HEROIN IS A DRUG TO MAKE THE WORLD GO AWAY

THIS IS A BLOG ABOUT A LIFE WITHOUT HEROIN



Monday 28 January 2013

Random things + reply to Anonymous

DOES THE LAST POST SOUND COMPLETELY miserable? I don't know. Maybe I should take the nut-nut pills again. I just don't like them, mainly because they are ADDICTIVE. They make me "better" in that my moods are within narrower parameters and I am less paranoid. It does not make me any more motivated to do certain things that seem complex. But then again sometimes I do some of those things anyway. Other times they go undone for months... That's why I'm fretting over moving house. I know what I'm like. Stuff will end up lying around and nothing will be fitted, installed, unpacked, nothing.

Yes anonymous like I said in my answer I agree with you, it is terrible to take state handouts. An American I know who lives here told me, long before I had a fancy label I could blare out as an excuse for my unmannered laziness that in America I would be living under a bridge. Only reason I'm not living under one here (or in a squat) is because the local council were kind enough to house me. The only problem was, by that time I had gone pretty ferral and found adapting back to normal living quite difficult. At one point my life involved a lot of sitting about on pavements asking for money, and using drugs in public toilets and abandoned buildings. One time I overdosed in a shopping centre and only woke up with the attendant banging on the door saying they were closing for the night.

Of course it would be "more civilized" (ok, maybe not more civilized: but cheaper) to shoot junkies and mental patients by firing squad. I'm sure if they made it voluntary, loads would volunteer when feeling low. If you arranged it so the guns went off within 5 minutes of signing the papers, you'd have an excellent clear-up rate.

My friend Binky thinks my going to live in a flat is the worst thing that can possibly happen "as you'll only render it unfit for human inhabitation". Well I'd like the chance to try (not to render it that way, I mean to actually succeed in becoming a human being again). Sometimes I am not sure I actually am human. Maybe I'm an alien impostor. From a sub-intelligent species. Who knows.

As for the drug (singular) I did go back to it. I was trying to cure suicidal depression. The kind of thing where you sit around for hours staring into space, but then perk up and manage to act normal, until the act falters about half an hour in and ... back to staring blankly into walls. (Often I angle myself towards a television in this state, but I'm rarely actually watching it.) This is what happened at Binks's on Saturday. But yesterday I started feeling better. You see, it's all cyclical. That's why I say the firing squad should have little time for mind-changing: if you catch benefits scroungers at the lowest point of the cycle, you'll save the country millions.

My old counsellor once said you can measure the civilization of a people by how they treat their sick. Well that makes Britain very civilized... America a bit less so (what with no NHS).

Methadone is still a drug. I really want to get off that. And I want to get back what I lost: my attention span (still nowhere near as good as it once was); my edge. I was already OFF 'eroin (hadn't taken it in weeks (early 2011)) when I LOST these things. I lost them to mania of the psychotic variety, which tears your thoughts to shreds then whirls them up in the air in a cognitive cyclone. I lost all my money. (OK, the government's money.) Could barely keep it together to look after house keys. (OK, the local council's keys.) Of course the nut doctor told me I should have been in hospital... AFTER the event. My support worker who keeps asking whether I'm into a part time degree doesn't reckon I'm up to looking after a pet! The kind of pets I go for are ones that essentially look after themselves, apart from feeding and drinking. The sort you let out, then they return from their rambles to live perfectly happily in their own little world. A degree on the other hand requires all manner of attention that I have given to nothing for years. I tried Teach Yourself Japanese CDs yet again... but just don't seem to learn anything. When I try reading books I sometimes do get to the end, but with only a hazy idea of what went on between the covers. Fact is actually easier than fiction, for me. So this is the problem. When I give answers on the kinds of forms that assess one's day to day living, my answers sound terrible. I know someone who repeatedly told me to lie and exaggerate. The sad truth is, I didn't need to.

I never claimed to be stupid. I just looked around at "ordinary people" (including ordinary crackheads and junkies) and they seemed to have skills I appeared to have lost. Wasn't my idea to call myself schizo. That one came from a doctor and I had no idea. Yes I heard voices saying "schizophrenia" but I just thought they were having a go. Never actually thought it could be true. [Hearing voices doesn't necessarily mean schizophrenia: clairaudient psychics hear voices; normal bipolar mania can make you hear voices. Crack can make you hear voices. Only mine never made themselves fully manifest until more than a year AFTER I had given it up.] I suppose I should say to Anonymous-type people: as for "schizophrenia" with bipolar, if I were making it up... bloody hell I would pick something a little less complicated. FOUR lists of symptoms to "satisfy". I have met people who said they faked psychosis, but it's always psychosis of the paranoid variety, where a person has some fable in their head that they believe. Mine was more like my mind and attention being shattered into a thousand pieces, seeing through each jointly and severally, all at the same time. Plus extreme swings of high manic energy to complete devastation. Sometimes both moods at once. That's how it felt.


And why the hell do the bastards who run this country make it so difficult to get hand-guns, poisons etc? That Dignitas euthanasia clinic in Switzerland uses 10,000mg of neat barbiturate in orange juice. But why can't I just by 10,000mg sodium amytal from Boots and do it myself? You see, Anonymous you should get on to the government. Make suicide easier. Then you'll get your wish. (The quicker a person can top themself before the impulse fades, the higher a success rate you will have.) I don't actually want to kill myself any more. Last week, some of the time, I did. I don't exactly know why.

O yes and I've been window shopping for furniture. Found quite a nice sofa. 3 seats. Brown. For £62 (about $100). Brown goes really nice against blue walls and I'm painting mine blue.

Have I answered every point here? Please somebody, give me an idea for a post, and I'll post it. Much easier that way. Staring into a white infinity, nothing but my own dolorous thoughts on screen ... I just end up ranting in a faintly ratty way... OK that it I'm off bye.


Illustrated: yellow-capped pygmy parrot; council housing for lovebirds...

5 comments:

Syd said...

Damn--sorry to hear that you got back on H. Really sorry.

GLEDWOOD said...

Hi Syd... I know... terrible. I'm actually starting to feel guilty in a way I never used to. Just want to be rid of this shit FOR GOOD

Anonymous said...

I'm not attacking you, just trying to understand - how come you won't take your prescribed medication because it is addictive, but you went back to heroin?

Syd said...

Just care about you, man. You are intelligent and a great writer. Hope that one of these days will be the last hit for you.

Gledwood said...

ANON: I'm addicted to opiates anyway, that is, even when I don't take heroin I have to take methadone just to be OK. Whereas that quetiapine is starting up a new addiction entirely, which I just don't want or need. I don't even know why I went back to that heroin rubbish it's awful stuff, a complete waste of time. I've decided not to sully my new house with it.

I don't know what to do about quetiapine. It's a confusing issue all round.

SYD: hopefully the last hit was the dregs I took earlier on. I think I'm going to try moving on as the frontier between now and then, my new life.