A Friend in Need (of more booze) is a friend indeed...

BINKY CAME ROUND first thing in the morning hollering and screaming, her voice echoing and clashing all around our housing estate, neighbours coming out asking "what's wrong?" and "WHO did you want?" I was hoping she'd just go away because my house was in a mess and I didn't want her to see it but eventually I let her in just to shut her up (I was going to get drest, wait till she was walking off muttering at the top of her voice and swearing because what kind of a friend was I pretending not to be in ~ and then catch her up saying "O, were you really knocking and making a scene in front of my scandalized neighbours for a full half an hour? I  didn't notice. Anyway I'm going to the shops why don't you come with me?" (to keep her out of my house)). But none of that worked. I asked whether she'd slipped and fallen in a vat of vodka because that's what she reeked of, but she insisted upon having drunken nothing at all (as if). She had just got back from being in casualty (which is what we call the ER over here because ER means Elizabeth Regina (the Queen)). She was in casualty because she took a deliberate pills overdose yesterday but said the drs said the symptoms didn't concur with the amount of tablets she said she'd taken (which were all the "Pams" (stuff ending in -azepam; temazepam, clonazepam, etc). 

But anyway I ended up getting drunken with her and asked whether she thought her way of dealing with her emotions is different to mine. She seems to feel hers so very strongly she doesn't know what to do except follow them right through by acting them out. I pretend mine don't exist so I don't have to feel them. And she said yes, my explication of her feelings was bang-on (but not mine; she's never been me for the day, so how can she possibly know). Then I said I felt dreadful and ashamed of my cruel words on xmas day when we ended up having a multi-phonecall and vicious text message shouting match in the mid-afternoon. To my eternal shame, during this episode I actually ended up saying things I didn't even mean, and KNEW I didn't mean at the time. I know probably a lot of people do that. The type of people who end up on the Jeremy Kyle show. But I superciliously look down on such types and would sneeringly label them as rough and immature (well, if unsympathetically critiquing my own behaviour, I might phrase it this way).

I thoroughly enjoy feeling separated from myself, whereas Binky seems far far far too in touch with herself most of the time, hence the constant trips into psyche wings to be punished for her schizophrenic borderline personality disorder. Oh and then she did start saying what she thought my problem was and I said "well what then?" and she said "schizophrenia!" She said "when you're manic you're not just manic you're more schizophrenic." I don't know where she got any of this from, so I asked, "is there any similarity between me and Penny?" (the girl I met in the nut unit who I asked out but she said no) and Binky said YES! So I said well what then? And gave my impression of Penny, when Penny has been really ill. That is, that she's a bit elevated and excited but much more scattered, scatty and off the wall, kind of like a completely non-joined-up person, as if all in separate bits that might function independently but don't seem to cohere. (Hard to explain Penny any better than that.) And Binky said yes like that. (Penny did seem to be in a very familiar state when I met her, but I couldn't pin down precisely why ~ THEN Penny told the label they'd given her, which just so happens to be exactly the same one as mine. So maybe there IS something behind all this psychiatric bollox after all. I don't know.

So anyway, because we got roaring drunk together today, Binky and I seem to be getting on far better than last year. I took her home and Genoustable the Mauritian support worker (who speaks French as well as a mysterious French creole as well as at least three Indian prakrits. + I think she also speaks fluent Tamil, which is a highly mystical Dravidian langauge from the Indian South with an alphabet that looks like a load of stylized ampersands ("&&&&&&&&") (it actually looks like this: திராவிட மொழிக் குடும்பம் do you see what I mean about the ampersands? I once went to Madras, better known now as Chennai, just to meet the Tamils and found them a peculiar lot (I fell out with the lackey in our guesthouse about a broken teapot lid and am convinced to this day that he poisoned my food). 

So anyway I said "oh Binky's not drunk!" and Genoustable kept saying "how much has Binky drunk?" and "has she eaten anything?" So I microwaved her a frozen pannini. Then Binky kept saying "don't you want any more cans [of cyder]?" and I kept saying "no". (When I drink, I never get into that thing of wanting more and more and don't really understand people who do. Once I've had so much I start feeling nauseated and only want to drink water and that's what I was doing this afternoon, after only a couple of cans. Even Binky started drinking my water.) So I told Binky I didn't want any more and that I was afraid that if she did keep indulging she'd end up puking everywhere. (What I was more afraid of was her going into emotional meltdown.) But neither thing happened because I distracted her with cups of tea and she put on a show on Pick TV about British police arresting people; then Binky fell asleep so I left.

So that was my exciting day. And how was yours??!


ABBA VIDEOS!
When I'm trying to name this song I usually call it "no more ace to play" but it's really called
WINNER TAKES IT ALL
~about Anyetta and Bjorn's 1980 marriage breakdown


THE DAY BEFORE YOU CAME
little known final song
about the "disappearance" of a Russian dissident 
sorry about the (brief) bit of German voiceover: it says that when they split up there was no final tour, just a slow dissolution and fading out... and then Bucks Fizz came along...

♪♫♪♫♪♫♫♪♪♪♪♪♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♪♫♫♪♫♪♫♫♫♫♫♫♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♪♫♪♫♪♪♪♪♪♪♫♪♫♪♪♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♫♪

Council Thievery Scandal and a New Hairdo...

I'VE CHANGED MY HAIR STYLE. The new one is slicked back with lots of mousse (courtesy of Poundland). I washed and moussed it in one of the mental hospital bathrooms when I was visiting Binky this afternoon. I really like the new style. It does make me look a bit public school (a public school in Britain means a very exclusive expensive posh one. I wish I COULD have gone to public school. A Level Japanese would have been right up my street... Ho hum. But anyway, the hair looks good. Quite dashing, if I say so myself. It's about as long as it can get and still count as "short". I'm looking out for a good barber who can "tidy it up" ie cut straggly bits off without really shortening it...

Yes Binky is STILL confined to a mental ward. Bloody hell ~ it's not as if everyone's raving mad. Mostly you can't tell the difference between nurse, patient, visitor and sundry NHS-floaty-through-type-person. But after a while the accumulated insanity does get to me. One lady who pulled most of her hair out and looked exceedingly confused before Christmas is still in there but sporting a healthy head of (short) hair (shorter than mine), wearing glasses, talking normally and looking pretty with it. I wonder when they'll let HER out... I noticed the coffee tables were littered with scraps of people's personal correspondence bearing details like "you are being kept here under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act because the doctors believe you need treatment and care for a mental disorder..."... ukh. My family say I should make some non-mental friends. But WHERE??! Everyone I know is mad or on drugs. Or both. What a life!!

I'VE FOUND OUT why I'm in rent arrears (paid 2/3 of the £50 ($77.73) off and about to pay the rest tomorrow, if the council insist... I was wondering how on earth I managed to get into arrears, having paid more than TEN WEEKS up front in advance... And it's because I had arrears from when I was in emergency accommodation, the council say it's written into our contracts that if we overpay rent for a new place they can take backrent to pay off another account. It's actually NOT written into anything I have signed and I intend to take them to task about this tomorrow. See if I can get 77 lovely US Dollars refunded to me. (Of course it won't be in dollars, it'll be pounds sterling but dollars sound so much more exciting...

My druggieworker was less than impressed with me after my testing positive for heroin and benzodiazepines. I promised her truthfully that I have NOT been pillpopping. The benzos were mixed into dodgy brown heroin. No wonder I'd been feeling so unaccountably sleepy after "using"... Sleeping during the day is just not my style, if I can at all help it. (It's depression that has made me sleep the most excessively. 19 or 20 hours a day, usually in two bursts, on my worst days. And if I try not to sleep so long I just end up dropping off in public places. And that really does make me feel like an old dosser. Depression is bad enough, without everyone thinking you're an old drunk to boot!

The weather here is still subtropical. I found a brochure of world and Asian cruses (would really like to go on one, now that I'm over 40 and OLD!... but why bother when the weather's so brilliant back home. I'm reading Freaky Dancing by Bez out of the Happy Mondays... A most interesting book, though I WISH the publishers would have translated his vernacular into normal spellings ...

On a benda in the Haçienda...

WHOOO! What a gaff. It feels like enterin a cavernous, cold storage room at the meat factory. I'm half expectin to see rows of headless animal corpses hangin from massive hooks above the dance floor ~ an yes it was that cold back in pre-ecstasy days...

(The Hacienda was a legendary Northern ecstasy rave club... People still rave about having "been there" to this day...)

Anyway I've gotta go and get my beauty sleep for when I REPRIMAND THE COUNCIL OVER THEIR SHAMELESS THIEVERY TOMORROW MORNING!!

TAKE CARE EVERYONE ☺

 

The Racist Drunken Dustbins Affair

I, AND ABOUT A HUNDRED other people on my estate were rudely awoken the other morning by a group of druggies tripping on something or other, shouting, laughing etc. Then my doorbell rang and I just got heavy breathing through the intercom. Just as things sounded like they were dying down, a heavily drunken bald man appeared on the private grass just below my balcony. He was ranting away to himself in the most obscene racist language, which I could hear with exceeding clarity, as when the weather is warm I tend to sleep with my back door open (it opens to a 30ft drop, so not too much of a security risk... (I hope!))

Turns out he had been mugged and robbed of his mobile phone by some youths of Afro-Carribbean descent. But I'm not sure most of my neighbours were listening intently enough to discern this. They would just have picked up on his attitude and his fury, which, at 6:30am on a weekend sounded very threatening. Next thing I knew he had kicked over three giant recycling bins. I could hear my neighbours pottering around above me and to the side, so I really hoped someone was ringing the police. The police did duly turn up and the man was "nicked". And suddenly the streets were full of dog-walkers. All awoken at the same crazy hour. And then I fell asleep. And slept and slept. And slept and slept and slept. And slept a little bit more. Eventually rising at FIVE PM. How very louche of me! But then I am a "schizophrenic". Even Binky was saying I "obviously had schizophrenia". I don't know. I wasn't acting weirdly but no fewer than THREE separate people on her ward asked me if I was "just visiting" (ie they're saying "you look like a patient from another ward"). Also manic girl #3 (there are currently six of them) told me I was very hyper the other day. That was the day of the Bulgarian sing-along. The Bulgarian lady is the most manic of all.

Were am I going with this..? Well FINALLY I MET A GOOD GP. I had to check their website choice of more than a dozen doctors to find one with an express interest in mental health, as Dr Benderson, the evil Brothel-Madam-looking cow, obviously has no time for all things Mental (which does beg the question of WHY IS SHE IN GENERAL PRACTICE if she doesn't like nutters..?) Anyway really I came for him to look at my back. It was really playing up, so I could barely lift my feet to wash them in the shower that morning. I don't know what happened. I took some Gear, for the painkilling effect ~ and that seems to have cured me ever since. Either that or it just went away. I'm Really Trying Not To Use Heroin. That's from a life gone by and I really want a new life.

I had to ask the doctor for a letter that I can have passed on to a furniture charity as my flat is still totally bare and I'm sleeping on a cold concrete floor. The doctor said that is probably NOT helping my back. (I thought people slept on beds to be middle class. And because in hot countries snakes, scorpions and other creepies like to cavort across bedroom floors...?) Anyway my letter says I have "schizophrenic disorders". So I read this and thought AM I REALLY SCHIZOPHRENIC? I don't know... I'm in 2 minds about the matter (wah waah). Binky is no help. I think she is too suggestible. The poor girl has been in there coming up 2 months now. Nobody knows when they're letting her out... I made friends with five patients on her ward. One, who really is schizzy, in a particuarly ditzy way, invited me to her flat for dinner. But she says it's infested with red spiders, so I'm bringing a can of Raid with me (just in case). Someone told me she has schizoaffective mania, which would be what I got diagnosed with. Bloody hell if I really was like that then no wonder I kept getting odd looks when I went crazy.

Anyway I don't think about psychology these days, I'm more into foreign languages. I'm learning five at once: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese. German and French via Hotbird TV. Spanish and Italian via Linguaphone. Japanese via the NHK TV programme Meet and Speak. But the language there is so very basic I'm actually ahead of them. It's my goal to speak seven languages fluently: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese and Japanese (+ English makes 7). I'd also like to get at least A Level competence in 14 more: Dutch, Portuguese, Romanian, Arabic, Russian, Hindi, Thai, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, Burmese, Hebrew and Greek and Welsh. This is a LIFETIME GOAL. I'm not planning to achieve it by next year. If you really put some welly into it, you can go from nought to A Level in 2 years, which means 14 languages would take me 28 years and I'd be 69 by the time I accomplished my goal.

By the way, if you're wondering how many I speak right now, I know something of eleven languages. English, German, French, Spanish, Welsh, Dutch, Esperanto, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Italian. I could write a basic letter in the first seven of these... You see why I feel in a sense that I'm a loser? Because if only I'd put in more concerted effort I might speak these eleven languages fluently by now!

The world is full of more cunning linguists than I. The world record for language acquisition belongs to Mr Ziad Fazah of Brazil, who apparently speaks some 59 tongues fluently. (But I saw him on Youtube and his English wasn't THAT amazing...)

They're saying he speaks and writes 58. So he's learnt one more in the time being...

Full Clip. (From Chilean TV)

ZIAD FAZAH ~ FLUENT IN 58 LANGUAGES

"HOW I BECAME FLUENT IN 11 LANGUAGES"

Alex from London.

Puts me to shame...

English, French, Greek, German, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, Italian, Hebrew, Catalán, Spanish

Note how, apart from Greek and Hebrew, these fall into three groups

Germanic: English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans

Latin: French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan

Slavonic: Russian

His accent in Spanish and German is pretty good...

A Death in the House (and a New House and a Baby Chirper)

THE LANDLORD'S HENCHMAN phoned me yesterday asking could I knock on the room next to me to see whether the man answers ... and would I phone back with the result so I said I would ~ and no answer. I said "Why, is he OK?" and he said no. They think he's ill or something. So someone from the agency was going to come round and open the door just to see that he really IS all right.

This man is pretty old and very friendly. He gives the impression of not having a nasty bone in his body ~ yet somehow without that "gone-out," dodgy vibe some people have when they're so "nicey-nicey" they seem to have a screw loose. Perhaps one reason he always seems so cheerful is that every time we have met, either outside the house or in the hallway, in the few weeks since he moved in, he had obviously been drinking. I never have seen him sober. But he is so old and unsteady. You can always tell it's him coming in because the shufflings between front door opening and the scrabbling of his key against his door and that door actually opening seems to take a good five minutes every time. He is very unsteady on his feet, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had some type of Alzheimer's or alcoholic dementia.  He seems somehow to be able to attain the same level of drunkenness every hour of the morning or night ~ he's in a perpetual blur. So it wouldn't surprise me if some other factor were involved. I've seen alcohol dementia, and that ~ or just general old age ~ would seem better to account for his general un-together-ness than drink alone. As I say, you'd need to be putting a lot of drink away, on a constant basis, to be that doddery and compromised...

THEN I CAME BACK HOME today to find the front door open and a policeman in our hall. "Is everything all right?" I asked. The policeman gave me a steady look, and said no. It turns out the elderly Carribean man downstairs has DIED. I heard the policeman saying into his radio that this man was SEVENTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD. So why on earth somebody that feeble and confused and obviously in need of help was living on his own in a house like mine, I haven't a clue. I don't want to think about it, because it will only make me angry.

I had only been into his flat the once, and that was when he said his heating was broken down last week. The boiler was working for hot water, and was set to warm up the radiators. Yet his radiators were stone cold. It has been absolutely freezing the last few days with snow settled everywhere. And this old man was living alone and confused in an unheated flat. He said the landlord had refused to look at the boiler. He was so out of it, he couldn't tell when the radiators were switched on or off. And now he's dead. Great, isn't it?

Oh and I'm supposed to be moving out and into a permanent place of which I have absolutely no details ~ this is according to my Support Worker, who won't give me the new address. I want at least to be able to check out the new place from the outside before going on an official visit with a council housing bod. Then I get to say yes or no to this new home ~ depending whether it's wonderful or otherwise. You're allowed to pick and choose between a maximum three places (which are offered one at a time) before it they say "right, if you WANT council housing, you have to take the next offer, or drop off the list". ALL I want is separate living room and bedroom, a bath, and a south-facing aspect to put up a satellite dish ~ otherwise I won't be able to watch German television, which makes all the difference to quality of life. And ideally, if it's a flat (which it probably will be) I'd rather NOT be on the ground floor ~ for security. So I'm in a bit of depression and stress over this, knowing that if I do move I'll find myself in a place that's completely unfurnished ~ not even curtains. And will have to get washing machine, fridge, bed and furniture all myself. I know I should sound a bit more grateful ~ but I just want to know what I'm being grateful FOR. Some of these council places are notoriously bad. I just WANT TO KNOW THE ADDRESS. The promised letter has failed to come. If I don't hear anything by Monday then I'm calling my housing manager. The idea of moving is really stressing me. Yes of course I want to move. But moving itself is horrendous. So most of the time I'm dealing with this in my own characteristic way: by not thinking about it at all.

Does this sound really terrible? I'm not in a bad mood. I've actually been feeling rather good. I'm still, most of the time, higher than normal. It's just that when I'm like this, every feeling and emotion is more vivid, so I'm VERY easily plunged into a whirl of confusion. I just want to know what is happening. And then, perhaps, I can be whirled up in a better-informed kind of way..(!)

Hey you know the best thing about moving into proper accommodation? Pets are allowed! I am in talks about ordering a baby parrotlet online (they are very difficult to get hold of in this country)... but no commitments have been made yet...

So that's it ~ wow! A death in the house and me (hopefully) moving out with a Baby Chirper!

An OK Christmas

WOW, I'm spelling Christmas with a Ch-. I must be in a good mood.

Yeah it was quite good. Of course I opened the £20 bag at midnight. Cooked up a lovely brown shot. Then cooked up the rest, which was really dark brown. So I saved the really dark one for Xmas morning and took the weak one first.

I had been feeling like I'd drunk a petrol tanker full of black coffee. (Only I hadn't touched any caffeine at all that day.) I hoped the heroin would calm me down. And it DID.

On Xmas morning I had the great big gloopy shot dripping with brown heroin at about 11am. Apart from going over the spoon later that day for the absolute dregs, that was my last ever shot. It went partially into one of my collapsed veins and I felt OK.

I didn't get to Binky's house till past 1:30, even though she is only 10 minutes away, because I was too paranoid to leave my house. I thought someone was hiding somewhere in the hallway, down the cellar or up the stairs. I kept hearing creaking noises and was convinced some psychotic housebreaker was after my stuff. I'm not worried about my person. Just my stuff. So I hid everything and took the tellybox with me. When I opened my door I saw upstairs's water was dripping into the hall and THAT had caused those sinister creakings. The mountains of unopened mail in our hallway are completely soaked through. But I was right to be para. There were people going up the road at 8pm on Xmas Eve dressed in fluorescent jackets making out they were some kind of officials, knocking on doors just to see who was and wasn't in. They were so obviously housebreakers I glared at them as I swooshed past and one, the dodgiest of the two, said "Merry Christmas!" in a criminal type voice. You know really fake.

On the way to Xmas Dinner I had a sudden urge for Advocaat, so I got a £7.99 bottle of Cooymans (Warninks is too expensive). In fact I had orders for a whole array of drinks so I turned up with half a distillery worth of hard liquor. Then when I got there nobody really wanted much. I drink snowballs so weak that even after five I was nearly sober.

Hey but I wasn't manic or depressed either. So how wonderful is that. Neither did I get sudden rushes of ridiculous enthusiasm over nothing, that take two hours to come down. And eventually all join together to form a type of "episode". Perhaps the Advocaat acted as a mood stabilizer. Maybe the eggnog was by a goose who lays golden ones..? Or else it was one of my very rare totally euthymic days.

Binky's housemate Trudy spent hours slaving over the hot stove. She kept saying she had burned the potatoes because they were crispy on one side. But I kept saying they were perfectly done. Don't most people like crispy potatoes? I know I do.

At 3pm HM the Queen came on, so I started yelling and everyone said they were coming but they didn't so I watched it alone with a catatonic person. Then everyone came in and questioned me closely on what Her Maj had actually said. But I couldn't remember any of it. [It was actually about the Olympics. And people surviving Xmas on their own. And something else I cannot recall now. Oh and it was the first Queen's Speech shot in 3D. She looked very cool wearing the special glasses on the news.]

I had tried to avoid eating too much by way of cheese crackers and Quality Street partially because I thoroughly enjoy being on a puritanical diet. But I still couldn't eat the entire turkey dinner. It was really nice though. Trudy excelled herself. She said she's never cooked a Christmas Dinner before, but you wouldn't know it.

So I ate half, then went out to the kitchen for a fag. A terrible film came on ITV called Tangled. It's about Thumbelina or Snow White. Or Sleeping Beauty. The one with the long hair. Rapunzel! And how awful. Like a cartoon that they've had half a stab at 3D-ifying. And everybody too apathetic to switch channels. Oh and then people started dropping off to sleep. So I went home with half a bottle of Advocaat still left. Yes, me, who is supposedly alcoholic of the century, according to some former substance abuse workers. I never finished it until 5am, when I was up watching the foreign shopping channels and wondering what Camilla Parker Bowles was doing for Xmas.

Like I said I went over the dregs on that spoon but there was barely anything. So technically that was my last shot. I didn't even bother trying to find a vein. My veins are now completely hammered.

I have been sleeping all at the wrong times. Drinking methadone like there's no tomorrow. Amazingly, I don't feel that bad. The first day on that stuff is always the worst, no matter how much I take. So feeling OK on day one is a good sign. Ukh: I hope I can keep it up to spend the rest of my life drug-free.

A member of my family recently said to me: yes you give up heroin but what do you replace it with? At that moment I didn't want to say this, but a nice flash of mania is nicer than any drug. It's supposed to be your brain's reward system going totally nuts, so no wonder. There's a lot to be said for pacing back and forth laughing insanely. Real paroxismal belly laughter, at my own witty ideas. (The more manic I get the less of a crap I give about anyone else's thoughts,feelings or opinions. I know that doesn't sound good but, hell, it's so much better than being depressed. Or being on drugs. Depressed people feel nothing. People on drugs would like to feel, but don't think they can afford to get hurt, hence the drugtaking. And maniacs are just cuckoo.) I kind of wish for the new year that I could be "normal". If normal means totally mentally and physically well, deliriously happy and stratopsherically rich, then I'm willing to go for it.

Anyway I hope Xmas was entertaining for you all. How was YOUR day..?





HM THE QUEEN: CHRISTMAS MESSAGE 2012




HARD TRANCE

I put this up before... but I like it...




How can I have nearly missed this?
QUEEN BEATRIX OF THE NETHERLANDS CHRISTMAS MESSAGE 2012
VINCENT, WHAT IS SHE TALKING ABOUT..?



♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫

The Issue of "Issues"... Plus the Issue of Heroin...

SO I took the pharmacological de-icer and felt instantly better for it, but the depression crept back and now I feel almost as bad as yesterday ~ and yet I'm on the gear as well! So now two negatives. Although just about everything looks "negative" when scrutinized closely.

My drugs worker is really pissing me off. Every time I come in there saying I feel down he says everybody gets down. And that he feels crap every single day. Patronizing piece of shit. So I said, Well I don't feel down all the time; sometimes I feel just perfect. A-OK. A1. And he had no answer for that one.

The other thing that annoys me is when drug worker type people try and get all psychological about it, as if I'm going to tell them what "issues" lie behind my negative mood. Whatever "issues" they may be, they must surely be ones that make me feel absolutely fantastic the rest of the time, when I'm not depressed. Or else, they are at least only part-time issues.

When I'm feeling bad, I'm not depressed "about" any one thing; I'm depressed about everything.

I'm using the word "depression" but really that isn't how it feels. If I didn't know what "depression" was, I'm not sure I'd even think of myself as "depressed". I would say that I felt sick and miserable, worn out. Overcome by some mysterious and indistinct illness, an affliction of the soul... That my heart feels packed in ice. Perhaps I would say I feel this way because my chickens have come home to roost. All I am is a miserable junkie. But I do not believe that if and when I ever do get off the heroin and off the methadone completely I will ever feel OK. I strongly suspect that I'll feel exactly the same way I do now but I just won't be an active drug-addict any more. I'll be a miserable ex-junkie instead.

Remember that in late 2010 through the spring of 2011, when the heroin supply in Britain had dried up anyhow (there literally was nothing out there to score, apart from dodgy white and brown powders containing very little to no gear at all)... That was when I really lost it ~ with mania, depression and psychosis. All of which had been building up in me for years. I was never altogether surprised to have a sudden and intense manic episode, because I'd been experiencing flashes of it for years. And for even longer than that I'd had intermittent and transient symptoms of what I now know to be psychosis. But I'd just feel strange and disembodied and sometimes hear voices. But it was nothing strong enough to require treatment ~ or so I thought. The first "voices" I ever heard were so indistinct, I couldn't even tell what they were saying: if I'd told a psychiatrist about this, I thought I'd have been laughed out of his office. It was only upon googling the subject that I discovered it starts for lots of people that way.

In my heart I feel lied to. By every well-meaning and probably genuine person who has ever tried to tell me that if I'd only kick the drugs everything would somehow be OK. It just never spun out that way. Example: I gave up crack ages ago. Crack used to sometimes make me feel intensely paranoid. But I've been far, far more paranoid months after ever touching the stuff than I ever was "on" it. The same can be said about depression and drink. I haven't touched drink in weeks. And yet this week I felt more depressed than in a very long time.

Interestingly, when I told the psychiatrist that drink actually made me feel better in depression and yet did next to nothing at all when my mood was already "elevated" he accepted this and didn't try to contradict me. You have to bear in mind that by this point I'd already reduced from the equivalent of more than a bottle of spirits a day, down to three to four double vodkas, spaced over twenty-four hours. So he said I was just "psychologically addicted to alchol". 

The effects of drink and drugs have become so unreliable ~ I never know how body and brain are going to react that I'm starting to feel there's just no point in taking any of them. Not just because they're "bad" but because they just don't work. Drink did used to make me feel better. But more recently it's only made me feel more run down and equally depressed. Heroin does something weird to my mood and I'm not even sure quite what. But common sense tells me that with my moods as unstable as they are, it's probably best to take nothing at all that's going to interfere with them.

Heroin, lovely heroin all-healing, all-destroying heroin; it's the last thing left and I just cannot drop it. I wish to God that I could, but I can't.

So I do not know what to do...


********************************************************************************


Not an original choice but what the hell

THE VERVE: THE DRUGS DON'T WORK...
This "anthem of a generation" wasn't originally about addiction, but about a person who is terminally ill... "hanging on for dear life," literally...



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The Great Heroin Rip-Off Scandal!

I VERY NEARLY got ripped off for four bags of vulgar brown heroin this morning. The normal guy, who is just running for somebody else, said his man had "no B" but not to worry, he'd get it off somebody else and could be use my phone. So he rings up saying "can I see you and are you still doing the usual for £40?" And then I asked what are you making out of this? And why would you want to help me out anyway? I mean, he usually acts all friendly and promises that if I come to him with nothing he'd be only too happy to "bail" me a couple. He also pulls this "I'm only on cannabis" act ~ then asks couldn't I sort him out with 100mg of methadone. So he's one of those closet smackheads. Dealing in the stuff and using it daily and yet unwilling to admit, even to someone like me, that he has a raving problem.

So I queried: Why are you doing this for me? Surely it's four for £35 and you're keeping the fiver? And he said oh no, it's four tens for forty up here and the dealers never give discount (well mine do! Except the man who's supplying this one and I only pay £40 for four bags because they always used to be nice fat ones ~ and they're not even that any more so I don't know why I bother...) So he's claiming to be making nothing on the deal, except when he introduces five new customers to this new guy, he gets a £10 bag free.

And then I realize, not only is this guy running up the road with my money, but he also has my phone! I can be so dizzy in the morning. And then what appeared to be a crackhead and a dealer showed up, which really put my back up because I know this crackhead of old and when he started waving a handful of gear and crack at me I wasn't impressed. "If it's so amazing, you go and smoke it yourself!" I said. I grabbed the runner who still had my money and had to wrench my £40 out of his hand. Then the "dealer" started yelling at me by name, telling me to come back because he was serving up. No dealer is ever that desperate to sell. The paranoia always outdoes the money-grabbing, and it's just not cool to look that desperate for a sale. This guy did have the dealerly look about him. Tall and dressed in new-looking sportswear and the right colour skin (mixed race colour ~ I've never in my life met a heroin dealer with blue eyes and blond hair). But his eyes were so obviously drug-frazzled that I just kept on walking.

Then the runner comes back ~ junkies are nothing if not persistent ~ and keeps saying Just wait with me and my guy will sort us out. But my nerves were far too jangled by this point to waste any energy pondering who was in league with who~ and I hadn't liked the way he was so friendly to the crackhead. And how come the crackhead just happened to appear with four bags in hand right at the wrong moment? Which he was way too over-eager to flog to me. Crackheads smoke crack. They don't want to sell it unless there's something wrong with it! And that was another problem: the "drugs" he had: two heroin, two crack weren't what I'd ordered anyhow ~ I won't touch crack cocaine at all these days. It's far too vulgar. So I kept on walking and the £40-and-my-phone guy was running after me saying What are you doing? And I said Tomorrow. Tomorrow. I'll come back tomorrow. So then he swore at me because he is foreign and I vanished into the main shops...

Eventually I did score, off the guy I always used to go to. Once my dizziness had cleared, I worked out that of course Mr Runner guy was intending to pick up five tiddles for forty, keep one and pass on the four to me. So why couldn't he just tell me that? It would have made far more sense. So I scored off another guy I'd never seen in my life (old number, new man ~ the usual guy was in prison) I gave £30 for 4x10ses ~ the bog-standard price these days ~ and then I disappeared back home. It was such a chill morning, yet because I'm a junkie, my back was pouring with sweat, which is so gross...

Ukh: my elevated mood has fallen down. How terrible is that? I spent all last week insisting I wasn't hypomanic, I was Just Fabulous ~ so I MUST have been hypomanic. My mood was most certainly Up, but the Symptoms: the hyperkinesis, racing cognition, "decreased need for sleep" etc were all very minor and that's partly why I didn't believe I was mentally ill. It's true I did start Hearing Voices in the night ~ but Hearing Voices is NOT a symptom of hypomania ~ so how about that! I only think of it as a sign of madness because everybody else thinks so.

I could say here "and what's so wrong with going mad anyhow?" but I don't want to go up that path. When other people go mad there's normally a LOT wrong with it. A lot of ridiculous and bad behaviour and ranting and raving and all that but when I was mad [last year] I just thought I was fantastic. And yet did feel this inner desperation that something was badly wrong and yet I didn't know what... I mean, I was fully aware of meeting the diagnostic criteria for mania because only an idiot wouldn't, but I felt deep need of a label I could throw in people's faces: "IT'S THIS!" Talking of madness, I only KNOW that terrible crackhead with the four bags in hand because I met him in the nuthouse years ago! He gets incredibly "prang" ~ that means paranoid ~ so why on earth he insists on continuing to pipe the crack, I'll never know. He only seems to have Drug Psychosis, but his mum, so I hear, is the full cuckoo-clock schizo ~ you see it's all in the genes. I get my bad genes from my mother's side. She gets recurrent depression. Which gives me an equally elevated chance of unipolar depression and bipolar i disorder. See? No wonder I went crackers! My uncle, her brother, was an inverterate drunken gambler. One of my cousins was chucked out of school for toking Mary Juana, another called herself "the Coke Queen of South Kensington" and had a boyfriend who wanted to lug over a kilo from South America until she reprimanded him and told him not to... My other cousin is two nuts short of a fruitcake... Oh man they're all crazy. You see, it's all bad genes. But I'm the only manic-depressive junkie in the family. I wouldn't call myself a black sheep. I like to think of myself as a golden sheep with wool that twinkles in the night because when I'm Elevated that is just how I feel...

Well now I'd better go. My electricity needs topping up. My house has gone beyond chilly and into that Damp n Dank phase where it feels like a dripping wet mine-shaft ~ most unpleasant.



Right, here's some charming psycho-active trance for y'all... The music's very run-of-the-mill ~ not a single good tune until 12 mins 22 in ~ and again at 14 mins 55 and 31 mins 09 ~ but hey you can watch the kiddiewinks dancing... (And what terrible, half-hearted dancing it is! Surely this can't have been filmed in the UK~?, because the Brits are far more up-for-it than this!)



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I Don't Miss Drinking

I GAVE UP DRINKING about a month ago and I don't miss it at all. Of course I've had the odd can here or there to test my resolve... or, more to the point, see whether I still liked it, because I wouldn't give up alcohol for the sake of it. If you really like it, keep on doing it! is my motto.

So Gledwood doesn't like booze. How weird is that?

Here's the details I told BeverlyBabe:

 

 

 

bugerlugs63 said...

I'm so glad your day wasn't wasted Bev. I wished I could've stayed in bed today . . . But I had no choice. I keep starting to write a post and giving up as I'm not doing much good at the minute. Apart from bringing the kids up, I just keep using and I'm fed up of myself for it . . . But obviously not fed up enough. I hope something changes soon . . .
Anyway, It's good that you didn't have to spend today hungover, and ex-hubby looks happy. Take care, much love sent to you x x x

October 21, 2012 3:55 PM

Oh cripes! That's the wrong comment... here's me:~~~~~~~

Gledwood said...

I was fantasizing sexually about you last night when I suddenly had this big urge to ask detailed questions about your drinking habits eg do you drink every day? Would you call yourself a drinker, a drunk or an alcoholic? Are you one of those people who once you start cannot stop until you pass out? Have you ever been arrested for being drunk? Have you ever assaulted anyone or caused massive damage to property?

I used to call myself an aklie but never was one of those people who started but couldn't stop. I'd have the equivalent of a quadrouple vodka then drink fairly sedately from then on. Biggest I drunk on a daily basis averaged out at just over one full bottle of spirits and I could barely remember anything I'd done ~ real nice blackouts!

Love and Hot Chili Kisses

XXXXXXX

October 26, 2012 4:52 AM

Gledwood said...

O yeah I 4got 2 say the questions were meant to be an idea for a post. Ya know when you've got nothing else to say just crap on about your drinking!!

Seriously though I have deep need of these answers.

Cheers!

October 26, 2012 5:08 AM

[Ignore the racy "references"; Beverly and I have an ongoing flirtation.]

I really hope Bev writes me some top grade alcohol-porn. You know, beaded bubbles 
winking at the brim and all that...

Anxiety and "Issues"

I HAVE banged up one bag of Lovely Heroin today and feel no better for it; I have one bag left. And don't even know if I want to take it.

Yesterday I felt horrible in the morning. Depressed and anxious. Then I took heroin and felt fine. All afternoon. Pinky asked if I was hypomanic. Come nighttime I felt OK and phoned my family.

All night long I slept deeply, only awakening once to pee out some of the three litres of lemonade I guzzle each day. I no longer drink alcohol at all.

So I got up at twenty to one feeling sour and blank and confused. Sometimes it pains me just to think.

Pinky has been transferred from mental hospital to burns unit where's she's awaiting surgery. When she set fire to her pyjamas last week, she burnt her leg so badly she needs SKIN GRAFTS. She's right across town so I don't get to see her for a couple of days.

People keep confusing me. The things they say; the things they feel. I don't want to take any of it on board. Eg Pinks talks about me as if I'm seriously ill. I don't like that, and I do not believe it.  If I mentioned it at all in real life, I would say I'm "a bit bipolar" but she says I'm "really bipolar" which is no longer true. There is nothing wrong with me any more. Apart from that I'm my old miserable self.

Dr Lovelace, the GP, says I should not take on the identity of "schizophrenic". I would not want to associate with a condition I do not have anyway. I said my moods are who I am. But mental illnesses are not and never will be "me". Yes in the past I have parrotted ideas that I've read. But psychiatry to me is like a religion: an object of fascination, not belief.

I'm totally off tea. I started feeling panicky earlier today and that makes me feel I should be shot dead. Anxious people are useless people ~ incapacitated by misplaced energy that crushes the heart. I loathe anxiety above every other mental state. If I get anxiety back, I will kill myself. Caffeine makes all this worse. It's just like the after-effects of crack cocaine ~ another drug I loathe.

There is nothing much more to say. If I analysed it, I'd ask myself why I should blog about feeling crap. The only reason is that I would keep a journal anyway. Saying these things in public is confusing enough. I know some people think I should just kill myself.

My blogfriend Bugerlugs, who has a cyclothymic nature anyhow, went on a beautiful two-week break to North Wales but came back not just depressed but panicky on top. I held back my opinion that anxiety is the absolute pits of psychiatry, sheer living hell.

And when her GP prescribed Prozac, I kept quiet on what fluoxetine would do to me: make me agitated, angry and dysphoric and a whole lot worse. My last experience with an antidepressant (mirtazapine/Remeron) was catastrophic. I never want to go near anything like that again. The stuff I'm now on (quetiapine/Seroquel) is for bipolar depression. But it's also antimanic and antipsychotic. So it shouldn't set me off on a psycho episode.

I hope Bugerlugs is OK. She sounds better. Her biggest problem now is a furry pingpongball-with-eyes robo-hamster who's been on the lose for nearly a week. They're tiny, flighty and much faster than normal hamsters. So it's like trying to catch a wild house-mouse. Except roborovskis are even smaller and pingier. And when on the lose, they switch to wild mode and don't want to be picked up.

Ukh. See that theory that distractions improve the mood doesn't work.

I keep thinking about Bugerlugs and what I said about anxiety. When I make these sweeping statements I'm talking about me. If Bugerlugs put a gun to her head I would be gutted. I don't want Bugerlugs to die.

As for this heroin (the other thing Bugerlugs and I have in common, apart from uneven moods) ~ I don't know what to do.

Earlier today, I ended up turning the issue over in my head. Telling myself it is destroying me: I have to make a break from it sometime.

Then I tell myself I will stop tomorrow. But I'm not naïve. When I think I've spent too much money, I'm able to put my fixation on ice for some days. So I've done a few days heroin-clean. But that day, the day that I still have a yen for gear and the money to get it ~ that "tomorrow" never comes.

Last year there were many days when I had the money but not the desire to use. My worker was asking me last week what has changed between now and then but I don't want to talk to some drug-obsessed drug-clinic worker about my mental equilibrium. Last year I had an "elevated" mood for weeks on end. This year I haven't been so high. I tested myself, by using again, and the habit came back. It's nowhere near as intense as it once was, years ago. I can do a day or several days on just methadone without climbing the walls.

And I want, I really do want to be drug-free and that means methadone-free as well.

I'm also aware that heroin is doing my mental wellbeing no good at all. For years it salved my misery. But now, it either switches my mood so I feel higher hours later than when I first took it. Or it does nothing much at all. Whatever it's doing to my brain cannot be good.

For a long time I was averse to methadone because I thought it would damage my brain.

I know what I have to do. That is: to give up all drugs, prescribed and otherwise. Then maybe my brain could be OK.

My family have said that if I leave the drugs ~ all drugs behind, I should be OK. I never used to believe that. Mainly because I wasn't OK before I went on heroin, so I didn't assume I'd be OK afterwards. But I never even had the chance to try Sobriety out ~ never gave myself the chance.

This is my single goal. To live drug-free.

Maybe next year I'll have some news to tell you...

Until then I can't promise not to put up a whole load more miserable posts. Sorry.



Illustrated: I couldn't think up an illustration, so I went abstract; I found this graph by accident but it shows something I've long suspected ~ that heroin is far more popular here in Europe than across the Pond...

MUSIC
I wanted to put up SOMETHING... but what?
This is an old trance classic,
AGE OF LOVE: AGE OF LOVE (JAM & SPOON MIX)
It has a PROPER VIDEO...



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Today I Met The Only Bipolar Girl I Know

... and she is fantastically beautiful.

I WAS down the Druggieclinic early because I'd gone to bed by midnight and yet somehow managed to awaken at 6am feeling crap.

A single cup of tea was enough to set me off all morning with Anxiety on top of Depression.

My Druggieworker wasn't in and there was no way I was going near the Group Session he always wants me to go to. I've attended the 12 sessions I undertook to do and no way in hell am I going near any groups again, except the legendary Nutter Club ~ the Dual Diagnosis (mental+addicted) support group that my own Consultant Psychiatrist cancelled. I'm writing in to tell him how he has disposed of my one source of support. Throughout Psychotic Break #2 (mid-January) last year Naomi, the group leader, was my single source of any practical help. Without her intervention, I might not even have got diagnosed.

My family, who live 100s of miles away never saw me, only heard me on the phone. Usually in the evenings when my mania was lulling ~ and a lot of online friends who know me via my blog ~ all said a lot of wellmeaning but seriously confusing things. People who knew me and actually saw me were in no doubt that I had completely lost my mind. One friend who hapened to phone me when I was in utter meldtown one morning, drove straight round with his wife, took one look at me leaving the house doing the best sane act I could manage ~ and burst straight into tears! I have absolutely no idea what was so upsetting, because I was feeling fantastic. They wanted to take me back to theirs but I pointed out that I was getting up each morning at 2:30am and wouldn't go back to bed for anyone. The psychiatrist told me after the fact that I should have been in hospital during that period. It's the most seriously ill I have ever been. I just could not help it.

Today I saw the only Drugs Worker who actually seems to care for me. This one comes from Germany. He checked my urine ~ only methadone and "morphine" (heroin) showed up. He kept asking what had gone wrong this weekend because I seemed down in the mouth and I kept saying I was fine. I keep my mouth shut and turn up my lips at the corners, as if half-smiling. I told him how much I'd gone off alcohol. So he added to my notes a breathalyser reading of zero. I told him how pissed off I was to be so anxious. He seemed not to credit how badly a single cup of tea can affect me. So I mentioned how, earlier this year, four cups flipped me out into hypomania, depression and paranoia for half a day. He mooted the idea of counselling but I told him I've had a lifetime's worth of that. I complained how four hours' interviews with the mental health nurse (more than two years ago and before I ever got the "schizoaffective bipolar" label) had left her with the idée fixe that it was some anxiety disorder that was bugging me. Despite my making the repeated point that I'd not had morbid anxiety for over a decade and a half, that I did not feel keyed-up, or a panicky grip round my heart. What I did feel was irritated, angry and overloaded with stress ~ an entirely different syndrome. When I'm anxious I want Valium. When I'm irritated, I don't. She gave me a helpsheet written for the me of twenty years ago! A person who wasted huge amounts of nervous energy turning over the same useless worries all night.

This morning was a tea-induced aberration: I DO NOT HAVE AN ANXIETY DISORDER. Or a Cluster C Personality Disorder, as she wanted to believe. (I do like that nurse, but she's too clever for her own good.) The personality disorders questionnaires I filled online (always in (hypo)manic states, as I would not ordinarily bother with such crap) said I was schizotypal and borderline! Doesn't mean I have any personality disorder at all. If the symptoms come as episodes, as mine do, it's called an "illness". Personality disorders develop by the late teens, manifesting as constant personal characteristics ~ hence that label: "personality disorder".

Then I mentioned how anxiety pisses me off a hundred times worse than any other symptom ~ extreme depression, "voices", manic meltdown, whatever...How anxiety is taken as a sign of weakness, never ever taken seriously by any doctor and how all sufferers should be shot through the head ~~ purely as an act of kindness. Which is as much as I'm prepared to say on the shameful matter.

Back in the waiting room a beautiful woman appeared. She didn't remember me, but I remembered her. I remember her because we ended up in bed together. (Long story). She is the one person I've ever met outside a clinical setting who has bipolar disorder. I told her what happened to me last year. She went and described my big manic episode for me: completely over-excited and hallucinating/~~ etc. She'd taken a big overdose of her meds at the weekend: 80 risperidone pills. A real recipe for feeling totally shipwrecked if ever there was one...

Then I went out to score heroin. Yes I'm still in thrall to the Killer B. ("B" is what we call Afghan brown.) Now I no longer drink, it's the last of all drugs... And I wish I'd taken Rachel's phone number...


Illustrated: this is the Spanish singer Jeanette Dimech. But she bears more than a passing resemblance to R...

MUSIC:~~~~~~~~

PORQUE TE VAS
Jeanette performs her biggest hit (the title means "Because You're going") at the Eiffel Tower, Paris...



KLF ft. TAMMY WYNETTE: JUSTIFIED AND ANCIENT (STAND BY THE JAMS)
I luuurve this track, it's so entertainingly kitch ~ know what I mean..!



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Judy Garland: A Complete Mess

I SAW A TV FILM called Life With Judy Garland: Me And My Shadows first thing in the morning. My: was she a mess. I knew she had her pill problems, but didn't realize they were quite that bad. In the end she was taking 1600mg a day of Seconal, on top of heavy doses of (prescribed) amphetamine. Plus she was drinking heavily. Barbiturates like Seconal are supposed to magnify the effects of alcohol considerably. They also cancel out the jitterier side-effects of speed, so you get a double-high.

In the beginning she was depicted on speed giving a master performance: singing her heart out, gesturing, pinging across the stage, reaching out to audience members' hands etc. Then she put in an Oscar-nominated performance opposite James Mason in the 1954 film A Star Is Born ~~ and yet no-one wanted to hire her afterwards because by that stage in her career she was already considered unreliable.

In the end she was performing concerts in theatres for practically no money because she owed it all to the IRS as back taxes for movies made the decade before. Drunk, confused, forgetting what song it was, tangling herself up in the microphone wire. And booed off the stage in Australia.

Her poor daughter Lorna Luft (upon whose memoir the film was based) had to tell a family court judge that she wanted to be with her mom rather than her dad because her mother couldn't live without her. This was true, in the most literal way. The judge sighed and granted custody to "Miss Garland". And the drunken, drugged confusion continued.

Towards the end, Lorna, who is barely in her teens, is reduced to a state of nervous collapse and physical exhaustion and realizes she just cannot go on. So Judy Garland is left alone and drinking. One night she cannot sleep despite all that Seconal and so she takes several more. And is found on the bathroom floor, dead.

It was a pretty horrible story. Funny how when you see something close-up it doesn't seem in the slightest bit "glamorous". A lot of people do consider drug-taking and even drug addiction glamorous. The more you see, the less you like it. But many don't see the full details until they themselves are addicted. By that time your one comfort, that seems to give you life, is the thing that is killing you.

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I wasn't trying to say yesterday that I thought my lovely label would get my any special treatment. Merely that I tick a box. So they would know what preconceptions to shove my way if I ever did get inpatient "care"...

Here's a furry picture of a cute koala.

Illustrated: the woman to the left in the second picture is Jacqueline Susann, author of the 30,000,000 copy bestseller about pillpopping, Valley of The Dolls...

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MUSIC: Judy Garland sings THE MAN THAT GOT AWAY in A Star Is Born

  I HOPE YOU HAVE A NICE WEEKEND   ***