Margaret Thatcher: After the Funeral

I WATCHED Margaret Thatcher's funeral live across the news channels. Interestingly CNBC didn't carry it, neither did Russia Today ~ but CCTV, the Chinese news channel had some pretty good commentary. In the end I switched off BBC World in favour of France 24 in English where the studio guests made some very insightful comments. (I did try the French version, which you can get on Hotbird but they were babbling on about Reagan's White House more than her so I switched over...)

Wasn't (granddaughter) Amanda Thatcher's Bible reading (Ephesians 6: 10-18) impressive?

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

I wish I could read like that to a group of international VIPs and a television audience numbering tens or hundreds of millions and remain so composed.

So typical of me to make some ridiculous statement and not explain it. "I love a good death" doesn't mean I'm glad Mrs Thatcher is dead, but that I like it the TV and press tributes to her life. I'm still very undecided about what to think about the woman. I was seven years old when she got into power, so during my teenage years for as far back as I could remember there had been Mrs Thatcher and the Queen and it felt like it was going to be that way for always.

I do think Margaret Thatcher was a great politician ~ but more important than this she was a truly great stateswoman who defended British interests abroad. Many foreigners, who didn't have to live with the effects of her domestic policies, looked on her with admiration. She was so obviously superior to her international counterparts (especially Ronald Reagan). She DID "get Britain working" ~ but also forced millions into long-term unemployment. She started hacking into the welfare state. Suddenly you had to pay for eyetests, dentistry and prescriptions (although you pay a flat-rate prescription charge (currently £7.20 ($10.99) ~ not the retail price of the drugs)). Then there was the vastly unpopular poll tax, replaced by the even more unfair council tax (the poll tax to fund local goverment was levied per person; with the council tax you are "jointly and severally liable" meaning if you share an address with fly-by-night types you are liable to get hammered for their council tax as well!)

There are many good politicians and great ones who make lousy statesmen (and women). Example: former (Labour) health secretary Patricia Hewitt, who was so obviously oily and slippery and yet totally rivetting to watch. I remember the time the BBC were interviewing her when her only response to a sticky question was how insulted hardworking doctors would be to hear such an impertinent enquiry. I thought she made a cheap shot there and I wasn't the only one to be totally unimpressed by her interview performance (which was usually fascinatingly flawless) or her lousy performance in high office.

Then of course there's Tony Blair. Amazingly charismatic at the beginning of his reign. And still able to be (apparently) disarmingly frank at the end of it. He gave every impression of being George Bush's lapdog and leading Britain into a war with Iraq that nobody I knew (and hardly anyone across the country) actually wanted. Or a war in Afghanistan that nobody understood. As of 2010 we were supposed to have lavished £20,000,000,000 ($30,492,453,118) on these escapades. And now the government's complaining it's running out of money!

Back to Margaret Thatcher: one of her greatest and most controversial legecies was that she allowed millions of people to buy their council houses and flats. Which I think would be a brilliant idea ~ if only local authorities had been required to replace all accommodation sold with new housing stock. Now we're in a situation where demand massively outstrips supply for public housing. The new Conservative-Liberal coalition are introducing a £14 ($21.34) a week "bedroom tax" where parents of grown-up children will be forced to pay extra for the now-empty bedroom. Which will undoubtedly cause a massive population cascade from 2 and 3-bed properties into single-bedroom flats. Leaving almost nothing left for vulnerable single people who would otherwise be in emergency accommodation. Or just sleeping on the streets. (Or in squats, like I used to do.) I was in temporary accommodation for about eight years before I finally got housed (and how that happened I have no idea. There was a process called "bidding", which I was told happened automatically, though you could somehow express an interest in particular properties. Anyway I got one I really like so I'm happy.

Other news about me: I'm still learning Spanish. Amazingly. I watch a Spanish-language Iranian TV channel on Hotbird called Hispan-TV. They do some quite good (overdubbed) dramas. I also get direct feeds from South America, eg Argentian president Cristina Elisabet Fernández de Kirchner's address to the nation. If I were in power I'd refuse interviews and do presidential-style videos too.

After the Spanish Linguaphone has been done and dusted (I'm still only on lesson 18 of 30) I would like to pick up some Italian too. But I'm terrified of getting the two languages mixed up. Just about every Spanish verb form (and there are loads of very complicated ones) seems to have its parallel in Italian (essentially the same thing, just spelled differently) and I know that if I don't really force Spanish grammar to seep into my very bones and my soul I'm just going to get hopelessly confused and not actually speak anything at all. While I only get four TV channels in Spanish, I get over 150 in Italian, including Rai 1, 2 i 3 i QVC Italia etc. Which means ample opportunity to practise. In my experience, apart from the close study of grammar, the major predictor of success in foreign language acquisition is PRACTICE. If you don't use it you'll lose it. So when I'm not tuned into Ethopian folk music all night I let them babble Spanish at me while I sleep. Somehow my befuddled brains dub this over into strangely mangled English. Which means I can't speak Spanish very well (because nothing like that happens with German or French telly). You see why I wanted Hotbird now? 1300 TV channels cannot be wrong!

Well I've gotta go. Binky is languishing in the mental hospital. For the FIFTH time in less than 12 months. And I have to bring cigarettes, scented candles, hair mousse etc etc etc etc etc before she flips her lid...

SO IN SUMMARY. YES MARGARET THATCHER WAS WONDERFUL (APART FROM MOST OF HER POLITCIES...)

VIDEO: Amanda Thatcher's reading at her grandmother's funeral...

(by the way, Amanda is only 19; "we are a grandmother" was her older brother Michael...)

Please Let Me Stop Heroin For The New Year

NOBODY who has followed this blog for a long time will get at all excited about this, as the number of times I have tried and ***FAILED*** to kick the habit, even with the help of methadone, is too many to remember!

Over the past week or two I haven't used very much gear at all. I was hypomanic, my mood was high. When I feel like that I don't NEED that nasty stuff!

I found myself using it the last couple of days purely because I felt so horrible. A lot of this horribleness might be incipient depression, which often manifests physically. I have this pervasive feeling of physical discomfort and dysphoria ~ it's the type of feeling I couldn't describe to a doctor, because it isn't distinctive enough, and I have no "symptoms". I have just been feeling negative, tired and crappy. And the sunlight streaming into the top deck of the bus yesterday morning was downright painful. I think it's no coincidence that when I feel "high" and manic, lights make me feel very high indeed. So the mood's changing polarity and so do my reactions to things. I bought more heroin late last night and that made me high again. It's as if the gear brings out the tiny bit of hypomanic high left in me. (A speedy high, so I couldn't sleep. Not ordinary heroin-induced drowsiness at all.) (I was still feeling very slightly excited yesterday morning, despite feeling depressed: all these symptoms run on separate cycles.) Anyway I don't know where I'm going now. I'm hoping that maybe I was just going to feel ill for a couple of days, that the illness will pass and so will the "need" for heroin.

I can't believe I'm back to using gear again for self-medication. Self-medicating is the hardest habit to kick. I'm in a situation where methadone is NOT helping like it should. Feeling cold and physically and mentally uncomfortable on methadone but not heroin is a bad thing. I WANT the methadone to work for me, but it just does not work the way the clinic believe it "should" do.

If I'm still having this problem in the new year I'm going to insist they change the methadone to some other drug. My worker said they CAN give morphine XR pills in rare cases where methadone isn't tolerated. Well I'm not tolerating it. (Also methadone seems to burn as it goes down ~ which is seriously not nice.)

Sorry if this is an unfocused post. IF ONLY I could dump that brown shit ~ yet again ~ but this time for good. Wish me luck. Because I think I'll need it  ... Or better still, pray to God for a miracle...

 "With God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:26.)

Madonna Reads from the Bible

THESE VERSES ARE FROM REVELATION. The first reading is from Revelation 2, the letter from Jesus Christ to the Seven Churches. The reference to the Beast rising from the sea with the blasphemous name upon his head comes from Revelation 13. She then goes on to read from Revelation 21, about the new heaven and the new earth (bring it on!)

The New Heaven and the New Earth
1	And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.
2	And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
3	And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
4	And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
5	¶ And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
6	And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
7	He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

Strange that Madonna should be reading such scriptures, don't you think?

"The Beast Within", was originally a remix of her scandalous single "Justify My Love"... notorious for its near-pornographic video...

(But no pornography here:~~~~~~~)

MADONNA: THE BEAST WITHIN

The Long Road To Recovery

AT LAST I had a proper appointment down the druggieclinic where I have a new worker named Fanny. I gave a clear "suck it and see" style oral drug screen and my methadone at long long last goes down to 25mg per day. I am pleased as punch. Nothing depresses me more than a flat methadone dose with no end in sight. If methadone is there to make me feel "normal" (whoever told Ann Widdecombe MP  it was a "state-sponsored high" was barking up the wrong tree entirely. Almost without exception, addicts on methadone continue using herin on top at every oppotunity for years on end. They tend to do that because methadone is NOT making them high at all! It takes an exceptoinal quantity of willpower to give up heroin, even with the dubious "assistance" of methadone.)

... Anyway, as I was saying, if you're going to feel "normal" on methadone, you might as well reduce the dose and eventually live your "normality" without the need for any chemical crutches ~ prescribed or otherwise. I'm fed up of having an elevated tolerance to opiates so that, even on about 35mg of methadone, as I would have been then, the Co-dydramol the hospital gave me for those broken fingers was rendered ineffectual. 10mg dihydrocodeine is equivalent to just 1mg methadone. Of course the 500mg paracetamol (acetaminophen) in those pills still works. So I might as well have bought myself a pot of paracetamol and saved the dihydrocodeine for someone who really would have benefitted from it.

I don't want to have to ask permission ~ and give at least a fortnight's notice to the methadone clinic ~ just to visit my Dad's side of the family, who I grew up with, yet haven't seen in about eight years. Last time I mooted that idea I was told I'd only get four or five days' prescription in advance and then have to pick up the remainder from a local pharmacy in a gossipy Welsh village. No way!

I'm still a drug addict as long as I'm on methadone. I still sweat far too heavily ~ even worse than I did on heroin. The hot summers I used so much to enjoy in childhood are nowadays a slow torture with me perspiring heavily, despite having taken multiple layers of clothing off.

I turned up (late) at an NA meeting last night and had to squeeze into a packed-out, fusty room in pitch darkness. I felt too sweaty, dirty and paranoid to stay long and so left early, telling myself I'd shower for longer before next time ~ and make sure I had fresher clothes on.

Narcotics Anonymous take the view I do, that you're not truly "clean" until you're off all drugs, including drink, and are no longer dependent on methadone. NA is the only place I know to meet clean friends and God knows I need some. I've decided to get a sponsor, work all twelve steps and follow the programme for at least a year, just as soon as I'm finally OFF the methadone.

With NA you only live "just for today" ~ which echoes Jesus Christ's declaration that "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Matthew 6:34).

NA advise that newcomers attend ninety meetings in the first ninety days. Again there's little point putting in this level of commitment until I'm totally off  the methadone and able to engage with the programme 100%.

An alternative twelve-step programme that has piqued my interest is Dual Recovery Anonymous ~ DRA. They are oriented towards recovery for drug addicts with psychiatric issues of any type. Most of their meetings are in Central London, so I haven't been yet. But I'm really looking forward to checking DRA out.

Whether I end up joining NA, DRA or both, finding the right sponsor is going to prove a tall order. Your sponsor is like a teacher, someone who guides you through the programme, somebody to turn to in times of trouble or confusion ~ and you supposedly have a lot of them in your first year. In effect, they're a kind of mentor.

I found an NA friend who said he would sponsor me more than five years back, but I wasn't ready to clean up; he wasn't ready to sponsor anybody. Yet neither of us knew this until we were put to the test. It ended up with him dropping out of our local meetings just to avoid me. And me continuing to use heroin and crack and white cyder just as before. My only progress since then has been to knock the crack on the head, cut the heroin back from nearly every day to once every week or two, to cut my drinking to less than a third of what it once was. I'm now a methadone addict, not a heroin addict, and my new prescription is less than a fifth of what it was less than a year ago!

So I'm on the way out. I'm going so slowly, slowly, it drives me crazy whenever I think about it. But slow and steady is the only approach that's going to work for me. By the first week of June, I'll be down to just 20mg per day. I try not to think about any of this too much. I just keep my eyes on the goal. The very idea of being Clean is faintly terrifying for me because it's unchartered territory. My whole life yawning ahead of me, empty and unfulfilled. I could do anything: yet what shall I do? I want to be off the methadone and want to be off all psychiatric drugs too. Then at last I shall know how I really feel. Most long-term addicts say they feel worse in the first year off methadone than they did on it. But most long-term addicts are not bipolar. One upside to my moods is that they've often swung contrary to circumstance. I'm hoping my hard-won Cleanliness if ever, however I attain it, might spark in me a lot more energy than I currently have, along with a better mood.

I don't want to be manic, I want to be happy. I'm yet to meet a happy drug addict. Getting off all drugs is the only thing I can see to do that will truly give me a chance.

And though I'm determined not to fall into a pit of brooding, I now see clearly that dabbling with heroin was the single biggest wrong move of my life. In fact, it's the only big mistake I've ever made. I've lost twelve years to that crap and I'm not willing to lose a single day more.



God grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
The Courage to change the things I can,
And the Wisdom to know the difference ...














******* 
And now for a musical break...

OT QUARTET: HOLD THAT SUCKER DOWN
BUILDS LIKE A SKYSCRAPER MIX +7%
Speedier version of the track I posted yesterday...

 MADONNA: POWER OF GOODBYEMJ's VOID MIXThe Power of Madonna!