As a pancake ...

I COULD HAVE CALLED THIS POST MISERYGUTS but y'all know that's who I am (at least half the time). FLAT AS A PANCAKE. Yeah. I blame Sunday, the Sunday blues not wearing off. I'm supposed not to be drinking but I can't do without drink. I need a Valium or two. I haven't taken Valium in weeks, so it might work. Then again Valium is for anxiety and I don't feel anxious. I feel depressed. I would score gear but do not trust it any more. And I'm not sullying my body with anything less than A grade China White*, that's what I'm telling the dealers. (Not that China White felt any different from decent B, it just doesn't sting my collapsing veins.) Now I'm left without gear but with the pointless bleak emptiness of it all.

Snow and ice is all over the news. It's snowy outside but not too slippery. It's not cold here. One good thing about shivering is, it's supposed to make you lose the flab (I once heard). I have gone off food, it's a waste of time. I bought two carrier bags full. Mince pies. Cornish ice cream. Pasta. Broccoli. I shoved it in the fridge/freezer.

The only good thing about today was sleeping through most of it till 3:30pm. Got up at 4. I wish I could sleep 24 hours. If I'd lived in Victorian times I'd never have been on heroin and I'd hopefully have died of some infectious disease. When I was homeless I thought that was the most natural way of living: in darkness, squalor and cold. Somehow I never managed to adapt to living in a house again, I never got myself together. Don't know why.

All this hypocritical crap about Xmas is on TV. I hate Xmas. Absolute waste of time. The only good thing about Xmas was having an eighth of gear to get through by boxing day.

Heroin never made me happy.

The drugs don't work.

*Number four heroin, often called China White no matter what its origin (Burma, Colombia or Afghanistan (yes it is produced there), is very rare here. More common was a type of white rock gear called white heroin base, an intermediate product between Brown smoking base and injection quality white heroin hydrochloride. I don't really want China White. And I meant "telling" in the future tense. I haven't spoken to any dealer since I stopped. I just love being bloody-minded.

Sour Sunday

WHY are Sundays so bloody miserable? Do not tell me I'm bloody miserable. Sundays are miserable. The rest of the week I distract myself from the world, on Sunday I can't. I'm having no difficulty sleeping now. Slept all night, all morning.

I watched Ugly Betty. Well that one's going downhill. I think the comedy came off with Betty's braces. Wilhelmina was pretending to be an alcoholic this week. Then that ended. Then something worse came on. I can't recall what it was. Then my mind turned to my dealer round the corner, and a £20 note. I still have that note on me, so no worries there. Usually I'm penniless on Sunday. That dealer got fed up giving me tick, because I wanted it every week. Heroin was the only thing that made Sunday tolerable.I'm put off heroin not just because I lost a huge chunk of life to addiction. In this time I achieved nothing, except that I learned to speak better German. I achieved this by ploughing through books when stoned, looking up every single word I was not 100% sure of in a dictionary. I must have looked up some words 30, 40 or more times. I also started a blog in German, which is awfully phrased "today I go shop, I did buy tea bags. Since two year my hamster die. I not no more eat tea." That bad. And probably that boring. So that's my one achievement.

What puts me off gear most is how truly dire it got. Not just the blank gear (ie not gear at all) but the last stuff, which kept me near-comatose for days on end, but not due to heroin, due to an "unregistered compound". My suspicion, by the way, is that this compound was leaked from a drug-testing lab and produced in the ilk of establishment that churned out mephedrome (meow, 4-methcathinone), a legal high that really was like coke plus ecstasy (I tried it) and was banned in Britain earlier this year. I'm blaming whatever was in this for that mental episode. The further away I get, the more out of it I see that I was.

Back to methadone. Like an idiot I had forgotten to drink it, in fact the dose was 6 hours overdue (twice daily dosing). I drank it, fell askeep for another three or four hours and woke up without the slightest urge for heroin. I suppose I'm not allowed to say I'd rather die than take heroin as that's suicide talk. Suicide talk is like the rubbish strewn on the ground after a tornado. It's crap spewn out of my drug-infested psyche.

Well I can't think of anything else. There's only an hour and 45 minutes till Sunday is over. I wish I was in Germany, they're an hour ahead. Less Sunday can only be a good thing.
See ya Monday...

DWARF HAMSTER PUP 2 DAYS OLD



That early 80s song Words (under the Tunnel post) is apparently French. I never knew that. With the exception of Vanessa Paradis Joe le Taxi and Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg Je t'aime... moi non plus this is the only French pop song I know.

DESIRELESS: VOYAGE

The light at the end of the tunnel...

IT'S A VERY COMMON EXPRESSION: "the light at the end of the tunnel". You might not have experienced the reality behind the metaphor. I have only experienced this twice in my life, both times in childhood.

The first time I saw light at the end of a tunnel, I was very little. It was the last holiday we went on before my parents divorced. Their hobby was hiking, so I did lots of hillwalking in Yorkshire and Derbyshire when I was very small. On this last excursion we followed the route of a disused railway. The terrain was luxuriously flat and reliable... until we came to a fenced off tunnel. The fence was torn open, so we ventured inside.

Unlike the road tunnels or Docklands Light Railway (where you can ride a driverless train right at the front where the driver would be), there were of course no lights here. Moving into the eventual light took a long, long time. The torch my Mum was shining around was almost ineffectual. Its weak beam danced around stones and rocks and just about lit the way. Within about a hundred yards we were in utter darkness. A strong dank smell was everywhere. When she turned off this torch, there was not the faintest glimmer of anything to be seen in front or behind. Just infinite blackness in all directions. I wasn't scared, but I remember vividly the intensity of this dark, knowing that if that torch failed we would see nothing at all for a long, long time.

The tunnel was "only" about half a mile to a mile long, meaning the walk through took ten to twenty minutes.

And this is what I remember best. Eventually, we trekked to the point where the tiniest pinpoint of light appeared straight ahead, like a needle-point. Walking onwards, this light grew gradually in size until it looked like an ever-brightening star. Eventually it grew to the size of the moon. It took what seemed like an eternity to expand into anything resembling the tunnel exit it actually was.

And then we were outside in blinding sunlight, and it was all over.

The second time we were on a canal boat. My parents were divorced and remarried, but the same phenomenon. Utter darkness, then the tiny point of light very gradually getting bigger. It was nothing like driving through a road tunnel, because it took such a long time to actually reach this light, which started so incredibly tiny, you might not be sure you were just imagining things in the endless night.

So there we have it. The great metaphor for life. Somewhere, there's light at that tunnel's end! Keep walking, keep chugging. Keep going. Eventually that light becomes almost blinding, because it's real.

(Just don't go in that tunnel after midnight!)




F R DAVID: WORDS (DON'T COME EASY)
Anyone remember this song? It got to number 2 in 1983, and it's barely ever played now. But I like it.

To do or Die: thank Q

***THIS POST DESCRIBES MY OWN FEELINGS; I DO NOT AND NEVER WOULD ADVISE ANYONE TO TAKE THEIR OWN LIFE. WEBSITES AND HELPLINES OF SUICIDE ORGANIZATIONS ARE GIVEN AT THE END***

I have focused here on extremes in order to make my point.

I GOT A MESSAGE THIS MORNING from Q, saying why do I talk talk talk about suicide, why don't I just do it? I'm sure Q isn't the only person to think this. So this Q is for you and anyone else who wonders. My answer.

I was long attracted to heroin before I ever got involved in it. The main attraction was that heroin was deadly. The first time I went out of my way to score heroin I was dead-set on overdosing and drowning in the bath. Circumstances conspired against me and my £50 came back. I have never been so disappointed. But I still had a good go with all the drugs I had: sleeping pills and vodka, lots of clothes, bricks, planks and a bath full of water. I was alone over Xmas. This should have worked. When I woke up in a white haze (the side of the bath) I thought I was dead. For a moment I was happy. Then I realized I was wet and cold and miserable.

I did a far better attempt a year before. Also at Xmas. Also in a locked house. With no interfering bastard due back for a good 10 days. I knocked back nearly a bottle of vodka. then 8 pills of 4 different types. My memory from then on went hazy. Suffice it to say, I woke up with vomit everywhere, and pills in the vomit. Scores and scores of pills. Not a single pill lay outside the vomit. Which speaks for itself. I felt sicker than I've ever been. Poisoned to the core.

I was out of it for three days, sleeping off this overdose. Gradually what came back was a moment when I picked up a bottle of 70 or more Lofepramine, a heavy antidepressant. As far as I knew this was fatal in overdose. I knocked the entire lot back. At least 70 pills on top of this vodka and pills cocktail. To my regret I puked nearly all of it up. But not enough not to feel sicker than I ever have done. Heroin sickness in no way compares. This was deathly. I must have taken in more than I knew of this lofepramine. There was no chance of this being seen as any "cry for help" I wanted to die. I didn't have a chance to feel disappointed or anything else. I felt nothing. As I say I didn't fully come round for a good 3 days.

In my drunken idiocy I had also forgotten that lofepramine is a tetracyclic, not a tricyclic antidepressant. Tricyclics are fatal in overdose. No question. You go unconscious, then you start fitting. Then you go into a heart attack. You do not come back. Tetracyclics are a different ballgame. Lofepramine made me feel ill. Iller than I ever have been or would want to be again. But it didn't kill me.

If only that idiot had provided me with heroin a year later I might not be here now.

Q brought up a very good point when he told me I should stop talking about suicide and just do it. Perhaps I should explain a few things about suicide for the uninitiated.

Suicide usually comes in impulses. When I have felt desperate and at the end of the line, these have hit me every few seconds. That is, literally hundreds of times per day. Most people in a suicidal state actually resist these urges, even despite their insistence. As my old counsellor told me, the will to live is the strongest will of all, no matter how bad you feel.

You need to get out of your heads the idea that suicide is just a wimpy way out, an escape from pain. If I hadn't been such a wimp I'd be long dead now. This isn't how it feels when you're in the thick of "suicidal ideation" as they call it. In depression, life feels worthless and meaningless. In severe depression there is not even a glimmer of hope or joy anywhere. In this state it is easy to feel you are doing the world a favour, that everyone would be better without you, that you deserve to die.

Things don't have to go very much further along until you hit an outright delusional state. Yes plain depression ~ not schizophrenia ~ can make you delusional. You can also hallucinate, hear voices or see warped faces in the walls, the carpet, piles of clothing. All these can be symptoms of extreme depression. It's called depression with psychotic features. (We had a friend at uni, who didn't use drugs (not even hash) who got into this condition.) In this state the most far out and bizarre ideas can seem utterly realistic and reasonable. I will not give details. If you know anyone who appears to be depressed and out of touch with reality you need to get them to a psychiatric hospital and quick. In fact if you know anybody who gives the impression that they may be considering a suicidal act you need to seek help fast. Most depressed people find it hard verging on impossible to take even simple decisions. If you think they need hospital treatment you should push for this, and make it clear to the doctors you don't feel able to take responsibility for yourself. That's what mental hospitals are for. To treat people who cannot survive anywhere else.

Using drugs while depressed, especially speed, cocaine or crack can make the state far worse and even precipitate psychosis. If you know anybody in this condition you need to step in as a friend and help. Never assume anybody who's ill enough to hallucinate ~ or who's just staring blankly at a wall, rocking ~ will get help for themself.

Two weeks ago I finally had enough of gear. Crap gear full of rubbish I didn't want and hadn't paid for. I'm not talking "bash" I mean pharmaceutical whackodrugs. I wasn't the only person to lose days at a time in amnesia. But I don't know anybody else who went off like a skyroket, hearing voices, paranoid and hallucinating floridly.

The absolute fruityloops peak of this lasted only 2 days. In 3 days I got 1 hour's sleep. My mind was electrified. When I closed my eyes it was like watching television. Vivid imagery played out behind them. My hearing went louder by a factor of at least 10. Suddenly I could hear everything in every room of my house. People on the street were yelling their personal business. If I so much as cranked a door handle open, the door told me to buy a tangerine (yes I thought this was hilarious, too). At one point it sounded like radios were lying everywhere, left on, babbling, playing music. A confusing jamboree of sound. At another point I couldn't tell whether I was thinking or hearing, I was hallucinating so much. I also had visual hallucinations: spectacular lights, police officers posing as parking meters. Going outside was like stepping outside a full-on rave. Two police cars side by side, blue flashers on, took me to psychedelic seventh heaven.

I took no drugs to get in this state. I STOPPED taking them. I wasn't depressed. I was laughing my head off, singing songs I was so happy, very disinhibited. My mind was racing very quickly and flooded with ideas. Into all of this utter darkness mingled. I was closer to a desperate, impulsive suicide than I ever have been. Every other act I ever did or contemplated would have been a planned event. This was random and quick and dangerous. I speak literally when I say I wasn't very far from a state where I would not have known who or where I was or what I was supposed to be doing. Because I kept in touch with some rational part of myself I knew this, and that freaked me. The experience itself was not inherently scary or nasty. I'd rather feel that way than be in panic or anxiety. What hurt was going mad and knowing it. You'd have to be incredibly naive to hear voices, hear people spitting and swearing at you along the road, all the way up and back, and not realize: this is what happens to crazy people.

To anyone still having a good laugh from all this, I challenge you what would YOU have done in such circumstances? Would you have got there and back and home without being arrested or put in hospital? If you don't believe a psychotic-like episode can happen to you, just try smoking as much crack as you can manage. Best way I know of to bring it on. Point was here, there was no crack. There were no drugs; only a lack of drugs. That is what scared the rational me, the tiny part of sanity that remained through all of this. My head was like an echo chamber for days afterwards. One thought I thought was repeated in my head and bounced back and forth. Some thoughts flew straight in from outside. What was mine or not became confusing. Doing the simplest task: buying something in a shop, using a laundrette, going anywhere in time on time. This was extremely stressful. I only posted on my blog because I find talking and writing easier than anything else. These are the only things I do truly WELL. Anything else computer-related, e.g. signing in, was difficult beyond words.

Well I think I've said all I want to re me and suicide. I've experienced suicidal thoughts for a long, long, time. Provided they aren't acted on, that's all they are, just thoughts. Usually I do not mention them. I am fully aware that to do so can sound childish and petulant and attention-seeking. I posted some of my thoughts as they came more recently because I was in a mess, had no idea what was or was not relevant or real. Through all of this I tried as hard as I could not to cause genuine offence or upset. And yet to be true to myself. This is not an easy situation to negotiate. My blog tells the truth, no matter how nasty, sordid or embarrassing. If I deleted everything that could embarrass me at some time in front of some person almost nothing would remain. In a way I have prostituted my life story, if you want to see it that way. So I might as well go on. It means little to me any more, I'm so used to telling it. At least that way it cannot hurt me.

So that's me. This is my existence. Judge me all you like. But I challenge you to walk a mile in my shoes and still say what you say.

Over and out.

***SUICIDE HELP***
Please anyone from the relevant countries give names/numbers of organizations.
If you or anybody you know is or appears to be contemplating suicide (including dropping hints) GET HELP NOW.
The following organizations and helplines can give advice and put you in touch with mental health services:

UK: Samaritans National Helpline 08457 90 90 90 (low cost from BT landline, may be expensive/not eligable under minutes schemes from mobiles)
Central London: (probably cheaper from a mobile phone or callbox) 020 7734 2800
Eire Samaritans: 1850 60 90 90

Australia: Samarians
Befrienders: helpline08 93 81 5555
Befrienders: youthline 08 93 88 2500
Befrienders: freecall countryline 1800 198 313

Canada: Befrienders 1-888-787-2880
Helpline Vancouver (cheaper from a cellphone) 604-872-3311 (Greater Vancouver)

New Zealand: Samaritans 0800 726 666

USA: National Council for Suicide Prevention 212.677.3009
Befrienders 310 391 1253

Kiwis

FRUITY/FEATHERY FRIDAY/SATURDAY


A KIWI is a fruit containing several times the vitamin C of most citrus fruits


KIWIS are the national bird of New Zealand


NEW ZEALAND, where the Lord of the Rings was filmed


KIWI BIRDS are flightless and feature the characteristic huge beak


KIWIS are shy and retiring. They like hiding in hollow treetrunks and here they build their nests


PROVIDED they're not shot at, chased or otherwise treated cruelly, they can get very tame


THE little Kiwi chooks are well known for being vicious and evil. Here's a police photo of one just before it was arrested for pecking to death 3 young kids in a primary school playground....


... AND IF YOU BELIEVE THAT you really will believe anything!

WISHING Y'ALL A PUKKA WEEKEND

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.

Lovely huge sharps bin

THE DRUGGIECLINIC have given me an enormous sharps bin for my old heroin needles.

Hopefully it's spacious enough to pack in an entire drawer full of used needles. Blunt. Used and reused. I'm so looking forward to clearing out this crap (not).

As anyone with experience of IV drugs knows, accidental needle-sticks, particularly sudden and violently inflicted ones in the fingertip hurt; reused blunted needles hurt the most. The tiny wounds are irritating and go on and on bleeding.

It's not fun living in a house full of used works. I've had them in my fingers my hands. I've sat on them. More than once I've ended up with a bent 1ml insulin works wobbling out the end of my big toe. Lovely business, innit.

Yesterday I spent hours doing many many things I had to do. I came back after 5pm utterly exhausted, collapsed in a blue velvet armchair (my landlord's good taste, for once!) and was unconscious, just the same as when I used to come back and have a lovely great gloopy hit on the Brown. See I always thought I didn't need Heroin to oversleep. And sleep I did. In this chair, all evening, all night. For hours and hours.

Waking up late this morning. Glugging back the very last of yesterday's methadone then running straight to the chemist for today's.

I always get the methadone collection out of the way as early as I possibly can. Running there in the evening, imagining I've missed closing time was never fun.

Now it's not even remotely funny as there's no substitute anywhere. I'd rather kill myself than take heroin again. Rather die now and get the misery over with. On Monday Paddywhack and I were discussing lovely suicide methods. I was far more flexible in potential methods, pointing out if you want to go it's worth a minute or so of pretty gruesome "discomfort" in order to get drowned, suffocated... whatever. I think Paddywhacks wants a luxury death. Is there even such a thing..?

And no, I'm not really suicidal. I just make really good dinner party conversation!!

OK so it wasn't a dinner party. It was two old junkies knocking back the alcohol in the gloom. We're all on the drink now.

Just before I trundled home replete with Chinese chicken curry mix vegetable fry rice (yummyyumyummmm!!) last night, I bumped into a guy who couldn't even tell me how he knew me. I knew him. He's been in a nasty accident and lost his memory and consequently a huge chunk of his life. His life was a life of severe heroin, crack and drink addiction. But still, he's lost it. He knows he's only half-back now...

... anyway he said the same thing I, and lots of other old people, say. Those "big time" drug dealers have messed up their business more than they know, trying to up prices, imposing a drought. In doing so they've lost many of their longest-standing customers. People who were fed up anyway have finally become fed up enough to stop. People who couldn't trust drug dealers (and who can) lost the tiny bit of trust that remained.

These are people on methadone scripts who were using (sometimes heavily) on top. Now they are happier to spend far, far less on bottles and cans we at least know the content of (unlike the last 2 batches of dodgy heroin I and lots of others got).

I'm being careful not to speak for them. Speaking for myself: I never want to go back. Perhaps some of those others will bide their time and buy the odd bit of brown, if decent Brown ever returns. If it doesn't (and we have years of experience plus a reliable level of methadone to judge against so we're not easily impressed), I don't think these, their longest-standing customers will be flocking back any time soon.

I'm far too old to con myself that me, my actions or attitudes might sway the behaviour of my old friends. But I hope for their sake they keep hold of the tiredness and jadedness and nausea and plain disgust and keep walking. Walking, trudging, stumbling. In the right direction. Away. And towards freedom.

I for one never want anything to do with that nasty drug Heroin ever again.

Never, ever again.

I'm having a bash at answering my multitudinous piles of unanswered emails later on. Wish me luck, please. And please don't be offended if one of those emails if yours. As I say me+email=really crap. Can't explain why but I'm crap at them. Akh. SORRY everyone.

PS WHY did no-one tell me the X-Factor was over? I gazed vaguely at enough of it last Saturday night to see this. REBECCA FERGUSON performing BEAUTIFUL with CHRISTINA AGUILERA. Rebecca only came 2nd against some nobody. With 38% against his 44%. I found this out days later in The Sun newspaper. She's way better than Leona Lewis. And isn't she sweet. Why didn't she win?
And I must point out Rebecca's voice is tired here. If she sounds this good horase imagine how good she sounds normal. Aretha-like. I will post her best up if/when I can find it

Baileys and Heroin

I AM GOING up Morrisons for Baileys or Baileys substitute. I know I am not supposed to be drinking but I tried the one litre cyder. It's all gone. I tried eating, it makes me feel sick. Not literally food-nausea, more I don't want to eat it so it's like forcefeeding. I slept from 8pm till 1am last night. Thought I was doing really well on no sleep.

First thing I went to the chemist. Gulgged a bit of (methadone) juice. I have more to glug. I'm thinking of glugging it now as I'm so down.

I entertained the thought of heroin for nearly 5 minutes today. But it never made me happy. Also I don't even know where there's any good stuff. Totally off the circuit. As far as I know the drought is almost as bad as it was before.

Most of today I was asleep. From about 10 till 4:30. Complete exhaustion. I don't know what to do. My friend is feeling really crap. We are holding hands across the Atlantic. She is on Suboxone and not enjoying it. Subutex (also buprenorphine) made me feel really "clean". Very much wide awake all day. Sense of smell about ten times more acute. Which probably all sounds good but not everybody is ready for that. On methadone I feel "normal" drugs-wise.

Methadone never intoxicates me. Taken at night it can help you sleep, but it's not like a sleeping pill, that, taken too early, would make you feel drowsy. It's not in the slightest bit a "state-sponsored high" as Anne Widdecombe MP wanted to believe. Addicts hate methadone because it DOESN'T make you high at all. Most say it leaves them flat and empty. For the vast majority of hardened addicts, unless they're ready to be clean, methadone doesn't work. They use and use and use on top, invariably. The reaction I had, if methadone played any part, was extremely unusual (never met anyone else who experienced that).

Now I don't know whether to go supermarket or not. Re O'Grady's/Carolans/Morrisons Own Baileys substitute it's more the sugary gakkiness putting me off than the alcohol. Akh. I think I'm going. I hope those big drug dealers importing lorry loads get really broke. Between them, they cannot even orchestrate a reliable supply from Afghanistan to the street. Far as I know, there's still a drought. I hope some supply chain from Burma and Colombia starts up. I would never in a million years have gone near #3 Afghan Brown Sugar (heroin base) if the proper #4 China White (heroin hydrochloride salts) had been available. Makes me angry to this day just to consider the matter. All that nasty vitamin C and citric acid I banged into my veins. No wonder they're gone. I'm telling myself I'm only using China White from now on, but that felt no different from good brown. So I wouldn't bother. Been there. Had enough to last a lifetime.

I'm not interested in heroin-assisted treatment for myself, but I think it should be dished out liberally to others. Contrary to what you might assume, people on HAT take a level dose, which means they are highly unlikely to overdose unless they have liver disease (which affects drug metabolism) or have been drinking or using sedatives heavily on top. All these can be easily tested for at a clinic, as can street heroin, which has a totally different signature from pharmaceutical heroin (narcotine, codeine other stuff is in street heroin). Numerous trials (e.g. RIOTT, link below) rating injectable diamorphine's efficacy against injectable and oral methadone have shown it more than twice as effective as methadone syrup and a lot more effective than injectable methadone amps.
ADDICTS HATE METHADONE.

Here's the Heroin Therapy link: http://www.actiononaddiction.org.uk/news_and_campaigns/news/187_supervised-administration-of-injectable-medical-heroin-leads-to-larger-reductions-in-street-heroin-use-than-injectable-or-oral-methadone-riott-trial

Illustrated: lovely gakky Baileys; about 20mg British 1mg/1ml green methadone; Swiss Diaphin pharmaceutical grade injectable diamorphine 100mg/1ml. It's mixed up with water a day or two in advance and must be used quickly, otherwise wet diamorphine degrades into 6-monoacetylmorphine (hence the legendary heroin "dry amps" given to a v select bunch of gear-heads in this country)

DIDO: HERE WITH ME
This tune has been going round my brainbox. I had no idea what it was called until just now:~

Drink Day

I ACTUALLY FOUND MYSELF entertaining the idea of taking heroin earlier on. With a longish history of heroin addiction this is hardly a surprise, it just hasn't happened so far (this time). On previous attempts at coming off, it's just about ALL that happened. Apart from wanting to die.

My deepest fear as a heroin addict wasn't dying, it was living. Something I had little-to-no idea of how to do.

I had been all day at a friend's house where we were drinking. First just me and him. Then a knock at the door. Someone I haven't seen in maybe 8 years. He remembers me when heroin addiction was all new and still felt (to be honest) like Xmas every day. Xmas with a lot of desperation and despair and puking on the doorstep waiting for our terminally slow dealer to show up, it has to be said. But the good atill far outweighed the bad...

Nobody drank very much. There was a lot of talking. It was boys' talk. After 3 drinks (I know how much I had, only three!) I started feeling sick from lack of food. So I bought a cheese and red peppers bread in Morrisons (79p). That made me feel better. I tried to go to NA. I went right there, but the meeting that used to be there wasn't on so that was annoying. But I felt let off the hook. Really I wanted to get home.

On the way back I felt empty without heroin to come home to. Very empty and desolate. Even though I was tired and knew what heroin would do: just make me sleep, I still wanted it. In days gone by I would have wasted no time in scoring. Despite being tired and cold and pissed off, I would have ensured lovely heroin was in my hand, then in my veins, making everything all right.

Which is annoying as I was saying only an hour before how much I loathed everything to do with drugs. Mostly the people. I told a story of where I used to live. I would get up at 2 or 3am to buy drink (24-hour shopping, doncha love it!) very often I'd get accosted by a crackhead I knew. There were two in particular, who I knew pretty well, who begged money off passers-by. If I had £4, £4.50 or so, I'd sometimes go in halves on a £10 rock, which we smoked on the mid-level bathroom in my house. One particular night we found ourselves a few streets away, in a downstairs room full of black men who I didn't know. Both of these addicts were black, I suppose I point this out to say it made me feel the odd one out. Being White Boy in this room full of crack smokers where the atmosphere was like something from a lower circle of Crack Hell.

There was a white girl on the couch by the window. Long blonde hair. Sour expression. The archetypal "crack whore". And one on whom the tables have been turned, as they often are. One of the men said to her will you stay here and watch the door/my phone. Something like that. She said yeah yeah. they left, after telling us they had no drugs. One had at least 3x£10 clingfilm crack wraps in his hand. The girl rolled her eyes and said in a quieter voice "As if I have any choice."

I think we left before any more crack returned. Outside I said, "Don't you think there was a bad atmosphere in there?" and he just stared at me, blankly. He was far more interested in his pipe. This is just one event that convinced me I was no true crackhead. Heroin I would have been more than happy to bang up, if only there's been a decent light somewhere in that gloom. Heroin insulates from sensation, like being wrapped in furry blankets inside a bulletproof bubble. I never cared very much what went on elsewhere, as long as I was stoked up on gear. Of course most of the time I never had enough gear and that seemed to be the problem.

When I did have "enough" it got to the point of heroin just not "working" on not much more than 2g a day (speedballed*, with coke extra). In my one proper crack binge, my body said NO NO NO to coke, quite early on. Maybe within a week or so of 24-7 snowballing and piping. (When I slept I don't know. I think I just conked out at various points round the clock. woke up and carried on hitting up, drinking and piping.) Heroin my drug-saturated body said MORE MORE MORE to. But just could not feel it. Yes I was blowing way way too much money on drugs. And of course I'm not proud of it. A friend of mine smoked a house. He inherited a bundle of money and put £100,000 or more on the pipe in a single year. This stuff didn't make me happy (certainly not impressed) then. Now it makes me feel sick.

I know I need to drink less. Thanks for all the comments. Caeser I'm sorry I seem to have missed answering you. I'm answering every point in a second. I want to say to everybody I do read all comments. Not necessarily precisely when they come. The only reason I wouldn't specifically answer one is when I'm upset about something or when lots of people are saying lots of things and I feel deluged but in a good way. I would rather be deluged than left alone, I think any blogger who says they don't want comments must truly live in la-la land.

When I got home, by the way, I slept for five hours, till 1am. Without heroin. See what I mean..?

Re my drug history, so it doesn't sound contradictory the timings are this. All drugs: about 20 years (started age 19). In the 1st 10 years there were long spaces when I just did not use them. I did experiment with everything that came my way so the list is long. I also took acid and other drugs (especially speed) when I really shouldn't have. I was clinically depressed, on high dose antidepressants, seeing a psychiatrist. Me on acid then was not pretty, and I probably caused damage. Full-on heroin (+ heroin/methadone) addiction dates back almost exactly 10 years, though even it is hard to pin down a precise start date. Heroin experimentation began in any "meaningful" way about 2-3 years before that. So that's why I mention 20 years and 10 years. It's not a typo and it's not lies.

Methadone is the only drug I'm on now. The dose is far too high for my liking. I want to cut down and come off as soon as I can. Me detoxing is not a beautiful sight at all. I have had a "nervous breakdown" to some degree every single time I tried and it would be really foolish to try and achieve detox too quickly. Some of these "breakdowns" (I use the word losely) involved symptoms of bipolar** and more serious conditions than ordinary anxiety/depression. This is not to say I think it is bipolar or anything else. I'm trying not to think too much about that particular issue. Probably any inpatient detox would be too fast for me. The standard would go from around 60mg to zero in about 2 weeks. The longest I know of goes from about 120mg to zero in 6. Staying off drugs and cutting down slowly in the outside world, if I can do it, is probably the most sensible route FOR ME. Perhaps for many other people the opposite would be true.

Drink is still an issue. I know I drink too much. I drink about 3 x half litres of 7.5% ABV cheap cyder. Yesterday I managed one litre, by buying it in a bottle not cans, and drinking three smaller drinks. I think I'm going to try the 1-litre bottle from now on, cut down from there to one can. There's no great hurry and this isn't me making excuses. Bear in mind this addiction is 10 years old. To break it overnight may well put me in a Fool's Paradise. The progress may not be real. I need reality now.

I am supposed to be "taking care" of myself. So I'm trying to be responsible. I have to be consistent on the one hand (not breaking resolutions) and not get over-enthusiastic go too quick on the other. Bearing in mind I lost my marbles just transferring to methadone, I cannot see that rapidly cutting out anything would (in my own situation) be wise.

To anyone in a similar condition, my best advice is find yourself a good doctor (not easy). Or a good drugs worker. Or a good drugs/mental health professional. Drugs come under mental health anyway. I say this because what's good for me and what works for me may not be best for you. If you've had specific problems detoxing/switching meds/taking any psychiatric or other meds you need to explain this clearly. The problem could be mental or physical or both. Here in the UK if you need special treaetment due to a co-existing condition, you should get a programme tailored to you. I have tried to explain how a methadone detox would be tailored to me. In a way it's good the dr saw me as I was. Now they know I'm not just exaggerating or fantasizing when I talk about going cuckoo. I was bouncing off the walls in that there office!

Better leave it there. I hope I will look back one day and be able to stand by this when I say: CONGRATULATIONS DRUG DEALERS, THANKS FOR THAT DROUGHT. YOU'VE LOST YOURSELF A LONGSTANDING CUSTOMER.

*speedballing or snowballing means mixing heroin and crack (or cocaine) in the same IV shot. It's v strong and v dangerous

**bipolar disorder is what used to be called manic depression; it differs from ordinary depression in that bipolar involves swings from feeling slow, sleeping a lot, eating a lot and pretty down to going very fast, being irritable and angry and/or euphoric and high and barely sleeping at all. The moods can become mixed up and don't necessarily come in clear-cut "episodes".

Anna's description of bipolar depression (yesterday) is here

Why

I AM IN A BAD MOOD. Been that way day. Can't snap out of it (I'm trying). I just went to the Chinese takeaway. If the trek there and back and the crap
with having to bish bash bosh eye contact, pulling face into smile all that crap etc works as aversion therapy then I'm not bothering going again. I only got it because I was indulging a greed craving. Don't feel better for having eaten anything.

I was asked yesterday why I am so hard on myself. Well if someone stuck you repeatedly with drugs of all varieties, lied to you, contantly made promises they caved in on at the first opportunity, made you depressed, drove you cuckoo, tried to kill you twice and made you and your house a complete mess: would you like them? Would you TRUST them ever again?

That's why I don't like and cannot trust myself.

A little knock on the head

(SARCASM: A BLOODY GREAT KLONK ON THE HEAD)

That's why I don't feel too right. A shedload of drugs over about 20 years (though I did months with nothing over 2-3 years; though I might give the impression of having once been on EEEEEEEEE all the time, I wasn't, I just liked it and was still able to go out with it and not take it when I didn't want to. I never lost control of drugs till Heroin.)

And... I'm feeling dazed.

Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello!

I once got hit on the head by a truck. That gave me concussion. Concussion is nowhere near as strong as this. This is the biggest thing to hit me ever. And you wonder why I don't want to know what it's called!

Thanks for all the comments. I'm not v good at emails. I have to try more.

I hope this makes sense. I have been told I make a lot of sense. The day I stop making sense is the day it all ends. If I went that barking, I would be mistaken for an American Akita and be apprehended to Battersea Dogs' Home. Hopefully a nice Middle Class family with ferns in the hall and a nice garden would pick me up.


** For those not into drugs, E is what Americans sometimes call X: Ecstasy **

Silver Plate

I THINK I have been handed just about the best Coping Mechanism there is on a silver platter.
Schizophrenia/psychotic episode. Let's not beat about the bush. Psychotic episode it is, no question. The dr knew I knew this and didn't try to deceive me. Schizophrenia means a certain form of psychosis (bearing in mind you can also be psychotic and depressed and/or manic) and contrary to popular belief there is a scale of psychosis running from near the edge (whatever that might be) to just over to well over to barking to barking so much you don't know who/what/where/why/anything any more. Schizophrenia can get bad enough. About as bad as it gets without your brain literally melting and your dying.
Schizophrenia: had a real good cry over that one.
I'm not claiming to be suffering here, so don't pin a suffering label on my words. Confused maybe, suffering, not really. Hearing voices can be fun. Head echoes make me laugh. Paranoia I don't like. Riding buses I don't like when there are crowds of school kids making it sound like they're not talking about me when they ARE. + repeating what they say when right up close...
Crowds of people do my head in bigtime. People talking. Even thinking.
Or breathing. Or having faces. Putting things up to face. Eating. Food prog. on TV promted that little baby.
If this doesn't get better I know what it's going to be called. SCHIZOPHRENIA.
BUT ~ and there's a big but ~ if schizophrenia is what it takes to cope being in this shitty world, I'll take that before your nail-gnawing idea of reality, any day.
If you're wondering what I have in mind when I say evil in the world.
And this, the crux of the problem, is what I cannot get my head around: EVIL.
Think Africa. Think Rwanda. Think of a certain event in a certain African country where a coach load of (relatively) rich people was held up. The robbers' idea of what to do in such a robbery was to force at gunpoint every passenger to lie in the road (after raping/abusing/etc) and to force (also at gunpoint) the coach driver to run over these people repeatedly. Whether anybody survived I do not know. Frankly, I would prefer not.
So if you wanna know what I would do now, I would go to Africa to a diseased war zone and find some children, who might well be lacking one or both parents, one or both arms/other limbs, their virginity (at 8) and so on). And if it was a little boy I would be willing to play football with him, even though I don't particularly like soccer (more to do with stereotyping than the actual game, I discovered, years later) and am actually quite good at it. For a girl, supposing she wanted someone to do this, providing somebody divided the hair into squares I would sit there and braid or plait her hair for her. This I can do. It's to do with 3 strands and then over over over (including under).
I'm not claiming to be highly original in the "what to do with abused children whose language you can't understand" stakes, but I'm sure somebody understands.
The best thing you can do to a lot of people in or after a lot of cirumstances is Be Kind. And try to be understanding. And patient. Even if it hurts. And try to give more than you are ever willing to recieve back.
Somehow, if you are willing to do this, it can make everything All Right.

** Yes you can play football (soccer-type) with artificial limbs. Otherwise make it table soccer**

Doctor

THE PSYCH DOCTOR APPTOINTMENT has been done. I think I got out of hospital by a narrow margin. He asked me if I wanted to go in. I said I had a toothbrush on me, nothing else was fixed, ready. Windows could have been wide open for all I knew or cared.
Well I rabbitted on. Feeling anxious and then trying to cure the anxiety by pacing might not have helped. He asked is this me? I hope that question didn't get me too confused. I said yeah. Then asked who I was meant to be then (after room being barged into by script-wielding worker). Then tried not to get real upset about a certain person I know who supposedly hits the drs for a schiz sign-off when he's actually well. 'Because then there's me saddled with all this shit not being listened to, when I intermittently tried to be, not knowing what's going on or what to do.
I am supposed to "take care" of myself. I don't think this dr was being as half-arsed as that might sound. He seems real cautious and intelligent even as shrinks go. And wisse. And I trust him, even as shrinks go. The other main one there I do not trust. Mind Game Playing is the absolute last thing I need.
No diagnosis. He did mention the all time pits NASTY WORD 8888888 fill in the stars with more letters.
Everything is doing my head in. I have to change clinics. Same staff. Old clinic. He says he thinks I am not myself. He also said he thought I'd been real helpful.
That's all I can do is, 1. try and explain; 2. leave matter in professionals' hands; 3. try not to think about. Forget worry. Even think.
No antithinking pills were offered. No pills. Did ask about ones I'd had complete with names. Antipsychotics. Marvellous. Gotta run. Got to close eyes. Go to bed. Something.

Psycho Terror!

HERE'S MY IMPRESSION of what a Psycho Dr Really Is And Does...
Sorry for the ambiguous picture. The others I looked up REALLY DID MY HEAD IN.I seem to have got distinctly thin-skinned recently.

O man. How did I get here (I ponder, not!)
Too confused for too much pondering, me!

CAVE IN (scrupulously avoided, with heroin-like horror going anywhere near any "mental" write up since declared self (or world) mental): Ended up manically checking diagnostic criteria in order to cut short "manic episode" ideas by a good day or two. (Because I didn't get hospitalized after 3 days but before 7 and... o getting confused. Basically it's gotta last 3 days then you get hospitalized, or at least 7 days and to clear it all up I'm not at all sure I've... been so badly out of my right mind for that much more than a week at most. Bloody psycho dcotors. Forcing me to second guess myself!! Hate 'em. Hate it (thinking about self). Obviously love spouting off crap on blog as y'all see. But not really into serious self-analysis. Or serious anything.

Re Psycho Doc Situations: I know I shouldn't talk like that, but the way I see it, it's my job to be severely Confused and/or Desperate; theirs to shove me away, or lock me up and never let out; or mistreat (severely); or prescribe dangerous medication to (would rather have a bit of that fun back than risk going near Physical Hospital, partly because I've seen what happens to people in need of both physical and psychiatric attention, but deemed on the psych side. Nutnut nurses don't know HOW to care.

O no no no no no. What you will have read, if you didn't skip right down here, will be an edited version that tries to clarify mud basically. So if anybody gets a Clear Idea of anything: I Don't.

I am v fed up and annoyed. And was surprised that last night, when I thought I was OK but just tired, annoyed, avoiding people, I should kind of go off rocker in car. "Mental health person" in post below is kind of friend of friend type person I came to by accident yesterday night and wasn't expecting to be there. Otherwise makes it look like this wonderful supportive network is all there when I need it when actually it barely is. I thought it wasn't there at all, that I had no friends. Then I realized (by having to explain away bad behaviour, to put it bluntly) that I did.

I just had to bang out some more crap as I'm terrified of being sectioned under the nasty mental health act (don't think even the lawyers know what year ~ some time in the dark ages). I don't think I'm going anywhere. Unless I end up being "hostile" to a dr. (Ie going off on one a step too far.) Bitter experience has shown me that these people ... are just annoying people, like most people. That's why I don't trust them.

Well I'm sure this has been a rivetting read. Gone way past wondering whether anything might interest anyone. Too tired, jaded, uncared-for/uncaring/unUN for that.

Is it Distinctly Unwise to just click Post and run off? When blog is only meant to be non-fascinating stream of consciousness?

IN A NUTSHELL: I JUST HOPE I SLEEP.

As no sleep means ragged and insomniac-feeling at best, likely to go off like a dingbats fire-alarm from hell at worst.

Please please please stay calm. I need to come across as calm. (Don't care what ACTUALlY AM, long as it appears Calm). Hopefully to make confused account of what supposedly Brings Me Here utter lies. Because what things seem and what they are are precisely the same thing. So if I'm seen to have concocted a story you'd have to be utterly cracko to come in and tell to a psycho doc ~ then I'm lying. When actually I just did a real nice job of keeping still and Behaving. And not being inappropriate.

I used to think I was dead grown up, in some little ways. I wouldn't be presumptuous enough to think I was anything good at all now.

Akh!! I'm off. Hope this has captured some icy terror in face of Dingbats Doc stuff. Then when I'm 84 and have a Printed Copy (bc the internet won't exist then) I can have a real good laugh. If I ever live till 84 and if I am actually able to laugh at that age. I wouldn't put anything past myself now. True lack, utter lack of any sense of self worth. I mean how would you feel if you knew you had got to a pretty short space from being sectioned, just 5 days ago?

Well I'm fully intending to come home after this appointment. Sorry for going on. I mean if you wanted something really boring I should have committed to internet the thought process that went on after I realized I might actually get diagnosed Schizophrenic. That was a good one!! Excepting Jumpf Off Bridge crap (see below: thought had missed methadone chemist (well what other way is there of dealing with a situation like that??)) that was the last time I seriously had a nasty urge to do myself in. This morning.

O that sounds sad. Ho-hum. Well I STOPPED HEROIN didn't I. Anyone having a real good laugh at this, look in the mirror and ask yourself, what's your poison? Or are you just poisonous??
Hope y'all realize this is only meant to be stream of consciousness and not to be picked over for hidden meaning. Otherwise I would never post, never cease second guessing myself... and NEVER SLEEP!!

PS just looked all this crap over after posting. no i didn't "edit" anything. just kind of randomly added chaos to confusion.

pps sorry i probably should/said i would check emails but if i get through that needle's eye at this hour i truly never will SLEEP

How did I get here

ALTERNATIVE TITLE WAS: ALL OVER PLACE am I supposed to fulfill Gledwood Going Mad Entertainment Quotient?

Met mental health person last night. Who I know. For various reasons wasn't sure. First impressions (not to be nasty, more as in it takes one to know one) proved correct. Sufferer.

Ended up having high old time in car. No drugs. Person said some helpful things.

Things I have been asked this week include Am I piping? No. Though feel as if am/have been full-on £1000s per week ~ v recently). Do not commit suicide. (Why does anyone think I will do that?) etc etc. Worker has been banging on about how much I drink, in nicest possible way. Turning up alcohol-reeking at emergency centre psych thing will lead to a Confused Picture, so I am told.

Also got advised to "watch television".

Got up around 9am. It took me till past one pm to get self, clothes, money, keys, shoes, bags, detergent, empty bottle for drink (not drunk, had only had half can by midday and that left over from last night) blah blah in correct place which is nearly 5 mins from own. Majorstretch of ... ability to do something. Whatever. Probably everybody in there thought I was on drugs as disgorging clothes from huge bags into a machine and attaining correct money in right change which laundrette assistant kindly sorted for me in piles.... Am I turning into grade A cabbage?

I only post so late because getting self, computer and dongle together, computer running, internet on and me posting took till 1940 hrs.

Clothes got both clean and dry. Had gone well past stressing by this time (probably would have run down road screaming/been arrested/sectioned through obviously going off head in public by this time. This is why I say I have to Avoid Stress and basically be Sick (frankly Boring person... akh.) No insult to anyone who might be sick. Because if I don't people think I'm high on something ~ badly ~ or I just go off/otherwise do not cope.

Where was I? No glasses. Relying on blur/touchtype occasional peer at screen. I hate wearing glasses, they get tangled in everything. Lost. Whatever, wherever. Also too vein though nothing to be vein about any longer. Look like old spectre of.... adjectivalness.

Anyway after this got home. Clothes intact. Still in bags. Dry but all over place, creased probably. Long as they're not going black any more, that's OK with me.

So exhausted I slept for so many hours had to entertain Chuck Self off Bridge type fantasies as knew methadone chemist actually open but it was really late, late enough for it to feel chemist should not be open. Was right to bring passport. How did I find this? Don't ask. Yeah I got me, ID, open methadone place. Person dishing out who doesn't know me (hence ID, methadone being full-on drug as far as govt concerned. Wont' get into fact that it is no true substitute for nearly any heroin addict here/now.

I think I know I am crazed because only a truly crazy or desperate person could ever 1. stop taking heroin (even with methadone) 2. not crave heroin at all. (only late into suicide-ideation thing did I realize actually could easily Hold Self by going to old drugs dealers for Heroin which by all accounts isn't as bad as it used to be. (Is this true? No idea.)

Heroin spoons/etc (everywhere) make me vaguely sick with ... what do you call it when you seriously go off something?

Is any of this actually real? Doesn't seem so/as if it ever could be so. Me Heroin Together + How Did I Get Here. Whatastupidquestion. Where is "here"? Quite pertinent question.

Must go. BTW still not really up to vast internet explorations. Am trying. Please no pressure. Can't do it.

Gotta go.

PS got a real entertainment comment yesterday calling me nutter, saying ought to be in mental unit. Quickly adding don't mean to hurt feelings. That's the same sense of humour that makes me make Valerie from Aus so off her rocker.

Nutnut dr tomorrow. Did I say that?

Back

(BELLS AND WHISTLES OFF.)

While I would be the last person to say I wasn't psycho any more, I don't feel like I did. I thought "normal" would be boring and would rather have gone back up high. Wherever it was I went. Left, right, which direction I don't know. Not straight up. Not down. I did go down. Right down. Felt like I was paying for the worst crime, but I didn't even know what it was. All I could see, when I closed my eyes, was a black shroud closing against me. With film of the most vile things going in the background.
I curled into a ball and tried to Heal.
That is all I could do. So I am hoping that was it. Up. Down. Left. Right. Over. Not out. I hope.
The clinic are getting me a dr's appointment. How grandiose I must have been, to use a psych-sounding word, to imagine I could ring up and get one that same day!
You can do that, but you're basically asking directly for admission to hospital and I don't want to go there.
So I am still at home.
I have got myself in a position now where I absolutely have to take it easy. If I don't, I might really set myself off on one.
E.g. someone tried to give some friendly advice. I probably took it the wrong way and went way over the top. Yelling. Crying. The whole shebang. The local shop where I get alcohol basically, however many times a day (they know how much I drink because it's normally the same shop and single cans. They're open 24 hours, so no stocking up for me. What I buy, I drink, quickly.
And I don't want to be an alcoholic, so I suppose I have to watch that one too.
... the local shop now think I'm a nutter as well as a junkie alcoholic. O thanks a lot.
I am still off the nasty heroin.
Normally a text message offering the "best dark" (ie brown heroin) would have sent me right there. After quizzing the dealer closely that it actually WAS the best. All the ones who knew me knew one thing that pissed me right off was crap B, which is why I ended up testing it for people. Which is hard to get out of, when it's free. That's what that two free samples was about. The phone was going on and on, basically the man wanting marks out of ten on each but I was so out of it basically I lost both. And didn't care. As I said, I had got to the point of Losing Interest in heroin.
Which I cannot explain. Except to say (and I disagree with NA here, because I never saw all drugs as the same and nothing could replace my heroin. I would never in a million years take e.g. methadone and valium and say it had in any way compensated for No Heroin. Nothing ever came close to Heroin. It was all I was interested in. I relied on it to sleep, to get up, to eat, to do anything, to deal with anything. An extra bodily function, and an expensive one at that.
I am not on Valium by the way, that's just hypothetical. I'm only on methadone and a bit of drink. (Yes, still drinking away!)
The drugs I have given up: ecstasy, cannabis, lsd, mushrooms, ketamine, speed, crack and coke etc etc ~ none of these ever tempt me. Crack came closest, because it is used on the same scene as, and comes from the same dealers as heroin. But those others, I wouldn't even know where to get them now and though I bang on about ecstasy if you gave me a couple of good pills now and a ticket for a new year's eve party, I can assure you I would still have the pills and ticket intact on the date. And I probably wouldn't go. No temptation.
So if heroin has gone in one of those boxes, neatly lined up with other drugs' names on, I'm not too worried. Speed, for example: never in a million years. Cocaine powder: didn't understand what all the fuss was about. I actually found it an uncontrollable high, harder than crack to deal with and I didn't like the way it climbed and climbed after not seeming to work for ages. I'm talking half an hour of line-sniffing ages. Then BANG! UP!!!! No thanks. Acid: no. etc etc etc. I won't bang on and on.
I'm really wary of ever saying Past Heroin For Good because I know other people have so much trouble, just as I did when I was on on on on on it. Bigtime. So if I'm sounding all smug and prissy to someone out there, take it from me: 10 years lost to a needle, as head over heels addicted as it is humanly possible to be, no question. Even the other junkies told me I had it bad.
Whatever happened over the last few days? That must qualify as my most lost weekend ever. Certainly it got lost without drugs... how can that be possible even?
My memories are like photos scattered all over the floor. Absolute whirl. If it had got any worse I genuinely would not have known what I was doing. As it was, I didn't know what was going on part?/or all? of the time. I've gone well past desperately seeking labels and in a way don't want one. Being able to cope. Properly. Would be nice.
Better leave it there. Thanks for the messages. I cannot be blogging or internetting all the time; I don't wanna go off on one again. So I might not be able to see anyone or answer any email till tomorrow earliest.
OK laters

1604: sorry to add a negative ps still not ok. why do i keep kidding myself i'm fine, i'm not
basic truth. not ok. if that sounds like someone being genuinely crap, just look at how out of it i was over the weekend and ask yourself whether you could make it the entire length of a street with people spitting and swearing at you without causing some serious trouble?
all i could do was convince myself that it was NOT REAL, therefore, if anybody did actually slag me off on the street, i honestly haven't a clue. because i do not know what was or was not real and i still don't feel ok. i feel fragile as an ice sculpture. hence the crap illustration

DON’T KNOW

It is 4am. Still not sleeping. Tomorrow/later today I see a dr. No idea what is going to happen. 50:50 hospital or not.

Thanks to everyone who has sent messages of support. I am in no state to answer comments or emails.

Shout to Anna Grace in Wisconsin, USA, who knows more than anyone I know what "this" means.

Hi to everyone else. If I start naming names I will never stop.

Shop closed. Over and out. (For now.)

Slept!

WOW I SLEPT! For far fewer hours than it felt like, it has to be said. I thought it was evening when I woke up. It was midday. I didn't sleep till long, long into the night past 5 or 6 am. Cannot remember when. Then I slept!!

Without pills, which I didn't really want. Or glugging excess methadone (not really a temptation). Or drinking. I did "imbibe" 2 White Stars last night. To prove what was going on was not DTs.

To even think you have DTs you must be pretty far-gone.

Last night, when I was still going batshytcrazy, the POLICE were everywhere. I have no idea what happened. They were parked up all over the place. Wherever I looked some lady police officer in fluoro jacket seemed to be in the car. One particularly attractive one proved to be a parking meter. Ho hum. I was not in an "ordinary" state of mind.

The lights looked absolutely amazing. Then 2 police cars, blue flashers full on. Wow!! That was a moment!!

Then there were police everywhere, following me. Before that, my house, road, and all the shops were full of obvious crack dealers. Talking their horrible way they talk. And just being horrible people I want to avoid forever. Because i hate crack.

I am not trying to say people were serving up all over the place. Just these off duty bastards. Making piles of cash out of other people's misery. Spending the money in my local shop!!

Haven't a clue what was or was not real. That out of it. At one point my room seemed full of radios left on each babbling some different speech or tune. Then I started hearing voices speaking Spanish and Chinese. Now that has to be loony tunes.

I don't know what the hell has happened, and I don't feel I have fully come down. (Don't want to. Who wants normality anyhow??)

But I did sleep. And I am a bit less destructible, disinhibited... still barely any appetite. At all. Not hallucinating smoke and bubbles. Everywhere. This the baseline. Crazy stuff on top. Saw the Northern Lights in candy colors in my own house!! How amazing is that!! All free of charge of course. No drugs.

I did crave a go on the heroin. For about 0.2 seconds. Then I remembered how crap heroin actually is. First time I properly tried it all I could think was "is THIS what all the fuss is about!!" Marianne Faithfull put it best: "Big waste of time."

So there we go. Don't want that any more. Always kind of knew it was an expensive Chemical Lie. As people off it, especially people who had never been on, seemed far happier and more contented than any addict I had ever met, especially the ones still using.

No amount of heroin, no matter how good (and I know I wasn't being ripped off: nearly always disappointed with intros to other people's dealers) even when I was nearly unconscious, still wasn't good enough enough enough enough. Never ever enough.

Thank God all that is Over.

It actually feels Over. Over. Done with. Gone.

THANK GOD!!

PS thanks mental health person. Did get what you said. Was in a slightly "distractable" state. Couldn't get head round charging a mobile phine, putting key in lock, signing into internet stuff. So was only randomly able to achieve anything at all. How I posted I have no idea!

PPS 2303hrs just found this discussion on my favourite cheapie drink White Cider. (White Star #1 choice; White Ace #2 choice. White Ace doesn't taste quite as nice in my book. If you're foreign, get out of your head any apply cultured drink country pub fantasy. This is dirt cheap alcohol. Like liquid brillo pads. With bubbles.
Really nice with tropical fruit juice though. Addictively so!!
Not bad on its own when you get used. I use a mixer to be a bit responsible and make it less alcoholic. As do not WANT to be an alcoholic.

PPPS read this for a lurid depiction of Xanax/etc Valium/benzo withdrawals. In America. Sadistic Doctors in a rehab clinic?? Surely not!!

So another night

SO ANOTHER NIGHT WITH NO SLEEP. Just found out a good one. The more pacing around I do, the higher I feel. Really brings me up. So no more lying in bed knowing I won't fucking sleep for me!! Ukh. Still in hallucinatory state if that is the expression. Psychiatrists and their mumbojumbo can all go to hell. When I get to see one, which I will ensure hapens Monday I will give the fucker the hardest time possible. In fact the way I feel I might actually top meself before I get in there.
O my mind my head is just racing around and will not stop. Is this sanity??
The bullshit the idiot at the nuthouse spouted at me was true gobshite. That £5 crack could in any way be responsible for this. Message for other lost mental health fuckers: get real. If people have symptoms PREDATING drug use by decades, going back to childhood (depression) and otherness (20s) that was technically after I'd tried a lot of things but if that makes me undiagnosable then so is about another 50% of the population my age.
At my worst I was feeling so fucking desperate I will not go into detail. It will only upset people \i care about. Just fucking crazy shit. Out of my brains. Stuff that gets people in the papers. Ukh. How can that even cross my mind.
And why did people tell me about being horribly sexually abused? As children and adults (raped/etc). All this stuff is stuck in my head and oozing out. Not good.
Dont go t taking this rant too literally i'm just sleep deprived. how on earth it is possible to feel so good/bad at the same time i do not understand but i do ho ho ho.
free father xmas drugs. i'm demanding a piss test on monday. that i do myself. they can do what they like with their bit. drink it if they like. probably would the perverts.
fucking idiot mental health drug workers why do i even have to think about such a corrupt system? that gives no choice and cares not one jot for how people actually feel.
i have gone past wanting heroin. but lots of people haven't. so give them heroin. put an end to all the crazy madness right now. just shut up and do it. and make it easy to get on and off. don't give it to a tiny select few or they'll never wanna come off it, because they will think they will never get it back.
just use some basic common sense for once and maybe actually listen to what someone who has been there has to say instead of relying on frankly unsympathetic/cruel observations from 1940s medical books.
ok rant over. had to rant about something. spinning in every direciton possible. free drugs. i'm convinced i got somehow spiked with crack now fucking high has a kite!!! for free!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

don't get too envious you crazy fuckers out there. i was seriously suicidal not much longer than 2 hours ago

look i gotta go. know i probably shouldn't post this but what the fuck
i'm ok and don't worry about me.
no heroin!
no heroin!
never planning on ever taking it again

hey i just ate something for the 1st time in God knows how long. was seriously starting to feel nauseated from lack of food, which made me not want to eat. and there was black hair growing out the side of the can, i ate it cold out the can, tinned soup. not in mood for cooking of any kind. my eyes hurt
i don't feel as bad as i did at the worst of it maybe i am finally coming down
all i want to do is sleep, i have not slept AT ALL since ... whenever it was

Hot News

Valerie my Australian non-pregnant non-bigtime heroin dealer (so she claims, now she got busted with 700 keys) non-friend has this to say from prison in Sydney. Got hauled however many 100 miles out of her own home by "crooked customs" (as she calls them) that woman calls everyone a crook bar herself!!

Here's her latest:

Valerie said...
Well dearie, it's me again from PRISON in Sydney. Fucking police. 700kgs of Finest Double UO Global China White. Seized!! And they are trying to pin it on ME!!
If you're wondering how I'm emailing this from prison, let me tell you when you have the funds we have, even though we pay fucking monstrous bills to get them washed as legit ~ anything is possible. I am thoroughly stoned off my box in here. They don't call me China White Queen for nothing. I paid off the bitch in charge of previous supplies. Now the neat shit's coming in. Bitches ODing left, right and centre!!
Well this is going to sort itself out in some costly way, I feel the loss of a 17 carat blue diamond coming on. Thank fuck we have those 44 keys stashed in the old back garden! O fuck did I really say that. Off me tits on crack, babe. Don't know what I'm really saying. Crack city in here tonight, baby!! Mama's home!!!!
Those bitch-girls love me in here. I'm their smack-mammy they never had. Oh they fucking love me gorgeous and you wanna take a look at me no make up shit light after starting out at that jailhouse/brothel/whatever the fuck I don't WANT to remember in Pnom Pen in 1956 would you believe!! That makes me quite successful in my own eyes.
Those peasants would be out of a job and growing useless wheat/corn/barley/crap if it weren't for me!!
Well I gotta go. Screws on me case for smoking cigar behind govenor's desk, hogging computer for too long. Got so much news to spill, just wait for my next one. I'll give the lowdown on what bitch is doing what to whom, if you want it. O shit gotta go. FUCKING SCREWS

vv v