold their witches' coven, refusing to acknowledge my presence. This is Nice Nursey With Too Many Ideas, not Evil Bitch Nursey. I can't wait till I bump into Evil Bitch I'm going to tell her what I think of her. Naomi thinks I ought to calm down. Naomi's OK and I could see I was winding her up. Maybe I'd better drop this Nutter Club if I'm only causing chaos there. Whole point in going is to express how I feel. Now what I feel is unacceptable because it's too vehemently expressed, too passionate and too TRUE.

I'm off I have a pie to eat.

No I didn't cut up with that bottle. As I said the broken glass was blunt on every side so even when I pressed hard I only got cat-scratches. It means I wasn't meant to cut up. I just thought it might be therapeutic. Like a therapeutic relationship between me and some glass.

Hey I'm down very nearly to the Acceptable Limit drinks wise, that being 28 units per week, 280mls neat alcohol. Wow.

Nutter Club Entertainment

I SAW NAOMI the kindly American Nutter Club lady again today ... it's Thursday, NUTTER CLUB DAY!!

Only one other nutter turned up. I really like this nutter. She was so ill she looked like she was about to fall over and faint. This was side effects from a medication she's taking for a physical problem, not her bipolar meds.

So she was feeling ill. Naomi could see I was amping with energy so I had to go second. Then I did 90% of the talking, calling the drug service an ineptly run dump and slagging off the nurse I partiularly hate, who isn't the one who wanted to label me on the "anxious-avoidant personality disorder" and "dependent personality disorder" axis. Dependent in this context means somebody who is a real white mouse of a person who kind of obeys everything some stronger character thinks they should say and do. Which is yeah so much like me. I really hang my self-esteem on other people. Honestly!

[She came up with this bucketload of shit because I was depressed during all 3 interviews and because she thinks too much. Most of her theories are really intriguing and perceptive but she does go over the top. She's a WAY better nurse than Judgemental Bitch Features who I really loathe.]

As for anxious avoidant I may have anxiety, but if I do it doesn't come with the worrying, obsessively turning over negative thoughts to do with things that won't happen style of thinking. My way of coping is to smack anything negative out of my head. And I don't need the drug smack to do that. To give her credit she did say I'd "satisfied" the diagnostic criteria for mania during my yummy cold turkey detox. But as I EXPLAINED TO HER there's a little proviso in italics under that one saying "not initiated or maintained by an organic aetiological factor" ie you're not manic if you're in heroin withdrawal.

I am going a bit nuts on these DVDs I'm buying. I got another four last night and three today. I FOUND YOUNG VICTORIA. It's Scorsese-directed and A1 though my poor attention span had me losing the plot within 15 minutes or so. The only film I can really tolerate is Mamma Mia because I like the tunes. I got Chicago which is DIRE and I have to say Renee Zellwegger getting fucked by some random man in scene one does NOT make for a certificate 12 in my opinion. I wouldn't want my 12 year old kid watching that.

I got a 3-pack for "only" £7 of Dr Zhivago, Ben Hur and Gone With The Wind. It's Gone With The Wind I hate out of that lot, the other 2 are really cool, especially Ben Hur. Dr Zhivago is more like filmic wallpaper. Anyone who truly has the attention span for that really has my respect. The music is fantastic.

Today I got something called Role Models which is about someone who goes on an Energy Drinks bender (comedy) and a twin-pack American Dreamz (X Factor piss-take) and Intolerable Cruelty (both comedy) and Case 39, which I misread as Case 69 and thought it was about an orgy but it's "supernatural thriller" but disappointingly only certificate 15 ie probably not scary at all. I like STRONG SUPERNATURAL HORROR. Only kind of action film I can tolerate. Ghosts and ghouls! Action films just have me staring at the "action" forgetting what I'm doing, what's going on and on a DVD I'd press eject. They don't excite or impress me.

Apart from GOOD costume drama and GOOD musicals what I really like is COMEDY. Laughter, as they say is the best medicine. Bounty Hunter with Jennifer Anniston was good. Though why on earth it came in a bright pink case I haven't a clue. Hopefully it put lots of people off buying it so I could have it. That's my theory. I love Jennifer Anniston. I'm looking for Bruce Almighty because I like the bit where he makes her boobs bigger.

Well that's today. If you wanna hear more about nutter club there isn't much except me being banged on at by Naomi for not taking my medication (I'm not going to lie). She did aske me why I originally wanted it. NOT TO BE DEPRESSED was the main reason. And going so incredibly fast and hyper high I couldn't even think in English. If I start going that fast I'll take it again and it works QUICK so no worries there. If I crash badly I'm going in the nuthouse. I'm not sitting at home staring into space. Last time the aerial fell off the TV and I didn't notice for 2 days.

Well that's me I'm off. Take care everyone ;-) :-)



dunno exactly what this video is, but if it's trance it's good
o it's a bit slow, ho-hum, tunes are ok though
actually now i've heard a bit some of the tunes aren't bad
LISTEN TO IT



ok sorry about that chillout music this is a bit better
GATECRASHER was a northern club where grown men put sticky stars on their faces
all in the name of trance
my trance was hard hippietastic Return To The Source trance
this is what's called Eurotrance, but it's still OK



OK THIS IS RETURN TO THE SOURCE
proper Goa trance
the parties I went to were way more bangin than this but it's a good start
bear in mind a good dj would cut out the "musical chronic fatigue syndrome" beginning and get straight to the "mother ship is landing" proper psychotrance bits
there's a good bit of tune about 3 mins 50 into it: THAT is banging trance!



20:38 I'm watching that Club 69 "supernatural horror" thing in the dark to try and make it more scary. It stars Renee fucking Zelwegger but hopefully she'll be demonically possessed or something. She's really fucking annoying that woman I won't go into why it's something she said in an interview that made me think "you uptight selfish cow". She's very good as Bridget Jones it has to be said. OK it's been going 5 mins and not a ghoul to be seen...

20:52 lights back on; can't see punctuation marks on computer keyboard
no way am i watching a film without surfing the net at the same time, i do not have the focus to give anything my undivided attention these days

Abba to E to Mental Mania

I AM LISTENING TO ABBA. Proof positive if any was required that I am in recovery from SEVERE MENTAL BREAKDOWN. I found Mamma Mia down Morrisons for a few quid. The lurid red heart on the cover made me buy it as a FUCK YOU to sneery supermarket staff, so I made sure I went through the slow isle where a surly person serves you, not self service as I usually do.

The sneery looks make such purchases so much more worthwhile (shame I didn't get one). Same as when I pick up cig ends from the bus stop. It's always better when somebody's watching disapprovingly. One time one Jamaican man had the cheek to inform me "that's disgusting" NOT AS DISGUSTING AS THE EXTORTIONATE NEW LABOUR GOVERNMENT TAX I shot back. He shut his mouth then. He looked like a Labour voter. Sad.

I'm voting Tory next time as long as they lower taxes for the rich. I want to be rich and I want to pay low taxes so I'm voting for whoever lowers them most for Proper People. High taxes for the poor don't bother me at all. We already have them. It's called the Council Tax. The one I'm being sued for not paying. The one my solicitor wants me "severely mentally impaired" for. Now that I'm a hallucinating paranoid mood swing nutter on antipsychotics I might go for it. Unless I'm depressed again, in which case I don't believe I exist, so I don't bother engaging with forms of any description. Mainly because my depressed self believes it's natural and right that I should live on the streets anyhow. And that the answer for just about everything is a flat-fronted commuter train whooshing into London. (Trains going into go faster than out of. Flat fronts are best for maximum fatal head injuries. I was researching this issue that day when the BASTARD DRIVER actually read my mind and knew I wanted to jump. He waved arms at me! I know I've said this before but honestly how did he know??? I wasn't exactly hanging off the end of the platform.

I was blaring out this Mamma Mia movie when Naomi the Nuttery Club lady rang up re my antipsychotic problems. She said "ooh what's that music" I said "do you like Abba?" she said yeah. I said well you can borrow it on Thursday but she's already got it.

I have to say it's a HELL of a lot better than I thought it would be. I LOATHE that Dancing Queen song. The only Abba tunes I really like are Money Money Money (of course) and Take a Chance on Me. And Chickadee Chickadoo whatever it's called. I never actually VIEWED most of the film. Just smoked fags and looked at blogs. I keep forgetting to comment so y'all probably think I'm dead rude, ignoring y'all. I'm not ignoring y'all. I'm just plain rude!

Now it's blasting out at 2 in the morning with German dialogue. I love German dialogue. Double value on all my DVDs. I now have a good 16, purchased in the course of a week. Tomorrow I get Burton/Taylor in Cleopatra. I know it's crap, but I like her look and I Like the scenery. Main reason I watch films: bright colours, nice scenery, nice actresses.

I know I should be gay because I like Madonna and like musicals but seriously do you know what you have to do to be gay? Wear TUCKED IN TEESHIRTS, cut your hair REALLY SHORT. Snogging boys I've done just for the shock value but they're not as nice as girls let's face it women ain't called the Fairer Sex for nothing. So I'm plain old metrosexual. I feel desperately disappointed in this [I meant being straight is boring, but it's not boring, I was just being provocative]. Also gay clubs are FAR too sexual for my taste. I've been to a couple of gay-mixed nights, but didn't really like them. When I was a clubber my Big Thing To Do was go to Trade Club... but it never happened.

Trade Club was THEE best club in London. It ran from about 4am to 4pm Sundays. Heavy heavy banging hypnotic E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E music. Ie absolutely fantastic. But I never went. I went Sunny Side Up instead, which ran from about midday Sunday till around 9pm, meaning you could spend Friday and Saturday night actually having a sleep cycle, then go clubbing Sunday afternoon and be daisy-fresh (well as fresh as anyone on an E comedown can be)... by Monday. E comedown doesn't really hit you till 3 days later hence Friday night high: Tuesday blues. About half the people at Sunnies as they called it were spacefaced nutters who'd been going all weekend and had probably had twelve pills each by this time.


Trancy hard house: what I went there for

The other half were like me: people who appreciated a sleep cycle. The press often compared Sunny Side up to Trade because it was thee most banging hardhouse club I ever went to. But Sunnies was a normal straight club. I never liked gay clubs as I say even though most are actually mixed I didn't like the sexualized vibe. Clubbing is about being free and expressing who you are. When I was persuaded into a gay club, I stood out like a sore thumb with my long hair and non-tucked-in teeshirts and no belt. Let alone one with a huge buckle.

Maybe I should play about with y'all and do a protesting too much thing so y'all think I AM gay. Well I'm hardly out of touch with my feminine side am I.

Everything I tried just led to the usual situation in my personal life. Me in bed. On my own. Crying my heart out because I felt broken, empty, abused, confused and very lonely.

That was the end effect of Ecstasy too. Though I ADORED that drug, because it's not just a high, it's transcendently high. Cloud 9, 10, 11... going up up UP!

Everybody's happy. Everybody's smiley. Everybody free. Everybody E.

Then the E wears off and they become the miserable gits they are in real life. And after the after after after party, no matter what adventures happened between then and then I always ended up in my own bed, eventually (never brought anyone back to mine: ALWAYS went to theirs. I had a thing about other people's beds, other people's showers... much more exciting)... after all this I ended up in bed, alone and crying. Wondering why I had said what I said (E makes me ULTRA frank, to the point of friendship-damage)... why I had done what I'd done. Usually it was just me being a tit, dancing on the stage but on a comedown this feels ridiculously over the top)... most of all I felt let down and lied to. Badly lied to. So I curled up in bed, crying again.

I had been to wonderland. A paradise so high I wasn't even dancing with people, I was dancing with fractals, dancing along a rainbow. I didn't just find the pot of gold at that rainbow's end, I picked it up and showered in stardust.

And then I came down down down and reality was just too much to take.

The last few times a kind of trip kicked in as the E-rush wore off. My books were dancing on the shelves. Everything was pink, blue, pastel coloured dots. Maggots in my contact lens case. I had to put the lenses in with the writhing maggots, telling myself they weren't really there. Telling myself this did nothing to diminish the hallucination. Then I took downers to sleep. I couldn't tolerate the cannabis most people toked to come down. I was on Valium (bought on the street, of course). Then I switched to heroin ~ far naughtier.

The fact that my friends disapproved only made it more attractive. I thought they were really uptight, snorting weak coke, thinking they were it. I scored heroin via dealers I met through the local homeless (my true home crowd: they never judged me, always accepted me. Only true acceptance I ever got was from the crustie junkies. My true crowd. Not the shoplifters or the prozzies. The crusties. And nearly ALL are dead now. The only people who "got" me. All dead. I'm one of very few left. So I took this heroin in secret. Because it was forbidden. Because it worked for me. Because unlike that coke, even the dealer's personal... it was crap. Washed crack cocaine: THAT worked. Heroin worked. In the end I switched drugs totally.

Raving and clubbing burns you out in a way not even crack does. Taking eight ecstasy in a night really does hammer brains and body. I was never into multi-pilling. I did 1.5 say at midnight, so by one I was flying. By two this dose was peaking and it was time for my second dose: one more pill. By three am I felt fantastic. by four everything was going full blast. Most clubs chuck out at six, so my 2.5 pills were coasting down luxuriously from six to eight.

Usually I went to someone or other's house, but was home by eleven when a couple of blue Valium pushed me down enough to get three or four hour's sleep. I never slept dirty. Always showered first. Showering on ecstasy is like that "dancing naked in the rain" song. Showering on ketamine is like showering in a spray of diamonds. Mushrooms added extra sparkle when I wanted it. Those were my holy trinity: ecstasy, mushrooms, ketamine. Ketamine was attractive because though I couldn't tolerate spliff, ketamine was OK to me. And lots of people were scared of it, which only increased its appeal (have you noticed I can be a contrary person?)

I genuinely loved the K trip. It's quiet and sparse. Very sparse compared to acid, which is sensory overload. On ketamine you float through outer space. One time I flew through the thorax of a gigantic metalic insect each rib clang-clang-clanging as I thrummed past it. The vibrations of ketamine (you literally feel a low-pitched vibration) were to me AUM, sacred syllable of the universe.

These drugs were my religion.

But you need to discard any ideas that I was somehow a fucked up acid casualty. I used E ONLY at parties. One per weekend. Any more was just overdoing it too much, you really do fry your brains on too much E. I knew about E, knew the bad brain damage neurotoxicity publicity so I took it with care. Yeah the last couple of times I took 5, then 8 pills but that was just 2 occasions. Through most of my E-phase I was known as somebody who DIDN'T TAKE IT WHEN I DIDN'T WANT IT. Even though I ALWAYS had it on me at a dance party (only the desperate score in the club where prices are more than double what they should be).

Like most drugs, like an empty glass once you fill what's full, what's as high as can be, you don't get any higher, the full glass overflows, the drug overflows sideways. Instead of Eeeing you're tripping. This is the law of diminishing returns. Didn't Jesus counsel "moderation in all things"? I'm sure he didn't have MDMA in mind, but it's good advice. If you WILL take drugs take this advice and TAKE THE VERY MINIMUM NEEDED TO GET THE EFFECT YOU WANT. Taking more is just wasting money, wasting serotonin, dopamine etc; wasting brain cells.

So that's me and E. Me and raving. I adored it while I did it, but eventually it all got too much and I wanted to do other things. I cleared myself out for several months but the mood swings I'd experienced since my early 20s were worse. I felt like the sea. High tide (me buzzing on nothing) meant a low tide was coming (depression). Heroin squashed my moods into a flat line and I thought I was cured of this cyclothymia. Then it came back ON heroin (ie heroin wasn't working any more). And y'all know what happened lately. Those mood swings were severe even by psychiatrists' standards. I know what mild-moderate-severe mean in the context of bipolar. Now I have bipolar symptoms.

The doctor didn't use that word but he did say when handing over the risperidone script "it should damp down these mood problems". What I experienced was definitely bipolar in that I swing between two opposite extremes. Bipolar disorder is another matter and it must be carefully diagnosed. So I don't know what's wrong. But it would be just like me to be a manic-depressive junkie, wouldn't it?

I've gone past wanting an excuse for inexplicable behaviour and self-neglect and neglect of pretty straightforward responsibilities like filling out council tax benefit forms and sending them off. I got to a point where I was engaging with nothing. It all seemed pointless. I felt like an utter waste of space and a fraud. And I was usually able to put on a convincing front which confused friends and drug workers. It was Mother Hubbs, who says she was on lithium before she dropped it in favour of heroin (both are mood stabilizers) who told me I was bipolar ~ years ago. I thought she was exaggerating. Then I asked her more recently, "do you really think I am?" and she said "you know you are".

I don't know what I "know" but I know I'm up against something pretty formidable. More formidable than any drug I've ever tried. I mean this high I had not very long ago, the one that had me posting rubbish for days on end... that literally did feel better than any drug I've ever experienced. Now I'm down towards normality I'm pissed off, to be frank. Well if you got amazing free highs, wouldn't you want to keep them? It was the agitation, volatility, physical exhaustion to the point of nausea (having forgot to eat), utter inability to focus on anything longer than a few seconds, a total lack of judgement ~ not so much regarding should I or should I not do this, but judging what was or was not right for another person... I honestly had no idea... the utter inability to care for myself, the inability to think of anything without the idea popping open like a flower, every petal exploding with streamers and little ducks dancing down these streamers saying "hello! hello! hello!". Utter distraction. It was this. This mess that I could see I was in, yet didn't really care about. That I was hearing walls, cars, ceilings talk to me. I knew I was going crazy but didn't care. Yet I was angry enough at having been ignored, written off, misdiagnosed that when my druggieworker suggested I see a psychiatrist I agreed wholeheartedly. I knew in my heart I wasn't right. The psychiatrists knew where I was coming from. I wasn't complaining of feeling bad. I was telling them I felt EXTREME. And I was going very very fast. so fast I lost touch with my own thought process repeatedly. If I put food in the oven I didn't know it was in there till the smoke alarm reminded me. Well it's past 3am and I've not slept. Sorry to go on about my mental probs yet again. You must understand this is a big deal to me I have to reach some solution, some serenity, some sanity. If sanity is good then I want it. If it's boring: no thanks. I wasn't bored when I was mad. See I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I've messed myself up so bad I don't even know what "ordinary" or "healthy" or "balanced" really are any more.

I need a Speak and Spell machine. Perhaps then I can phone home. Maybe somebody will rescue me. I'm lonely here. Nobody seems to understand where I have been. I went to wonderful places more beautiful than you can imagine. And I was tripping on my own natural Higher Power. No drugs. If you honestly do still think I'm on drugs then do yourself a favour and stop reading this blog, because you're totally missing my point.

Well this has gone on long enough. From Abba to Ecstasy to me being a nutter. What's new. Take it easy people. Sorry if this is a mess. I'm not editing, else I'll get uptight and won't want it to go. All I'm doing to this is spellchecking, paragraphing it out then BAM! It's yours to skim or pore over or have a good laugh at.

Take care, lots of love

xx

PS I can just tell someone is going to read this and assume I only took heroin to be "naughty" I had many motivations. Its deadliness was a big one. The fact it made me FEEL BETTER was what kept me taking heroin. "Self-medication" as the nurse who never medicated me (did she think heroin was a good thing?) used to spout...

The flakes on the spoon are ketamine, cooked down from medical ketamine for injection into dried ketamine salts, which are snorted up the nose. Ketamine is NOT horse tranquillizer. It's a dissociative agent used for emergency anaesthesia and pain relief where more diamorphine is not appropriate. IF YOU HEAVILY ABUSE KETAMINE WITH HEROIN AND HAVE A BAD ACCIDENT, DOCTORS MAY HAVE GREAT DIFFICULTY ADMINISTERING ADEQUATE PAIN RELIEF... YET ANOTHER REASON TO GO EASY!


MAMMA MIA MOVIE: TAKE A CHANCE ON ME



ABBA: TAKE A CHANCE ON ME
fully original version
don't anna frid and agnetha look a bit like men in drag?...??



MAMA MIA MOVIE: RED NOSE DAY SPOOF



This tune is the kind of stuff I used to go E-E-Eing to. Without the tacky voiceover. And less cheesy eurotrance. More hardhouse with trance on top. Or hard Goa (late 90s Return to the Source type clubs were my favourite parties; tranced-up hardhouse was my favourite music)
shall i add a few more dance musical terms just to confuse you more if you're not into this shit? hardcore-jungle-tekno, drum & bass, speed garage, grime, deep house, trip-hop, amyl house, psy-trance, gabba, acid techno! There ya have it!!

Risperidone Problem

NAOMI, the Dual Diagnosis lady, who isn't medical (so I wasn't asking medical advice) rang me back about my risperidone problem. I am on 4mg daily. 4mg is half the usual maximum dose. The usual starting dose is 2mg according to the leaflet, but the dr. probably gave more as I was getting symptoms that were severe enough to be losing it pretty completely. I don't lose it every minute of every day even when I'm ill. Everything with me is episodic, variable and changeable, like tides of the sea. A hurricane doesn't last forever, neither do my mood swings. So you need to understand this if you think I'm calling myself "mad" then seem sane. This is the crux of the problem!

Anyway I was put on risperidone 2x 2mg pills at night for the first week (when they are strong enough to make you feel almost concussed, not inherently nice at all, but I was pretty manic so they made me sleep at night and slowed my body down daytimes. They cut out voices though I still hear the murmurs. They stop me pacing, dancing and acting hyper most of the time, even when my mind races and rushes. They also probably slow that down, though they were prescribed on the tail end of a mood swing and the dr. knew that.

From week 2 onwards they're to be taken 2mg by day, 2mg by night. It's the daytime one I had problems with. It gives what you might call drowsiness but it's not sleepiness (it feel way better with Valium on top and I don't want to be scoring Valium on a street corner because of antipsychotic side effects). So I didn't take it yesterday or today.

I said to Naomi I was going to take it nights only (ie 4mg at once) until my dr appointment on Feb 24th. I though this was the most responsible course of action.

I CAN make emergency appointments but don't want to be one of these neurotic complainers going through every single medication until I find one that satisfies my hypochondria. This ISN'T hypochondria. It's not a listed side effect. It feels like the brain-fog and photophobia (lights glare at me in a nasty way) from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and THAT is not something I would relive for anyone.

Another issue is if I do go cuckoo again I WILL go in hospital. Considering those nurses' bizarre idea of misbehaviour I can foresee if I'm a bit "manic" I could easily get into a situation where I get wrestled down and needled. (Not that there's not something secretly funky about that, but it's not really what I want. Y'know...?)

I NEED TO KNOW AN ANTIPSYCHOTIC THAT CAN BE GIVEN IN EMERGENCY HIGH DAYTIME DOSES THAT AGREES WITH ME.

If I left it until I did get needled in hospital, my complaints will be interpreted as insubordination. So I NEED to cross this side-effects bridge NOW.

Naomi has the ear of 3 psychiatrists who work in my area and will bring up my issue with one of them tomorrow. I see her at Nutter Club Thursday anyhow. But I have to sort this problem out. If you went as off the planet as I did NOT ON DRUGS you'd want something you could rely on to bring you down. Being "high" on a mood swing is not all hearts and flowers. It involves being extremely agitated, very volatile, unable to follow simple conversations (sometimes) and being incomprehensible to others (at times). I have to sort myself out. I absolutely have to.

I got a very pertinent comment about my search for a diagnosis yesterday pointing out that maybe I ought to be thinking on nicer things. Problem is I HAVE to answer to the government who are paying me money. They ask for a diagnosis. And my problems have gone extreme enough 1. to put me off heroin and drugs (the high, when it really gets going is WAY BETTER THAN ANY DRUG) and 2. I absolutely have to take responsibility for myself. If I don't, and follow my mood-induced whims I really could get in extreme trouble. I could do anything from chucking my possessions out the window and setting them on fire to... stuff I don't even want to think about.

So you see I'm dealing with what has turned into a serious problem here. And it has to be dealt with properly.

I have to ping out now. Take care everyone. I'm TRYING to take care of myself!

Nutter Club

I WENT TO A THING CALLED NUTTER CLUB EARLIER. Well that's what I call it. You go to the building opposite where people are punished for shoplifting by having to attend group therapy each morning. Instead of court-imposed group therapy for tea leaves, we had voluntary group therapy for the mentally deranged and confused. I fitted right in!

I'm not mad any more by the way. Just my normal self, so if that's crazy I'm still barking. I'm not into excessive self-analysis, which is why I hated counselling so much last time I tried it. I did OK at the sessions; what I couldn't do was link what I said to the real world and effect changes. Counselling is about changing yourself, otherwise it's hot air. Well that was my approach. Whatever it was I said stayed in the room, I barely considered any of it. I think I was meant to practise Positive Navel Gazing.

Interestingly the counselling style that worked best for me was Psychodynamic, the deepest and least problem-centric type. I thought I needed one that finds a solution to a problem, not one that turned over stones to see what psychological woodlice went scurrying back to the shadows. But this psychodynamic psychotherapy actually worked. I learned to think outside the tiny little box that is my head. What I didn't like was that my counsellor and my GP independently both suggested repeatedly that I see a psychiatrist because in the counsellor's words "you need more help than I can give you".

This was just before I launched full-tilt down into that decade-long morass of heroin adddiction. In this period, just before addiction sucked me into the Poppy Void, I was miserable and lost. Physically sick: that was called post-viral fatigue. What the virus actually was, I never found out. It cannot be HIV or Hep C. I tried to put a life together as I wanted to live it, but could never be well enough to both put it together and do all that lovely living!

I had ideas. Things got started. But nothing got seen through. I even got myself on a part-time uni course. I forced myself into this. Originally I really wanted to do it, but a chill wind was howling. I had found something that would help me. so I forced myself to go through with it. Forced myself into a breakdown. Still forced myself on and signed in and did the first year. I did lots of forcing. But very quickly I was too addicted to heroin to go on.

I thought this was what Grown Ups did: push themselves through situations that are supposed to be to their benefit no matter how much they don't like it at the time.

I query why this never worked for me. "Feel the fear and do it anyway" only pushed me to despair. Maybe it's because it wasn't fear as such I was facing. Fear is easy. This was a sense of hopelessness, impossibility. The only fear I couldn't face was that of living without drugs. But we have despair behind that one again. Life without drugs (specifically heroin) is utterly meaningless, empty, bleak beyond imagination. I'd like to say "was" not "is" but I'm a methadone addict. I'm still on a drug. Still a drug addict.

The Nutter Club invigilator says I've done really well. Maybe I'm meant to give attention to that, but I can't. She picked up on my use of past tenses. Heroin does feel past. I always had a sense that if I gave up I would never go back. I would feel too stupid to do that. Conventional wisdom claims getting off is easy; staying off's the hard work. I've found getting off impossible. I'm not surprised giving up heroin coincided with a kind of mental breakdown. My sanity depended on heroin, literally. And you have to be crazy to quit a drug as good as heroin, the only thing that made me feel together. So far I've not had any of the difficulty I might have expected steering myself to stay away.

There's no point wondering about the future, something I have a huge hand in. (I wouldn't say I alone can make my own future; I do not live in a bubble.) But I can make a very large contribution. I can steer my ship. I can alter my attitude. In my experience turning a corner can get you to wondrous places you never dreamed possible... I just cannot see anything wondrous yet...

I'm coming back to Nutter Club next week. I'll let you know how I get on.