I HAVEN'T WRITTEN anything here because not a lot has gone on. I didn't have a good Xmas, really. Or a happy new year. I don't know, I must have been depressed, or sick, or something. I don't know. Hey I just got a comment saying I was delusional because I thought I could get in print. Well... maybe I am, maybe not. Fiction writing is not like blogging. Everything goes through at least two drafts, if not five, six or seven. Here I just tap it in and press publish; there I weigh every word. Fiction is about characterization and dialogue. Blogging is just me reporting every turd I've done. My fiction, you might argue, is just a literary turd ~ and a real steamer of a sloppy one at that! They have almost nothing in common, so you can't really assess my ability to write novels by reading my blog. Anyway I haven't written anything for about a month. I finished my first (short) novel in computer-ready form and almost instantly spiralled into depression so bad I couldn't focus enough to weigh up two versions of the same short passage, to work out which should go into book two. I don't know why I got like that. My GP wanted to up the meds by another hundred milligrams, but I don't want even more antipsycho tabs. The ones I'm on are causing enough side-effects as it is. Er, I don't know what else to say. I feel like I'm under seige. I have this feeling that I need a guard dog. I saw the most beautiful doggie on the Australian Animal Rescue programme. At first glance I thought she was a St Bernard. She was really cute, but she had been bitten by a snake and they couldn't save her. So she died. And she was one of the most beautiful dogs I have ever seen. And she wasn't a St Bernard, she was an Akita. I have always wanted an Akita puppy but have never seen them for sale. I have this daydream that one day a stray will come looking for me, and that will be my sign. An akita puppy. See how cute it is..?? Though I think this one, with the sawn-off legs look, is something of a crossbreed... I must go. Hope everyone's all right... Hachiko monogatari: the tale of Hachiko, the faithful dog who never stopped looking for his master...
YESTERDAY I DUG OUT my old £30 ($44.70) Spanish Linguaphone course and had a bash at hablando en español. I did moderately well.Spanish is "cognate" with French (both languages being forms of "baby Latin") and I have a French A level (higher school certificate). But a lot of the little words you'd use day-to-day are different. Eg bed = le lit = la cama; apple = la pomme = la manzana; town = la ville = la ciudad; suitcase = la valise = la maleta and so on. Other day-to-day words are cognate with the French but not English eg customs (at the airport) = la douane = la aduana.
But the higher vocabulary is similar to both English and French eg electricity = l'électricité = laelectricidad; Liberty - Equality - Fraternity = liberté égalitéfraternité = libertadigualdadfraternidad.
As far as I know, Spanish is the easiest major language for native speakers of English, after Italian (Italy is one European country I'd really like to go to. The Hungarian support worker at Binky's halfway house says the Italians "have everything: beautiful countryside, beautiful art and the cities: Venezia, Bologna,Milano, Napoli, Roma...
All I have seen of Spain is a tiny part of the Costa del Sol around Málaga: Mijas Costa, the (inland) clifftop town of Rhonda... I have spent just under an hour in Madrid, where I left the railway station to wonder at the vastness of the city stretched out on the plain below me as far as the eye could see... oh yes and Algeciras and the boat to Tangier from where I took the trains to Marakech, Fez, Rabat and Oujda but my 1991 Moroccan adventure is another story...
¡Well my depression seems to have cleared! ¡And I actually felt a rush of Spanish-induced excitement! ¡¡Wow!! ¿Do you like my Hispanic upside-down punctuation marks? Bloody hell I'm glad that shitty mood has cleared. Some days last week I was starting to feel truly horrendous. I phoned my folks who seemed to think the dismal voice was drug-induced. But I was wide awake and a hell of a lot more cheerful than before I banged up smack just to make it through the day.
I'm engaging with groups a lot better at the druggieclinic I attend. I'm not sure methadone is "working" for me as well as it's meant to. I told my worker that if I can't make an improvement I'm thinking of going to a private clinic who will prescribe XR Morphine Sulphate Tablets (MSTs as they're known on the street). My worker said that any improvement is down to me. Fair dos, but methadone is supposed to be a "heroin substitute" and if staying off the gear is really such hard work, requiring iron willpower and I feel so drastically better on street gear then the methadone really is NOT substituting for heroin at all. It's just masquerading as a substitute. It's hard to get MSTs on the NHS in the UK, but in other countries like Austia and Australia they're used routinely as the second-line treatment for patients like me (there are a lot of them) who don't take well to methadone treatment. MSTs are time-release pills, taken twice a day. I have experience of oral morphine in syrup form. I drank about 240mg, fell asleep in the late evening, and woke up feeling about a hundred times better than I'd ever felt waking up on methadone (which usually entailed a gasp of panic as my body, supposedly held on the "substitute" drug, cried out for lack of heroin. I didn't "gauwch" (no heroin-induced stupor) and I wasn't "high"; I just felt perfectly OK. They like to tout methadone's "lack of heroin-like 'high'". But nobody I know talks of a heroin "high". When you're as opiate-dependent as I am, heroin is a drug for survival. Junkies who want to get "high" will pipe crack ~ and I haven't done that in a long long long long time.
My biggest thing against MSTs is that other people, on coming off methadone or suboxone ~ neither of which make you feel very good ~ say they feel "really depressed". So depressed, in fact, that two people I know ended up back on methadone/suboxone within weeks of detox and a third went screaming back to heroin. (That was Lucky, my good friend who died.) I do feel really depressed (episodically) on methadone. My hope is that, in sticking with a drug that makes me feel shitty as methadone does, I'm facing the inevitable misery upfront ~ before detox, rather than after... (There is some logic in this?... Surely...) That the transition from very little methadone to none at all will be easier for me and less of a psychological (not to mention psychiatric) step down...
The final matter is that ALL my severe mental problems flared drastically and really came to the fore the time I gave up heroin for many weeks, living on methadone alone. For all I know methadone could be causing all this manic-depressive psychosis. And at its peak it really was full-blown delirious manic psychosis ~ with me so incoherent I couldn't even speak English. At all I didn't even know it was possible to go crazy like that.... If I DO find out methadone has caused all this I SHALL BE VERY UPSET INDEED. And will seriously consider suing the clinic for malpractice. Because I SAID how dodgy I felt on methadone and NOBODY EVER LISTENED.
My prospective new worker says MSTs are completely out of the question and says if I need to up my dose of antipsychotics that's for my GP to do. Well I don't see that I need to see a GP to take even MORE drugs to counteract SEVERE side-effects of another drug (methadone) I never really wanted to be on (would never in a million years have chosen that if the clinic had offered a true range of alternatives)... oh I don't know I'm just really unhappy on my progress on 20mg methadone. I should be far happier. Should be 100% clean and off all drugs by now (somehow I knew that was never going to happen).
I suppose my point is this: having seen over years many people of different ages, intelligences, backgrounds etc doing pretty much the same on methadone ~ ie, they take it when nothing better's on offer but as soon as they can get their hands on heroin, they do it. I've seen old people blowing their pensions on gear. Then they go back to the clinic thinking they've failed. Well MAYBE METHADONE HAS FAILED THEM! All I know about methadone is I WANT TO GET AS WELL CLEAR OF THAT SHIT AS FAST AS I POSSIBLY CAN. I hate it, resent it, LOATHE MYSELF FOR COMPROMISING ON A DRUG THAT IS WELL KNOWN TO BE EVEN MORE ADDICTIVE THAN HEROIN AND HARDER TO WITHDRAW FROM! (The clinic never told me that little fact before putting me on it ~ another thing I might sue them for.)
And you know, with a convoluted life story like mine, it's very difficult to remember the precise whys and wherefores... well:~~~ THE TRUTH ABOUT ME AND HEROIN came to me yesterday morning, first thing on awakening. The ONLY REASON I ever asked someone to get me heroin in the beginning was that I was so unhappy I wanted to kill myself.I truly was dead-set on dying. ~ And I knew heroin overdose was supposed to be the nicest way to die. You fall asleep and never wake up. So I gave an Indonesian man (one of the few non-students I knew) £50 to get me half a gram (back in 1992 heroin cost £10 a point and if he could have got it for any cheaper than £50 I didn't begrudge him pocketing the difference. I fully intended to snort the whole lot in the bath. If I didn't OD, I hoped I'd drown...
A few days later he came back to me saying he couldn't get it (couldn't be bothered, more like). I still had a ridiculous, botched attempt at overdosing and drowning myself. It obviously didn't work (well I'm still here, aren't I?) But about FIVE YEARS LATER this same person sold me a £20 deal of powder cocaine at a rave in Norwich (only time I've ever scored snorty coke) saying he "had a bit of brown in a drawer" if I'd like to come back to his. Of course I was round like a shot ~ I'd always wanted to sample heroin purely out of curiosity. He was dealing the stuff by then and said I could have as much as I could smoke. So I smoked a full £20 deal, which astonished him. Then I went home with another £20 deal. And that was my introduction to heroin. My point being: if I hadn't sincerely wanted to kill myself I'D NEVER HAVE GOT INTO HEROIN TO START WITH. You see ~ IT WAS ALL ABOUT DEATH TO BEGIN WITH!
I'm sorry to end on a negative note. I'm thinking maybe I ought to write out my life story. I find telling the truth distances me from the facts. I want to be as remote from them as possible... I'll retell my life to avoid EVER RELIVING IT AGAIN. I mean, it doesn't matter if no "real" publishers are interested: I'll dump it on ebook, told by "Anonymous"... (or "by Gledwood": whichever).
I'll leave my closing paragraph to Google Translate:~~
Entonces,espero que tengastodo bien.Lo siento,no he visitadoninguno de vosotros.No heestado alrededor.Me sientomejor ahora.¡Guau,me siento bien deestar vivo!
So,I hope you'reall well. Sorry,I have not visitedany of you.I have notbeen around.I feel better now.Wow, it feels good tobe alive!
Methadone is a highly addictive synthetic opiate, more addictive than heroin and harder to withdraw from, but it survives the digestive system and so does not need to be injected. Most addicts loathe it. They call it green gunk and grimace as they swallow. All of today's addicts have been coming to the pharmacy for months, some for years. And that's the problem.
And what of those heroin addicts not in treatment? They visit me regularly for clean needles to inject filthy brown street heroin. There is growing evidence to support treating these long-term relapsing addicts with pure heroin. A blueprint for the requisite regulatory changes has been created, but until the laws are changed they must remain thieves and prostitutes, rather than patients, victims of legalised social neglect.
MY LANDLORD came and tamed our Rampant Bush, then his handyman came in and polished all my cookertops and kitchen surfaces. With an explosion of magazines, papers and carrier bags on every available surface, the hanchman asked how I ever sat down. I told him the mess was my attempt at tidying (well that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it). With all the mess cleaned up and the lake mopped up (caused by a dodgy fuse that made the fridge go off nearly all weekend causing a mini Lake Baikal to accumulate under the washing machine) and a new light in the bathroom, which I nearly brought the ceiling down trying to change, the place is looking wonderful. My sleep has been seriously all over the place. My appetite is down. My moods are swirling. I've been feeling very anxious and a bit hyped up. I've been trying to keep a journal of my feelings but they're so all over the place, just writing about them makes me very supset again. I'm not "depressed", but three things happened in the past week that upset me greatly and this is what triggered all that heart-stopping anxiety that has been killing me so un-softly. I realized that one person, who I thought I could trust, doesn't understand my viewpoint at all and doesn't really respect my feelings, probably never has, and wants me to take a course of action that is dangerously irresponsible. I got a message saying DO NOT TRUST HIM. And though I doubt the Messanger's motives, I sadly realized this message was accurate. I've received frightening messages before, and they also turned out to be true. My feelings around Binky are confused, too. I say I'm confused; she's seriously confused. Binky has a lot of health problems, her body is collapsing. O, and to add insult to injury, we both have common colds. But because she's more fragile than me, she has a chest infection on top.
I just deleted a load of stuff on my mixed feelings on her torrential emotional torments. But it's not fair to write like that behind my friend's back. And as I say, my feelings are so swirled up, it's hard to say what I really think. Anything I put now I may disagree with in half an hour's time. My family think I should make new friends who are sane and clean; but frankly, who would have me? I feel so comfortable around psychiatric patients because they seem to accept me for who I am. The junkies certainly don't (and the ones who did are all dead). The old "Nutter Club" that I used to find so supportive (before it was axed) was actually a Dual Diagnosis group for addicts with severe mental health problems. It was the one support group where I felt I could speak freely. This is my biggest problem: I don't feel I have the support of anyone who really understands me. I do have the support of my family and they try to understand me. I don't know how successful they are. A need that was uppermost when I was younger has started to resurface; a need to be Understood. Perhaps behind this is my own need to understand myself. With so many conflicting emotions and moods in strange admixtures, it's hard to say what I feel about anything. I feel in need of some kind of support, but I'm not getting it. I do have an official Support Worker but I get the impression that, like so many others down the years, he thinks my problem is that I just don't give a shit and just need to pull myself together. Well I used to think that, too. Whatever I said, that is what I actually thought in my heart. Then I tried to pull myself together and found I couldn't do it. And I don't know why. My family, the only people in this crazy world who I do trust implicitly, seem to expect that once I'm finally ffree of all drugs, and this of course includes methadone, then my turbulence should resolve. Well if it does, I don't expect anything to happen straight away. Various NA members have told me that the first year Clean is a real challenge. Moods and emotions no longer blanketed by opiates burning brighter than ever before. The rehab I emailed some months ago with brief details of my situation and meds emailed back saying the methadone might actually be acting as a mood stabilizer (though it doesn't feel like it is). So that, without it, unless they up my psyche meds I'm likely to be more unstable than ever before. So I don't know what to make of any of this. Anyway I'm not scared of getting clean. I've spent about 30% of my life addicted to heroin. Which means that 70% of that journey was travelled without chemical dependency. Contrary to stereotype, I never got hooked on my drug of choice until 28 years of age. So I have vast experience of living and surviving without needless crutch of opiates and there is no doubt in my mind that I can survive again. I don't expect it to be easy; but I don't expect it to be too difficult, either. Before Heroin I was a much more complicated person than I am now, with a poor sense of self-identity. But I have matured despite my drug habit (which some addiction experts say never happens). People who knew me back then say I'm so much more comfortable in my own skin. Even my old drug worker from about three years ago seemed astonished at the change in my demeanour. Perhaps she's seeing the swtich from constant low-grade depression to constant low-grade hypomania... But perhaps not. I think it's something more. Despite everything I feel more at home with my Self ~~ turmoil and confusion aside I'm far happier now than I was even two years ago. They say the longest journey begins with that first step... I just hope that finally I'm stepping in the right direction...
I'M SUPPOSED to be keeping a diary of my mood. My mood is intermittently "up". Yesterday I had a single cup of Typhoo tea (I state the brand, in case it comes to light that a case of mass tea-spiking, with cocaine and amphetamines has occurred, because I certainly felt like I was speeding) I was high. Two cups and I was "speeding off my tits". I only kept drinking the tea because (1) I really like tea (2) I really like being high (I only avoid caffeine like the plague when I'm depressed because then, if it does anything at all, it's likely to make me feel horribly anxious and because I consider morbid anxiety to be the worst of all mental conditions, no way in hell will I go near caffeine then!... Anyway by two a.m. I'd had about five cups of tea (spread over the course of the day) and I really couldn't sleep. I went to bed for two minutes, realized sleep was impossible and so get up and spent the rest of the night watching a DVD that I couldn't even remember buying called Against the Wall, about a prison riot and reading the NA Big Book. I started at the decaffeinated coffee but frankly it tastes horrible so I gave that up and went back to bed around six a.m. and slept. But I was up by 11:30 freezing my arse off (literally).
Oh by the way does anyone else wake up repeatedly in the night to see swarms of flies at the curtains? On closer inspection these "flies" turn out to be a swarm of miniature books (hardbacks) flapping their covers merrily to stay aloft! I'm not kidding? Why does this happen to me? Is it because I'm not taking my medication? (I was depressed last week and wanted to induce a mood switch, so intuition told me that drastically reducing the dosage might achieve this and WOW I was right!) Does anyone out there actually think I should be taking psyche meds? Because a lot of people seem to think that I shouldn't. I don't mind hearing voices. I like it. It's like free entertainment beamed direct to the mind. As for visual hallucinations ~ they're always a plus. I mean, think of all those kids spending their hard-earned money on strange pills and trips ~~ and yet I get the effects for free! (Similar efffects, not exactly the same as any drug.)
Well I'm NOT hypomanic. Because ever since getting up I've felt stone-cold "normal". The high mood is intermittent. So har har har to my doctors if you're reading this I'm not mentally ill! (Again.)
IT is FREEZING COLD. I've got the blow-heater on, blowing like crazy. I've managed to switch myself out of depression by cutting DOWN my medication. Now I feel stone cold normal most of the time. Except when I get this weird meaningless feeling of excitement, which is really entertaining. But the main problem is IT'S COLD... FAR TOO COLD! And I'm drinking tea to stay warm and the caffeine makes me hyper and high. So I spent half the night playing All Saints songs on top volume... here are 2 good tunes:
STREISAND: YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE
ALL SAINTS: BLACK COFFEE
Illustrated: scene from Zao Mountains, Japan, featuring "ice monsters" (snow-encrusted firs)
WINTER is drawing inexorably closer. My house feels exceptionally chilly, clammy and damp. I daren't use the central heating any more after testing it out the other day and running up a bill of nearly £8 in eight hours (I'm sure I read the meter right).
Like a lot of other people I know, I feel run down, sickly and miserable and the time of year, surely, is a major factor.
As I said yesterday, my friend has what sounds like a badly behaved less-than-year-old Alsatian/Akita cross in need of a good home. I would really like to take her on but Binky says it's a terrible idea as I wouldn't be up to the responsibility. One of the dog's behavioural problems is chewing things up in her owner's absence, which really wouldn't endear her to me. But on the other hand, the fact that she's big and furry with pointy ears would endear her a lot. I forgot to ask whether she pulls at the leash, because that really annoys me. If I'm going to have a dog I want a really well-behaved one. I've never seen a badly-behaved Akita but there's a first for everything.
I've been feeling down for a week or two now. This past weekend, in order to "regulate my mood" (my GP's expression) I tried taking my pills one in the afternoon and one at night, like I'm supposed to. Usually I take the entire dose at night in order to avoid daytime drowsiness.
So by five pm I was whacked out unconscious. I woke again at midnight, in time to take pill number two. And then slept all the way round till 9:30 ~ just in time to drink my methadone. Was awake for less than an hour... and slept round again... eventually rousing myself after two pm, making a grand total of twenty hours' sleep. Now that is ridiculous. The next night (Sunday) I slept badly, only going to bed around two and waking at 7:30, freezing cold. But last night I was unconscious for twelve hours in one block. So my sleep's all over the place. They do say winter depression is a kind of human hibernation response with the hypersomnia and carbs cravings. I've been packing on the pounds lately with all the Mr Kiplings Country Slices, chocolate limes and other stodge I'm consuming every day. So I'm trying to give up the sweets and stick to cottage pies with "country mixed vegetables". And supermarket Chinese chicken curry and beef in blackbean sauce. Not that I'm obsessed with food or anything. I haven't got the true Seasonal Affective Disorder ~ I know I haven't, because the most hyper and manic I've ever been was also in midwinter. My Mum says she gets winter depressions though ~ every single year. When I'm a famous writer I think I'm going to move to the Bahamas.
OK well I've gotta go home to microwave Sainsbury's Chinese Beef in Blackbean Sauce and I'll tell ya if it's OK.
I hope y'all are OK. Especially those of you in Continental Northern Europe or the northern United States or Canada... places where the climate's even worse than here.
PS Kate and Wills and the Third in Line to the Throne, due next June ~~ wahey!!
IT IS nearly 4pm. I have been up since 10 or 11am. I go to bed relatively early and get up late because I'm sleeping 12 hours solid. Between 7 and 9am I nearly always wake up. Then I drink my methadone and fall back to sleep. Drinking my dose a good 2 hours before I get up means that once I am up, the methadone is working full-on and I'm far less tempted to use the alternative.
I had a horrible dream that my Dad, who doesn't even like taking headache pills, had a couple of ounces of very low grade, dark brown heroin.
Usually when I wake up after a dream like that, I just want to use. But today it never even crossed my mind.
I got up, got tomorrow's methadone (because I pick it up a day in advance) and for some reason, youtubed up the Prisoner Cell Block H theme, which made me so sad I nearly cried.
I have felt lousy all day. I never even bothered showering until ten minutes ago. I have been stuck in a chair, staring at television, not wanting to move.
Yesterday, I suppose I managed about 900 words of this children's story, which is supposed to be ridiculous comedy. I was going to force out another 600 words (2 manuscript pages) last night, but had taken my medication too early and just wanted to sleep.
I'm only on 300mg (quetiapine). My friend is on 750 mg quetiapine (Seroquel) plus TWO antidepressants ~ mirtazapine and venlafaxine (Remeron and Effexor). What the doctors are trying to do in her case is medicate the very changeable moods of borderline personality disorder (her quetiapine is for schizophrenic psychosis) but I'm not sure this can ever work.
The BPD is sometimes considered to be on the "bipolar spectrum" but the mood swings in BPD ~ swinging from OK (not euphoric or high) to very angry, frustrated or sad ~ are totally different from bipolar moods which in my case have, at the extreme, alternated between highest exaltation and deepest despair, although I can get extremely irritable at both poles, especially mania.
Anyway I am not and have not been even hypomanic for several weeks. I am now getting more and more depressed.
Under normal cirumstances my moods aren't very much more extreme than those of Stephen Fry as filmed for the Secret Life of the Manic Depressive documentary, although when I'm hypomanic I'm probably more hyper, more cheerful and prone to laugh uproariously over practically nothing. My attitude towards the "illness" is similar to his. He was taking no medication and I don't want any more than I'm on. The last thing I want is a mood that's pancake-flat.
I also agree with the man who says he's seen angels in psychotic mania ~ that it's worth any amount of misery to go that high. [I didn't see angels: I felt trillions of volts powering through my brain and went into outer space.]
But I agree with Carrie Fisher too ~ eventually I'm going far too fast. Thoughts are racing totally out of control. Then they all crash into each other and become completely garbled. The whole world is in ridiculous slow motion. So that when the computer asked me for a password and then spent what felt like months considering my answer before allowing me in, I very nearly sent it crashing across the room, on many occasions.
Someone once asked me how, if I was in such a mess, I managed to put up posts with pictures. The answer is, I very nearly didn't. The pictures only appeared hours later and the effort of finding them put me into near-meltdown with yelling and swearing and the computer was lucky to survive at all.
In mania the symptoms vary widely over the course of a day. So when I was in complete confusion ~ which lasted for hours ~ I never posted at all. I couldn't even speak coherently, let alone write, And there were many occasions when I literally could not read at all.
As for "liking" being bipolar, if my mood continues to fall, ask me the same question in a couple of weeks and you might get a very different answer.
(I'm not trying to say, by the way, that I enjoy losing my mind, just that I love the extremely high moods... And why does the world have to be so crap that the only "illness" that makes you feel better than anything else is the same one that shows you utter hopeless bleakness and despair?)
Over the last couple of days, I took to wondering, if I ever did achieve success, how I would possibly cope. The answer is, if I ever made any serious money (how would I do that anyway?) I would be extremely stressed by it. But would still far rather be rich than poor. The only thing it could pay for is a change of scenery and I would use it to insulate me from the world as much as possible. And I don't think I will ever find true happiness. Never, ever.
I have just been watching, with one eye, a documentary about the Baader-Meinhof gang and Stammheim prison. I love TV programmes about the Cold War era, the Iron Curtain and the Eastern Bloc. That's one reason I so like watching telly in German.
My house is getting more and more untidy. I don't mind cleaning sinks, surfaces and showers ~ what I hate is clearing, sweeping, scrubbing and mopping the floor ~ and it requires all four. So most of the rubbish is on the floor now, uncleared up.
The Great Bathroom Stench, by the way, has temporarily gone. I know if I call the landlord, the bad smell will hide, only to return with avengeance once he's left.
I should end on an inspiring note ~ weeks before that man made the 128,000 ft leap from space to earth, another guy in America, constructed a gas baloon with a camera that filmed the whole ride up right into the stratosphere. When it fell to earth with a GPS, they found it and you can watch the film here.
UKKKKHHH WHAT A WASTE OF TIME. It took me all day just to get up. Properly. I actually got up at around 6:30am because I know when I'm not going to sleep any longer. Then I watched some French crap and brooded. Then I switched to American crap: some Danielle Steel mini-drama about a beautiful woman with very fake looking blue-eye contact lenses whose ancient husband is terminally ill falls in love with another man. Halfway through I started leafing through a book, but it was still OK.
I tried going back to bed in the afternoon because I felt so ill but it was a waste of time.
My friend Pink is back in the nuthouse. Transferred back from the unit that gave her skin-grafts for third degree burns she inflicted on her leg by deliberately setting herself on fire. I cannot handle going in there today because 1 she is confined to her room with her leg in splints so no smoking and 2 I cannot face having a shower.
I keep forgetting I am actually (theoretically, at least) taking an antidepressant every single day. For what good it does me. This afternoon I started feeling desperate enough to go and hit doctors I don't know with a sob story about having come down from Manchester with a plane to catch and how I desperately need my Prozac (to induce a manic episode) or Dothiepin (to OD and hopefully die). I think I'd go for the Dothiepin because it's meant to be stronger than Prozac anyhow. Dothiepin is a tricyclic antidepressant, the only type that is worth ODing on. Because you really do go into the classical Danielle Steel drama style unconsciousness. Then you start fitting out. Which knowing my luck would attract my fuckwit neighbours, because fitting people can involuntarily scream. Then you have a heart attack and hopefully never come back. Dothiepin is now known as dosulepin, apparently: see ~ I would have got busted straight away asking for a drug that hasn't even bourne its own name for 20 years...
Well I don't want to die. I just want to get out of here because I am boiling hot. I have a dr's appointment on Wednesday anyhow. The "antidepressant" I mentioned being on is actually an antipsychotic (Seroquel). If I'd been popping real antidepressants I'd have gone star-rocketing up a long while ago. But Seroquel does nothing. It is only recommended for bipolar depression because bipolar people's brains are so fucked they cannot tolerate any normal drugs at all.
Well I've got to go. Sweat is running down my back it is disgusting. I hope your weekend was a hell of a lot better than mine.
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...
MY EAR IS CLEAR! I stuck a rolled up bit of toilet paper right into the end of the narrowly winding sinus that is my eardrum thing and as I pulled it out a loud POP! and WOW!!! I don't need the telly on top volume any more. Which is just as well as I'm in the front room and don't have a TV licence. My Mum (I think) is buying me a new one. But I'm frankly feeling a bit old for living off Mummy's charity and might just go out and buy one myself. I heard you can pay weekly at about £3 a week. Which is slightly IRRITATING as I barely watch BBC and am about to get my telly switched to the 19.2E Astra satellites which broadcast mostly in GERMAN. Not a single BBC channel among them. Yet our bastard government insist everybody must pay the BBC a whacking great licence fee of £150 a year no matter whether they watch TV in Polish, Arabic or Zulu ~ this for just seven channels, 4 of which share frequencies (it is no coincidence that when Cbeebies goes down BBC4 starts. The cheapskates won't even pay £70,000 a year for a dedicated frequency. And they don't do +1 hour channels. For the same money you can get 175 channels off Virgin or more than 400 from Sky. Yet we are obliged to pay £150 a year for 7 channels a lot of people don't want to watch. Why the hell does this ridiculous monopoly go on? And why do they continue to make EastEnders? (This is the BBC's flagship working-class soap.) Nobody I know watches it anymore. I used to watch it. Everyone I knew used to follow it. Drug dealers used to say "I'm not coming out while EastEnders is on".... NOBODY watches it now. Ah! I just googled it. 8.55 million people supposedly saw it last week. Down from a peak of about 30 million who tuned into Den and Angie's divorce back in the day. Maybe there are that many mentally retarded people in Britain. I don't know anyone who likes it any more.
I just went into the satellite shop who said they could get me a 90cm dish, and an HD box (I haven't got an HD telly but it supposedly still works) and installation all-in for £150. I have to come in tomorrow to make a definite appointment for Tuesday. I'm going to spend the money on German television 1: because watching television is a waste of time and this way I can at least convince myself I'm somehow educating myself as I go. 2: you supposedly get French channels as well. I supposedly "speak" French and German. (Even though I don't.) and 3: if I don't spend the £150 on new telly channels it'll probably go on some nefarious brown lumpy substance that is only perpetuating a 14 year habit (if you include a year of experimentation plus a further year of on-off addiction). So the £150 is getting spent. I don't know why I was ranting about the heroin purity yesterday. It feels like less than a quarter of what it once was. O yeah I do. Because at the clinic they like to say the heroin is really weak. Well it didn't used to be. It was strong enough to render their pathetic non-substitute methadone ineffective. Most days, by the end, I was spending "only" £15 a day. For that you got 0.4g heroin. And I needed 90-120mg methadone to even half feel good when I wasn't on it. Not 30 or 40mg. 120.
Well enough of this ranting. I'm so glad my ear is half back to normal. I still have louder-than-normal tinnitus that side. (I've had constant ringing in the ears since age 17: I just don't let it bother me.) If it doesn't go I will get Dr Lovelace to peer in for me. Last time I managed to block up my ear with clandestine excavations I got an A-grade infection there as well. Felt like somebody had planted an acorn in my head and a mighty oak was sprouting sideway into my brain.
O cripes I just had to run and pee out the back. Why does pissing take such an odiously long time when you're in a hurry? By the way is it true women can piss faster than men? Something to do with wider pipes, or something. I'm glad I'm not a pregnant alcoholic. Then I'd be peeing all the time.
I tried not taking my medication last night. Being as it's useless crap that appears to do nothing except knock me sideways about 90 minutes after popping the pills. It doesn't stop me hearing voices (which barely ever bother me anyhow: it's like getting free radio broadcasts without the hassle of turning the radio on). Doesn't stop me getting depressed. It might stop me a bit from getting manic, but I wanted to be in a manic mood last night. What am I saying? I WAS hypomanic. I know I am when I can walk down the street feeling like a strong wind is pushing me along from behind, when I feel all excited over nothing, when I'm disinhibited and overtalkative and when I CANNOT SLEEP. I took three Nytol one-a-nights and was STILL wide awake at 5am. I didn't sleep till 6. Then Pinky went and rang me after 6 hours' sleep accusing me of ignoring her. She is in a mental health crisis house for having a mini-breakdown.
Well what else was I going to say?~? I'm saving a FORTUNE since switching my fridge off. Even that slight defrost (3 days after a full defrost) left a miniature Loch Ness on the kitchen floor. Shame it didn't have emerald green banks and an aquatic diplodocus skulling around, that would have looked really cute. Almost as cute as a surprised roborovski hamster. Anyone who says hamsters don't have facial expressions doesn't know hamsters. They are really good at looking shocked and surprised. Golden hamsters perk their ears up and sit up on their haunches, hands together in a very fey manner.
O yeah that reminds me what am I going to eat today. I've munched down a quarter kilo of sultana grapes. Those are the tiny ultra-sweet seedless ones that go yellow when they're ripe.
Anyway I've gotta go. Hope you didn't have too much of a shit weekend. Bye!!!!!!!!!!
Illustrated: lovely fresh sunripened sultana grapes (and by the way, what other bloody method of ripening IS there??!) Sunripened my arse.
I FEEL flat as a French pancake (they are very flat). And kind of depressed. What am I saying? I probably am depressed. I wake up every morning hating the day. Then Judge Judy comes on various channels. Then various shows about housewives that I don't actually watch; they just come on anyway. There's nothing at all on TV tonight so I'm definitely going for German TV. At least that way, I can waste hours on end and tell myself it's all an education as I'm picking up the language.
There's little else to say. I wrote this about 8pm last night. Only thing I'm looking forward to is popping my 2 pills that wipe me out. Nothing to stay awake for.
Ha! Except, I found this OK but totally BO-ridden crackhead's jacket in the trash. I know it belongs to a crackhead as an old Martel pipe came tinkling out of the same bin. Anyways, I've washed it once yet it STILL reeks. So I've tried to copy Bugerlugs' technique by soaking bath towels in half a bucket of water and three capfuls of blue fabric conditioner. Later I'm going to add more conditioner and more water and soak this jacket on top to see if I can get it fresh again. Then I'm going to wash the whole lot with at least three times the recommended dose of softner. And see what happens. I've turned the spin off on the washing machine to try and save electricity...
YEAH... today I came to this horrible realization: that I have to drop the Big H, the Killer B, heroin, skag, smack, brown number 3, whatever you want to call it. I wasted money I couldn't really afford on a dose just because I had a bellyache, which was almost certainly caused by quaffing down Lithuanian cherry cyder for breakfast... As ye sow, so shall ye reap, you see...
Ever since I hit up many weeks ago, and then found myself feeling hyped up hours later so that I couldn't sleep all night, heroin appears to be having a "paradoxical effect" it never used to have in that every now and then, several hours after taking a dose (if you look it up, heroin is supposed to work for about four hours, this takes place after that time has elapsed) it's helping make me or keep me hypomanic. This doesn't happen every time I take it: if I'm depressed before I use, I usually simply feel less depressed. But if hypomania is crouched around the corner, it seems to be bringing it out of hiding.
I just don't know what's going on any more. I'm on enough of a (mental) health kick to have completely given up caffeine (yet again).
The first time I gave up caffeine I had been suffering from depression, which had mostly faded leaving an ongoing sense of free-floating anxiety (ie anxiety related to nothing in particular). I also happened to be drinking at least five cups of strong tea per day. When I switched to decaffeinated tea, the anxiety quickly vanished.
A few months ago I drank four cups of tea in the space of a couple of hours, after which my mood felt noticably "elevated" (like I'd taken a little bit of speed). As the afternoon pinged past, the caffeine buzz became intertwined with depression, so that I just felt "weird". And then I became really paranoid and terrified that if this feeling didn't go, I'd end up in a mental unit. I really did feel very strange indeed ~ and caffeine seemed to have set off the whole episode. So I now don't drink any caffeine at all. Which makes respectable tea-drinking impossible (because I don't really like decaff tea). The only non-caffeinated, non-alcoholic beverage I can stomach in large amounts is Sainsbury's own lemonade. It's like the lemonade I drank in my childhood. No aspartame or acesulfame-K (unlike Morrisons'). No real lemon juice (which R Whites now add to theirs). Just old-fashioned 1970s style lemonade. Which my dentist would probably reprimand me over... but nobody's perfect. The only other drink I like is chicken and vegetable Cup-A-Soup with croutons (it has to have croutons).
Once I've kicked heroin, I've kicked drugs. There is nothing left, chemical-wise, to inspire me.
I have never promised myself never ever to take another Valium, or sleeping pill, because I don't and never did abuse these. Taking one 10mg diazepam because you're on the verge of a panic attack is no more drug abuse than is taking aspirin for a headache. Whether or not my doctor prescribed it is neither here nor there as far as I'm concerned. The Seroquel I'm on feels like Valium and sleeping pills anyhow. Usually, I get really good sleep on the stuff, which is one reason I don't want to switch to Olanzapine (Zyprexa) like my GP suggested last time I got a refill.
Well this post was written completely off the top of my head, so I hope it's reasonably OK. I have an appointment at the methadone clinic tomorrow and I think I'm going to have to say the unsayable: that me and heroin are finally going to part. It had to happen sooner or later, else there's no point reducing my methadone. The time is coming when using on top is going to completely saboutage my detox. I've given up heroin before. When Britain was in complete heroin drought in late 2010/early 2011 I didn't touch the stuff for weeks on end. Even though I was stupid enough to go back to it, at least I proved to myself that abstainance is possible.
And anyway ~ here's Madonna!
OPEN YOUR HEART The video seems totally irrelevant to the theme of this song, but hey...
I HAD A CRAZY morning. I noticed I felt a bit hyper and high yesterday afternoon and I went higher in the night and ended up copying out pages of Japanese characters. I couldn't sleep a wink. By the mid-morning my mind was pinging all over the place. If you want some entertainment, go see the post I put up around 11am. My mind was overwhelmed with ideas but I just could not compose myself to compose a coherent post and I was racing so fast I lost track long before fingers on keys could even attempt to keep up. All the while I was running lower and lower on time. Eventually I just had to click "Publish" before I got timed out.
By the way, the micro-pigs were relevant. For some reason I felt it necessary to say in Japanese, would you like to be a micro-pig, or a stream, or a dwarf?
I can't spent long here; I'm going to try and catch up on lost sleep, but I have the distinct impression my sleep has switched poles. Lately my sleep disturbance has grown very extreme. By my calculation I spent more than three quarters of the weekend unconscious. Not just duvet-diving to avoid the world (though I was doing that too) but hibernating in bed, sleeping deeply all through the day ~ and the night as well.
The doctors' surgery annoyed me this morning. I put in my repeat prescription request for my antipsychotics early because I seem to have lost a week's worth of pills. The form came back covered in highlighter pen saying it was far too early and alledging that I must have been bingeing on my own medication. This was signed by a doctor I have never seen and never want to see. When my friend Pinky also registered at this surgery, she was unlucky enough to see this Doctor Arse, as she is called (by me), who saw fit to question the value of prescribing her 750mg of Seroquel XR (which costs about £70 or $100 a pack) when dirt cheap alternatives like haloperidol with its loathesome side-effects cost pennies (and no wonder ~ that's all it's worth). Then she queried Pinky's fentanyl patch with the special dressing that stops it peeling off. Without fentanyl (an extremely powerful opioid analgesic) Pinky would be bedridden and in agony. She needs a knee replacement. Many days she can barely walk.
O man my attention span is still in bits; I forget where I was going with this.
Instead of buying heroin I've been buying CDs (I did buy a tiny bit of heroin but it did precious NOTHING). I got some pretty banging tunes by DJ Tiësto and a weird CD for £1 brand new that appears to be blank (no wonder it was cheap) I also bought Adele 21 thinking it must be good because so many people have bought it (it's outsold Michael Jackson's Thriller in the UK). How wrong I was. I hadn't realized Adele was behind that awful dirge "could have had it better" ~ if I'd known that I'd have gone nowhere near it. I gave it to Pinky and did a good salesman job saying I might detest it, but four million other people can't be wrong. By the way that woman has packed on so very many pounds she managed to go seven months pregnant without anybody realizing ~~ Adele that is, not Pinxx.
Today I bought Madonna's True Blue ~ a real 1986 blast from the past. Plus something called Everything Is Wrong by Moby.
Now what was I going to say?
Yeah I keep getting extreme mood swings. In the last seven days I've been hypomanic at least twice. Plus this morning I had full-on mania. Well it's better than being depressed. I cleaned my toilet with bleach, did the cooker top with shower cubicle spray (pound shop best) and cleaned my sink. My kitchenette is gleaming.
I'm giving the antipsychotics a break. There's nothing wrong with an Elevated Mood. Obviously I'm hoping for more Elevation. I did get fed up of people throwing me funny looks this morning. What a paradox: on no drugs I go highest of all.
Actually, come to think of it, that is completely crazy. How can they call a condition where you don't just feel Better Than Well, but Better Than Ever a psychotic mental disease? That's ridiculous.
Well I've got to go. Sainsbury's are selling Lloyd Grossman for £1 so I got Italianesque gunk called Puttanesca "I love this delicious combination of sun ripened tomatoes [what other kind of tomatoes is there?], black olives and anchovies," he drones. ~~I've got a plate of stuffed mushroom pasta fantasmagoria'd with the stuff. I lost my appetite last week. Which is all to the good. Quetiapine is notorious for turning nutters into great fat wobbling tubs of lard ~ I'm pretty sure I still weigh at least 185lbs (down from 200). I might ~ shock of shocks ~ actually lose a few lbs instead of packing on more pork.
I must dash. Lloyd Grossman's literally calling my name. Ukk ~ OK, not literally; I forgot for a moment there that I'm a schizo. If I did hear voices today they wre so mixed up in the background of bizarreness, it was mere more disquiet drizzled over mass-peculiarity.
These are two of Moby's best tracks. Very good.
PS I actually took a proper shower this morning. Instead of a glorified stripwash. Wow, I must have been feelin' good ☺.
Before you ping away, do go and be entertained by the manic crap I avalanched this morning. BTW in Japanese I was asking, what would you rather be, a little river, a little pig or a little person.
FEELING SO REAL
BRING BACK MY HAPPINESS
top tunes!!
Illustrated: a tub of lard ~ what Seroquel turns you into...
I'VE BEEN FEELING over-emotional all day. I don't know why. I don't know if I had too much sleep. I went to bed around 11pm on Thursday night and had to get up by quarter to ten to get my phone back from where I'd left it in the internet shop. So that's a good ten hours' sleep. By midday I was back in bed again with exhaustion. I slept right through past eight p.m. I took my medication (quetiapine 300mg) and was back in bed by eleven; I slept right through past 5 a.m. ~ making a grand total of 24 hours out of 30. Being so early there was nothing to do except watch Michael Jackson videos. And I was back in bed by six and I woke up around ten. So that's a ridiculous amount of sleep I got. And I still feel I could sleep some more!
I bought Michael Jackson's Moonwalker from my local record shop and have been playing it over and over, as background music. This is what happens when you're deprived of TV. Of all the tunes in that film, it's the snatch of USA for Africa "We Are The World" that's stuck in my head, spinning round my brain.
Happy nostalgia Everyone, and have a Great Weekend!
I DON'T know what to say. I don't feel as crap as this time last week... but that doesn't necessarily "mean" anything. I long ago noticed that my mood (whether high or low, or both) inevitably follows a
wavy line; that is, if you imagine a piece of paper with a line through the middle, denoting "normal" mood, as well as fluctuating each side of normal ("high and low") it has been known to stay high, above the line of normality, and to still follow the wobbly line, or, more commonly, to remain low, always below "normal" but still endlessly wobbling on and on. Does that "mean" anything...? Probably not. But does that happen to anyone else? If so, please tell me.
I told one of my doctors about this donkeys years ago... then the shrink at the drugs clinic, who I used to see every week, some years ago, noticed it herself and proposed LITHIUM..!! The last thing I wanna take! All it's good for (so I hear) is for breaking open and sprinkling on your chips (and British chips are like really fat French fries)... with vinegar. As for other mood stabilizers, my GP prescribed carbamazepine (Tegretol) about 18 years ago... I never did know why. I took it, then gave up on it. Then took it again, as a one-off, when I couldn't sleep and it brought me out in a terrible rash. My skin looked like wax. Never again.
I'm only popping the quetiapine (Seroquel) 300mgs out of desperation. If I ever feel like I want "out", I need only pop 150mg during the day, and daytime slumber is assured. And in case you're viewing that as borderline drug-abuse, it's actually prescribed as 150mg twice a day. I only take 300mg at night for convenience. Because ordinarily I don't like being knocked out during the day. I don't know what else I wanted to say. Nothing really. I'm OK. I'm OK. OK. Don't worry about me...
THIS TUNE HAS BEEN GOING ROUND IN MY HEAD...
DON MCLEAN: THE GRAVE
WANT SOMETHING LESS MORBID?
MADONNA:~~
"...I'M GONNA RELAX
IN THE ARMS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS..."
