HELLO it is a hot sticky Saturday afternoon I'm not in the mood to post anything but I'm here so why not. Oh my computer that I use every day STILL doesn't offer me internet access. If you're wondering why haven't I had it repaired it's because I've been too busy using Microsoft Word to hand it in to some repair person for two weeks. Also I don't want its memory to be wiped. I NEED Word on that machine. I've got a horrible feeling that absolutely every program on that thing is going to have to be deinstalled. Every single one. Wow, that's going to be fun. Because the antivirus or antispam thing is blocking internet access... blah blah it's a long story.
I don't know why but I found myself thinking about my past and feeling very kind of ... what's the word ... I dunno. Sorry for myself? Disgusted? Lost? Indulgent? Who knows?? Well that's the thing you see, I think my biggest problem in life has been that I'm separate and divorced from myself. This makes me incredibly "objective" and excellent at second-guessing myself. But terrible at actually knowing how I feel. Lousy at living a joined-up existence. And very bad indeed at being one person instead of a collection of perceptions scattered all over the place.
I think that's why I turned to drugs. (Correction: DRUG singular ~~ h
eroin.) It made me feel whole and I have never been that. When I went mad a few years ago I was hearing voices every day and the voices are a kind of separation from self. When I was really insane it was impossible to tell whether I was thinking, hearing or imagining somebody else's dream. Nowadays I only hear voices when I'm really tired (I'm not talking about a dream ~~ I mean I'm awake when I hear them, but maybe you could call it a waking dream.) I sometimes see things... but none of that bothers me. Depression bothers me sometimes. Insecurity used to bother me a LOT. But I'm still to this day separate from myself... so how am I ever going to find out WHO I AM???
I'm sorry to everyone I haven't been in touch with but after this I really have to run; I'm too scared of staying online. Don't you feel like you're being spied on? Or that the internet is sucking your life away? I think one day we'll all be washing dishes and get sucked down a digital plug hole swirling with the babbling memories of times past and then we'll get swooshed away into the communal sewers of 21st Century Blues and wonder where the hell our lives went. Know what I mean?
BINKY AND I are getting on far far better than I would have imagined after our friendship-fracturing-to-the-point-of-near-termination blazing xmas day row. Which was kind of all my fault, as it was I who verbally stuck the boot in (I see in retrospect). Though at the time I believed I was merely making highly valid points that needed to be made if our dysfunctional relationship was to continue to function at all... I upset her so very much I'm deeply surprised that she wants to talk to me at all. (+ deeply touched.)
Tomorrow we're going to the art shop for my intellectual Japanese brushpen ink and her sketching equipment. For some reason, we're both into learning to draw black-n-white illustrations. Me to illustrate my children's book. Her purely for self-improvement, I think. She knows I've completed this story that I'm calling my "intellectual book" (there's nothing intellectual about it and it's barely long enough to be considered a book by anybody's standards, but I'm kind of proud of myself over my achievement at actually finishing something, even just this one tiny thing, that I started... know what I mean? So I'm learning illustration, to be able to put this story out on my own, without reliance on an outside illustrator. I'm learning Japanese brush pen because it'll give my work a distinctive aura all of its own that will be more difficult for outsiders to copy. Did you know the cartridges for this Pentel refillable brush cost literally £4 each??!? That's $6.59!!! So I took a syringe and pumped in 6 parts Windsor and Newton's India black and another 7 parts Lamy black bottled fountain pen ink and got a product almost as good. It's just not quite as sensitive to the very finest details, where the old product sank more into the paper this floats atop it, causing different effects. Also I find it quite different attemptedly painting in shadow, whereas naturally we see by light. So in effect I'm painting a photographic negative... know what I mean?
I'm also TRYING to write another story but am nowhere near as inspired as I'd like to be. + another, far better plot has come along, for another book, but I'm trying to finish the first book first... which is wearying and very trying for me, as I know I need to be most professional about all this. Even though I'm not a professional but merely a down-&-out schizo on benefits who is lucky to be able to write at all. And when I feel really ill I can't even do that. Can't get my head around the details of even the simplest passage of children's prose, in order to compare and improve short less than 1-page passages of parallel drafts. How truly pathetic is that?
Anyway, back to Binky's and my friendship. I think it's better than ever before, for this spring cleaning of truth-telling agony... how really weird is THAT??!?
My family say give her more benefit of the doubt, she is mentally ill and all that. Weirdly, Binky says I am mentally ill. It's true, at one point I did learn all the labels but labels are all they are ~ in the modern-day prevailing religion known as Psychiatry where the priests are the doctors and the Blessed Ones are diagnosed with Schizophrenia... Know what I mean? (Ie, I mean it's all bullshit.)
I do think I give Binky a lot of Benefit of the Doubt but was angry on xmas day because I thought she was insulting my intelligence and taking me for a ride. Now I think I was unnecessarily cruel to a person who is immensely brave and strong to have survived the cartload of shit that she has been through in life and the last thing she needs is a person like me, who should be supportive, undermining her in any way. So I've decided that I need to be much more of a friend and I'm doing the things I think friends do. So I hope I'm doing the right things...
Righty-ho I've got to go. Have a great New Years Eve everybody and NO TWERKING!!
WHERE IS IT WRITTEN?
BARBRA STREISAND singing in the film YENTL
I LOVE THIS SONG
You could say the words are totemic to my life...
I want this played at my funeral
o and here's a new year's song especially for you Akelamalu, because I know you like it
MADONNA: HANKY PANKY (BLOND AMBITION: LIVE IN YOKOHAMA)
Illustrated: top ~ this is what I think I have done in principle to Binky ~ beat up somebody who didn't deserve it though very kindly she forgave me; my Pentel Japanese cartridge brushpen; Japanese liquid "sumi" ink; "The Nightmare Before Xmas" (though ours was AT xmas...); "Where is it Written?" I love this tune...
HEY SOMEBODY BOUGHT ME A PRESENT! YES, finally I'm the proud owner of a real ink pen again! I lost all my old pens when I turned into a raving heroin junkie nearly 14 years ago (don't even know where they went: I certainly didn't sell 'em). I love a good ink pen, with a liberal nib that splurges ink all over the paper (before it sinks in, you can see the wet writing sort of standing up on the paper). So I'm really happy with this pen. It is for writing great literature with. Well... editing the "great literature" already written. I've so far revamped 5000 words and have "only" 25,000 to go! (Which is not that much prose: Liz set a goal to pen 50,000 words this month alone! A shortish adult novel would be 80,000 words and that would occupy about 200-300 pages, depending on typesetting.) So my 30,000 words isn't that much at all. When I'm in a good mood I do think (or hope, more like) that they're 30,000 pretty amazing words, it has to be said. (Well someone has to believe in this book~ it's my job to!)
WHY AM I SUCH A MISERABLE BASTARD? I should be happy. I have everything going for me. I have written draft one of this book I keep banging on about. Including illustrations it would comprise a 150-page (or so) volume. So it's not that long. But at least I achieved something ~ so why am I so bloody miserable? Ukh, I have no idea.
I told my methadone worker about all this and the new life I was hoping/intending to start up, you know, as a worthy writer and all and she said "what about your mental health?" (my drugs worker thinks I'm really nutty, last time when I came in looking particularly scruffy she said I looked "very community care" (community care is what they call it when you see a person going barking mad at the traffic lights. It means there's not enough room in British mental hospitals). Oh I saw a TV prog t'other day on Channel 4 called Bedlam. The episode I saw just happened to feature 3 bipolar people. The theatre studies girl happened to have been slapped with the same horrible label as me ("schizoaffective")... but I couldn't help but notice, when her manic episode wore off and the meds were working she looked completely and utterly sane ~ I mean, even saner than I am. There was a big black guy who the nurses said was being "horrible" (you have to be REALLY horrible to get that label from a mental health nurse!) and lastly a bloke who'd come in after a "suicide attempt" looking really chirpy and not at all depressed. Supposedly bipolar, but it turned out to be a misdiagnosis. The new doctors decided he was personality-disordered, promptly withdrew all drugs and chucked him out of hospital! Yeah so anyway, my future mental health. Well I've never expected to feel any different in the future from how I do now, and it turns out that was a most pragmatic move on my part. Because I've "achieved a life goal" and yet I feel practically the same as before! Every morning I wake up feeling miserable. Every time I stop thinking, moving, speaking, writing~ the misery floods back. Like a sinking ship, when you cease bailing out. Swamped all over again. Oh I dunno!
Hey I just had a really nice pineapple-vanilla ice lolly split. I do love a good lolly in the autumn. Inspires the mind to greater things.
OK I've got to go. Noah I will get back to ya tomorrow. I'm about to be timed out by this ******g thing. Can't swear. Now that I'm a children's writer ha ha!
AND TO THE MYSTERY PERSON: THANK YOU FOR THE PEN!!
Illustrated: Lamy Al-Star ~ a fountain pen for writting intellectual books; Liz Hinds jailbird extraordinaire (she's a prison chaplaincy adult literacy counselling assistant. Or something... Authoress of This Time Next Year, available on Amazon!The last photo shows Liz's dog George having an "issue" over a twig with a Northern Spitz. Nothing to do with anything really. Just liked the picture!
HELLO PEOPLE. I'm still around. Still trying NOT to take Nasty 'Eroin. It's all nasty nowadays. So piss weak you're paying for nothing and I've regretted it every time. I feel no different off it than on it. So I might as well stay off it, I keep telling myself. I'm off it now. And I thoroughly intend to stay that way! My head is full of such marvellous creative ideas that I'm more dissatisfied by my Actual Life ~ As It Actually Is ~ than ever before. I've decided the best thing I can do is to put into operation a certain long-cherished idea for a kiddies' book. Then if some publisher takes it, and I write a few more, I might HOPEFULLY get enough dosh behind me to actually be able to launch my Main Idea (which is a concept for a glossy magazine) ~ like an atom bomb on to an unsuspecting World. Trust me, when they see issue #1, Condé Nast are gonna piss their pants and wish my magazine were theirs. Years ago, I used to work for a large local newspaper chain, and one thing that taught me about the industry was that, in business terms, a magazine is essentially a load of adverts. Editorial is, in a sense, just filler, because it's the ads that keep any publication afloat. These days they even have a proper name for it. They call it "content" ~ as if it's a vacuum sitting there, longing to be filled in. This isn't exactly true. In the type of book I want to do, there's a great deal of synergy between editorial layouts and advertising. In other words, the heavier somebody advertisers, the heavier they feature in our wondrous photoshoots. So anyway I've been dwelling on that, in between feeling miserable, misplaced, mishapen. And sitting around wondering what I've done with my life. One thing that is becoming increasingly apparent is that Heroin has no place at all in my future. (As if I hadn't grasped that thorny fact many years ago...) Every week I've been going to a closed group therapy session at the methadone clinic. Although a cynical side of me sees Group Work as a money-saving exercise, there is a massive upside to doing Group. That is, that I get to be privy to other people's secret insecurities. They're essentially the same as mine. Last week, between four of us, three, including me, appeared to be so miserable we wished we had never been born and were just waiting to die. I get a certain consolation knowing I'm not the only person to feel this way. In a sense, though, I don't care how I feel. As my old friend Clare Bony Arse used to say: "WE'RE ALL ALONE IN THE DARK". Which was particularly poignant coming from Clare, because she had such severe eyesight difficulties (Retinitis Pigmentosa) that she only had 0.5% vision. And there was a real chance that in the next few years she would end up 100% blind. A thought so horrendous that I refused to give it space in my head.
Some of y'all seem to think that I feel especially sorry for myself, as if my own problems and predicament are somehow worse than anybody else's, but this has never been true. I have always, always known at least one person ~ often several people ~ who were considerably worse off than me. I remember years ago trying to explain depression to a person who had almost no grasp on the subject. Everybody seems to think they know depression. But in actuality only one person in TWENTY ever becomes seriously clinically depressed throughout the entire course of their lifetime. So this person says to me something along the lines of "you think you're the only person in the world ever to get depressed" ~ which has never been what I thought. A friend of mine at university had a breakdown so bad she ended up wandering the streets homeless, face covered in snot, convinced her life was the centre of a Satanic plot. It wasn't "schizophrenia", as you might expect. It was just particularly severe depression "with psychotic features" ~ and the doctors treated her with Prozac. So THAT was my idea of bad depression. I never thought my own depression "bad", in fact I thought it didn't count. I never saw myself as "mentally ill" and I never used my depression as an excuse to get out of anything, until things got so bad that I had to drag myself into my doctor's office ~ by which time I was so badly off I could barely string a sentence together. My GP gave me a medical certificate writing me off for the entire academic term. That autumn, at the start of my second year at uni, I spralled down so badly I barely attended any classes at all, and certainly never did any work. One afternoon they sprang a test on us (probably after weeks of notice, though I had no idea it was going to happen ~ + the marks went towards our final degree classification). I sat there for a few minutes, then wrote some obscenity across my paper in bold capitals and skulked out. It wasn't till years later that I looked back to this era and realized I was a lot worse off than I thought. I ended up dropping out of university, which completely knocked my confidence. Then I got a job and spent every waking our either working or on the way to or from work. Every hour I wasn't working or going to work I was fast asleep. In other words, really, I had no life at all. That's why I want to work again doing something I really believe in. If only I had something to do that I really wanted to do, I would never stop working. I mean, it's not as if I haven't spent more than a decade of my life essentially on a drugged-out vacation. I've had it with drugs and I've had it with living life on perpetual holiday. When I was younger I never, ever envisaged life as a layabout. Even at university, where I knew people who seemed to take pride and revel in their pothead, slacker existences, I never counted myself as one of them. I couldn't relate to their lifestyle at all.
I did end up dossing around quite a lot, but as I put it, I was at the time completely unemployable. I once (around the year 1992 or 1993) went for a job as a cloakroom attendant and I couldn't even get that. It wasn't that I didn't want to work in a nightclub full of pissed-up beer monsters (not my kind of place at all). The point, was that back then, wish zero self-confidence and almost zero social skills, I couldn't even pretend to muster the enthusiasm to get through an interview even for a menial post such as that... NOT good. If I've learned one thing Over The Years, I've learned how to put on a pretty good act. Nobody ever thinks I'm "mentally ill" now until I'm manic enough to appear High On Crack. Until that point I seem to come across either as happy, cheerful, full of enthusiasm or just a bit moody or morose. It does annoy me sometimes that nobody sees how desperate I feel inside ~ but in reality that is a brilliant skill to have in Life ~ and particularly in Business. Of course most of my more recent problems are self-inflicted (though no junkie ever sees their life entirely that way ~ particularly not when they're lost in the thick of it!) Not until I've dropped the "H" for good and weaned myself off methadone, will I ever truly be able to go Forward. (Much as anything else, you cannot travel the world on Heroin (at least, I would never dare try and do such a thing) ~ and my single most basic ambition is to get the hell OUT of Britain ~ at the earliest opportunity ~ and to STAY OUT ~ FOR EVER! Ukh I have gabbled on and on. The weekend has started. The dusk is illuminated by a hundred Turkish kebab shops. I have to go. (Do you see now why I never wanted to write my memoir. I get so bogged down in it all, whenever I turn my attention in that direction. I'm only looking in one direction Today, and that is TO THE FUTURE! WISHING Y'ALL A CHARMING WEEKEND. AND IF IT CAN'T BE CHARMING THEN MAY IT BE TOLERABLE!!
COUNSELLING: IS IT A GOOD THING? As regular readers might know, I'm currently undergoing group therapy towards an end known as "Mentalization". (Aka MBT.) But mentalization involves not just jumping to conclusions regarding the thoughts, feelings or motivations of others and "mentalizing" ~ ie thinking them over and, in many cases asking. Eg: "What is it you meant when you said that? Could you explain?"
Well I'm starting to think that if NOT FEELING is my coping mechanism, and if THINKING TOO MUCH is a personal fault in many people, not just me, then undergoing this group is going to achieve nothing except a persistent erosion of my mental health. I mean: are they actually TRYING to send me nuts? It's a question worth asking. I've been wondering just WHO I can trust in the world. Friend. Family. Anyone. It makes me really sad to think this way and maybe I am extraordinarily narcissistic and self-centred but I do feel certain people out there ~ namely doctorly-type people and employees of drug clinics are DELIBERATELY trying to do my head in. All saying different things that I cannot thrash my way out of.
Eg my druggieworker keeps saying she's worried about me and that if I'm not careful I'm going to have another mental breakdown. And she says I should see a psychiatrist again. I'm much more straight and open with her than I would ever be with a GP. But my (new) GP who has only seen me twice, says he thinks I'm totally OK. I didn't feel at all OK when I last saw him. I was very upset that day. Binky says I should "bring my feelings into the room". But how can I possibly do that? If you go around appearing as OK as possible (like any normal person who isn't a teenage girl with emotional problems would) then suddenly act out in a dr's room isn't that self-indulgence bordering on fakery? She also said that in answer to his question what could a psychiatrist do for me (which I took to mean I was beyond help. Because I don't actually believe he thinks there's "nothing wrong" I think he wants me to think that's what he thinks (mind games again) ~~ in answer to his question I was meant to say "to get a proper diagnosis and the right medication". Well I don't want yet ANOTHER diagnosis, which, knowing my luck would be added on top of and not replace the existing one. And as for even more pills. No I don't want MORE. I'd rather be off everything!. The absolute last thing I want is something that's going to completely block any "high" moods and "higher" states of consciousness. Obviously I want to be ("bipolar") high all the time. I just don't want to lose my mind as well. If I could break the light barrier again I'm hoping I will never ever ever come down. I'm talking about mind and body sublimating to a Higher Level. But I obviously DID come down. I just can't believe that I had to... Why does life have to be SO SHIT~~??
You see the great thing about blogs. Because nobody supposedly knows who I really am I can speak what I actually think and mean. No way in hell would I say something like the above to a friend, let alone any doctorly person.
I told Binky some weird ideas I had had when I did have a mad episode and she laughed until it looked like her sides were going to split. She said (hopefully jokingly, as nothing involved potential harm to self or others) that if I ever told a dr anything like that I'd get sectioned and never come out again. (To those on foreign shores: a "section" means involuntary commitment and it's REALLY HARD to overturn a British sectioning under the mental health act.)
I NEARLY had a "nervous breakdown" just now over picking a bucket to wash my clothes in. I'm still feeling ridiculously depressed. (Ridiculous, considering it's JUST A PLASTIC BUCKET~!!) I DID used to own a bucket, but it got filled with paint after I took dodgy heroin some time ago and kicked dregs of a can of paint over in my hallway. I need this new bucket to wash my clothes in, because it's cheaper than going to the launderette. But the launderette costs £4, whereas this bucket was £3. For £2 they had a round black bucket, but that one doesn't have mop-squeezy-out attachment. Then I looked at this bucket after purchase and it does look RIDICULOUSLY TINY. I don't know how many clothes I'm going to be able to wash at a time, but not many.
Well it's been raining most of today. It matches my mood. All weekend through Monday we had spectacular weather but I stayed in to avoid it. I really wasn't in the mood. Then one night, completely at random, I did start feeling "high" and couldn't sleep at all. But I made up for it by sleeping most of the day yesterday. Plus 2:30-6:30am. Then methadone (eventually) sent me off from 8:30 to about 11:30.
My life is so depressing. I know nobody wants to hear this. I just don't know how to get out of it all. Giving up drugs is very much JUST a first step and it never really helped that much in the past. It wasn't as if I stuck to methadone and was miraculously OK. Oh but the drugs clinic NOW say if you have other issues or health problems, methadone isn't even supposed to help with those (even though heroin does ~ it makes just about any affliction of mind or body feel better). This OF COURSE SUITS THEIR AGENDA. Which is all about deception and lies. They can't handle it when I tell the truth unvarnished. Now they don't just WANT to, they NEED to believe I'm nutty because otherwise time has shown them out to be LIARS. Ie "if you stop crack you won't be paranoid any more" (I've been way more paranoid months and years after stopping it than I was on it). And "alcohol is a depressant so that's what is making you depressed. If you stop drinking you'll feel better". Well lots of ANTI-depressants are also CNS depressants (eg dosulepin (Prothiadine), mirtazapine (Remeron)) and I certainly did NOT feel better after kicking alcohol. I've felt just as bad, if not worse off it than on it. I could go on but this is the gist of their lies. Of course they want to conveniently forget the times eg that a floating duty worker snapped at me that if I stopped heroin I would "feel much better". (In what time-frame? I was certainly NOT OK before I got addicted to heroin age 28. And I don't think I'm that unusual. There are LOTS of people using methadone clinics who feel permanently run-down (as a symptom of hep C as much as anything else, suffer from constant or recurrent depression. And have terrible presents eg involving imprisonment or the threat of it, and children in care (often both). Plus horrendous pasts (very often involving sexual abuse) they still want to escape from. I think, compared to people like that, and there are a LOT of them out there, I've got it easy.
I don't think I had any period of adult life, and probably not teenage years either when I was "OK". Growing up I had almost zero self-esteem or self-confidence. And almost no "social skills" either. And I do mean almost NONE. Everybody, friends included, thought I was a "weirdo". I was prone to depression but wouldn't characterize myself as depressed all the time. I managed to catch what was then called CFS or ME and is now known as CFIDS. I was not "on drugs" when I came down with that particular condition in late 1995. In fact I became intolerant to alcohol and wasn't well enough to dance all night at raves (only types of drugtaking I was interested in back then). I never knowingly tried heroin until 1997, although I may have taken it once in 1993 ~ I don't know for a fact that actually was heroin (not knowing what to do I snorted and ate the greyish powder that looked like it had bits of demerara sugar in it). Whereas the 1997 stuff looked like heroin, melted on to silver foil just like it, smelt like it and had the effects generally ascribed to heroin so I'm pretty sure that stuff WAS it.
O am I ranting again..? I don't know. I have to go.
I've given up on Spanish and am now learning Italian. Very very very very VERY slowly!!
(Moltomolto molto molto MOLTOlentamente.)
BTW: I've just found out MBT (the therapy I'm doing) is for BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER. I keep wondering whether I've got that and now they've somehow got me into therapy for it without even telling me!!! (They just told me they thought it might be good that I did it.)
Yesterday Naomi, the Dual Diagnosis lady, called offering me a place in a drama therapy group she's doing. So hopefully I shall be doing both. Surely you can't have "too much therapy"...? CAN YOU~??!?
I FEEL BETTER TODAY... but only because I have "used" ~~ yet again. My feelings have been all over the place. And painfully so. On Monday afternoon I was wondering about crying. I'm doing a group therapy thing called Mentalization, which is really difficult to explain in a nutshell, but it's about not assuming what others think and mean but to ask them. That way, the world might be a More Understanding Place.
Anyway there's a girl with Borderline Personality Disorder (not Binky ~ she has it too) ~ who can talk coherently and cogently about her inner emotional incoherence. It seems she comes from a similar place I do. Where you cannot think, see, emote or feel from any fixed point but are so constantly in flux that you never know where you are (and others just assume they know where you are). I'm not at all sure I would ACTUALLY have Borderline Personality Disorder (which mostly affects females anyhow) but when I took the online personality disorders test (my biggest fascination in psychology is what makes us Individual and what makes us Different) I scored highest on "Schizotypal" (about 86%) and "Borderline" (about 82%). Each time. More than a year apart. ("Normal people" score about 35-40%) You can see my Personality Test result toward the bottom of my sidebar.
My GP has totally done my head in. Sitting there shuffling through a wodge of papers from the methadone clinic, he seemed to be saying, in effect, that I was just a scheming, manipulative junkie piece of shit who had probably just hoodwinked a shrink because both times he saw me, 3 weeks apart, I seemed "pretty OK". (First time my mood WAS as normal as it ever gets; second time I was definitely depressed and I'm NOT flattered when anyone, least of all a dr thinks that depressive person is somehow the "real" me. Come on! I think there's a bit more oomph and jizz to me than that!
My druggieworker, who says this GP "is a good doctor", doesn't want me to do it (which makes my paranoid side feel they're somehow in cahoots) but I'm writing this GP a letter. It's far FAR easier for me to explain the inexplicable in writing than by answering somebody else's questions which cast me adrift more than anything else!
But what really gets me is that that doctor, among all of them, is supposed to have a "special interest in mental health"! Well he doesn't seem too interested in me! Barely looked at me. Didn't seem to be listening either. What I got, was that he was trying to be a smart-arse, asking the same questions twice. If a person does try and catch someone like me out, who tends to get lost in a billion viewpoints from a trillion details at a quadrillion nanomoments then of course he's going to get different answers. Because I never feel the same way twice. And like I say, I cannot hold on to anything like a single, fixed position. Heroin really SEEMED to help sort out the chaos in my mind and emotions. But without it, I'm cast adrift. Even when I do take it these days, it doesn't seem to "help" the way it used to. (Yet another reason to stop... of course!)
On a much better note, we went shopping this afternoon and Binky was so lovely. She bought me new boots, new jeans, five new pairs of socks, two teeshirts and a new jacket! Jacket and jeans were second-hand. The rest were brand new. How kind of her is that! She wanted so say thank you for the way I looked after her when she was marooned in hospital...
OK it's getting late and I must dash. It's a bank holiday weekend so I hope you all have a good one, wherever you are in the world and even if you DON'T have a special Holiday Monday like we do! ("Bank holidays" are British public holidays.)
BINKY is very depressed and quiet. She is getting dragged off to the nuthouse later today, so she's not happy about that either. As I left, the Home Treatment Team arrived. You could tell it was them by the jangling of handcuff chains and fetters and the zapping of Tasers. Also the straitjacket got tangled in the front door knocker and then one of the psychiatrists let off the Taser at a pigeon on the balcony. It fell to the floor flapping helplessly and died after a second shot. £20 changed hands and everyone laughed.
No I'm kidding, of course. What happens is, a gone-out scared-looking unfriendly nurse-type person appears and minimizes every answer the patient gives. So extreme paranoid hostility will be written up as mild anxiety. Catatonic depression becomes "fatigue". A person running up and down the hallway turning cartwheels and screaming might be said to display mild agitation. In hospital this attitude is reversed, so that anyone diagnosed psychotic or bipolar who expresses the slightest justifiable irritation (especially at a nurse) is written up with "severe agitation", wrestled to the ground and given "rapid tranquillization" in the form of intramuscular antipsychotics and benzos.
Binky is terrified of running out of cigarettes. So everyone she knows has been buying her packets. There's one particular ward she absolutely refuses to go to. It is apparently even worse than the ones I saw her on the last two times. She's been in hospital twice since June, so this will be her third admission in six months. I really don't understand what goes on with her, except that she has some paranoia, hears voices and gets upset really easily. Sometimes the upsetness extends into what they probably call "clinical depression". But she does a lot of things I just cannot understand, and it's not as if I haven't tried. Example: extreme self-harm. A few months ago she set herself on fire, in hospital. Her leg is now covered in skin grafts, it was that bad.
As for me, I tried concocting a personal mood and "mental phenomena" chart. But the full chart is too complicated, with over 20 symptoms. By the time any of these became florid, I wouldn't be into calibrating precisely how intense and persistent they're supposed to be. So I simplified it to mood on 3 counts: elevated, irritable & angry and depressed. You have to note the highest and lowest scores for that day, as well as a rough average. And mental excitement and physical hyperactivity. "Hedonic activation" (enjoying things more than usual, example: experiencing a rush of excitement on seeing a street light, which happens when I'm manic) and anhedonia (not enjoying things). And sleep. If I completely lost my appetite I would note that, but partial loss of appetite is impossible to quantify, as I resist the urge to eat a lot of the time anyway, because I don't want to be fat. If you're depressed you'd usually experience the opposite of mental and physical excitement, but this would be so hard to rate, until it gets severe enough to start physically freezing up. And if I were that depressed I don't think I'd be bothered wanting to write it down. When I feel mildly depressed, my mind sometimes feels crystal clear ~ presumably my thoughts have slowed down. + my attention span actually IMPROVES. The opposite of what it's meant to do in depression.
Wish me luck filling out this crap, because I don't know how long I will have patience to continue. I wanted to use myself as a case-study for my intellectual Mood Disorders book, plotting inter-episode mood lability and manic-depressive symptoms.
So I have diagnosed myself as a hypochondriac with Moody Bastard Syndrome. Really I'm not that interested in my own moods. I want to know how other people feel, when and why. I would like to get Binky to fill out these charts. But when she's annoyed, she's probably too angry to write it down. See, we get the same problem again.
I did once commence a BSc course in psychology, although I had little interest in Abnormal. I was much more fascinated in Individual Differences: what distinguishes one personality from another and what makes people tick. Everything went to pot because of Psychobiology (the most difficult unit) and Research Methods (the most boring unit) complicated by Heroin Dependency (my own, of course).
O I hope Binks is going to be all right. She phoned up saying she was going to be on one ward miles away. Then called back saying it had been altered to the hospital nearest me, two minutes later.
Last time she was in hospital the atmosphere was dreadful. All the patients obviously severely disturbed, which is not usually the case (usually you can look around a mental ward wondering why on earth anyone needs to be in there. Plus distinguishing patient from nurse from visitor is well nigh impossible). Example: last time there was a lady in there who had ripped out all her hair, and I mean all, leaving just isolated strands. When she walked past the tea trolley, closely escorted by a nurse, she tried to grab the dirty polystyrene cups and paper napkins. And the nurse called this lady, who must have been in her late 40s a "very naughty girl". Most of her talk was incoherent. At least four patients were on one-to-one care. Either wandering about helplessly or else lying in bed weeping piteously. Or staring into space, swaying. The remote to the television (in a perspex tank) went missing on a daily basis, because a girl who wouldn't stop laughing had some delusion about being controlled by the BBC. Binky wouldn't go near the TV either; she said it kept making personal comments.
I wonder whether being in such surroundings is actually any good for anybody's mental health? The one redeeming feature was the tea-break. The tea was nice and strong, and they had a decent selection of biscuits. O and also, because of the digital switchover, their telly now does Pick TV. But apart from that, barely any redeeming features at all.
I couldn't sleep properly last night. Couldn't stay asleep for longer than about half an hour. Then I woke up depressed. But I'm nowhere near as depressed as Binky.
Ukh, I've got to go now. I hope next year is better than this one.
SEEING as I'm considering becoming a Consultant Psychiatrist, or at least a Clinical Psychologist, the following piece of correspondence, found on my road this morning, was of interest. And because I want an office job, I thought I'd practice my typing by tapping it in here. NOTE: I changed the names (have YOU ever met a guy named Potishell?) and NO it is not me. Check the mood report. Does that sound like me? No. Also if it was me, they'd probably note an increased rate and production of speech. [Incidentally the mood section does make psychiatry look like a joke; I would rate my mood as 8/10 and yet Binky says I seem "manic".] Here goes:~
Thank you for referring Mr Potishell Pantswell to services and he was seen on the 21.08.12 and I am now writing with my findings and recommendations.
Reason for Referral: Has a history of mental health problems and you have requested a further assessment of his mental health.
Presenting Problem: Potishell reported that he is feeling well within his mental state, despite experiencing some residual psychotic symptom (sic). He added that he was not quite sure why he had been referred to us and it was more than likely it was suggested that he would need to be linked in with mental health services.
Mental State Examination: Appearance/Behaviour: A male, with a medium build, from a Black Afro-Caribbean background. He presented as calm, pleasant and engaged well during the assessment with a good rapport and eye contact established. Speech: Spoke clearly in English with a normal rhythm, rate and tone observed. Mood: Objectively he appeared stable within his mood. Subjectively he described his mood as okay and he self-scored his mood as 7 out of 10. Appetite: Okay Sleep: Expressed that he is experiencing dreams, which at times he finds distressing. Abnormal Perceptions: Reported that he experiences visual, auditory and tactile hallucinations. He described that he sometimes see's (sic) vivid lines in different colours, hears occasional voices which he ignores and sometimes feels as if someone is touching his chest and he was unable to describe the type of touch. Currently he reported that his symptoms have greatly reduced, however he still experiences some residual psychotic symptoms. Concentration: Okay Delusions: Nil Self Harm/Suicide: Nil Insight: Good
Drugs/Alcohol: Has a past 10 year history of crack cocaine, heroin and alcohol dependence. Currently Potishell denied any current alcohol or illicit drug use. [I bet he's lying.]
Police/Forensic: Was sentenced to 4 years for burglary [naughty boy! What a terrible thing to do!] and is on probation until 2013 and he has to attend probation twice a week. [How dreadful for him.]
Employment: Works part time as a domestic cleaner at B&Q.
Finances: Is in receipt of a part time salary and expressed that he was managing on this salary. [What? In London?? Either he has no interests and cheap taste, or else he's surely working or committing crime on the side.]
Treatment: Olanzapine 12.5mg daily, which was prescribed 2 years ago.
Summary And Recommendations A 38 year old male, who is experiencing some residual symptoms of abnormal perceptions in the form of visual and auditory hallucinations. He has currently remained relatively stable on Olanzapine 12.5mg, which was prescribed 2 years ago. Currently there are no risk factors exhibited and No self-harm or suicidal thoughts elicited.
Plan: 1: I discussed his case with Dr Mazooramabakhadan and he recommended that you increase his Olanzapine to 15mg daily. 2: Dr Parper could you refer Potishell to the Neurologist and conduct a full physical health check. 3: Potishell's mental health to be monitored accordingly by primary care services. 4: Potishell has been advised that he can present at our 24-hr walk in service if he is to find himself in a mental health crisis.
I'M IN A FUNNY MOOD TODAY ("today being yesterday, Friday). I got to reading books and listening to music and watching Helen Mirren starring as The Queen (yet again) last night and didn't realize how late it was until I saw the foreign satellite box was showing me a time of 2am. Then I went to bed in hat, coat and scarf (because it's that cold and I can't afford to keep the fanheater belting it out all night)... only to wake again at FIVE A.M. unable to sleep. I thought I needed more methadone so I drank that... and went into a long internal rant of the type I usually only make when I have some serious complaint I want to make (usually to the methadone clinic) or some ranting blog piece I want to post but the computer isn't there and I'm rehearsing what I'm gonna say. Or I'm becoming manic. I carried on ranting in a most irritated fashion inside my head till past eight o'clock and then distracted myself by phoning the DSS ("DWP" as they call themselves now) to find out when my benefits are getting paid. Suddenly, at the sound of a kindly human voice, I was most cheerful and chatty. I'm now getting my money on Tuesdays, not Mondays, which put me in terror of the electricity running out on Emergency, so later that morning Binky lent me a tenner. When I'm on my own I feel stone cold normal. But whenever the phone rings, or I'm in the company of another person ~ whoever that may be ~ suddenly I'm acting and feeling half-drunk: lively and verbiose. I just wish I could keep this good mood going all the time. [And I'm trying to keep careful track of my moods: hence these notes.] I got to musing about my True Job Prospects (and not the illusiory ones; I mean, if I truly had my pick of professions I'd go for Head of State (obviously ~ and not for a mere four years like a poxy American president ~ it would have to be a lifelong position to suit me... if not hereditary). And if I put my talents to full use, I'd be a bestselling writer. Plus a magazine editor and publisher. And a maker of fine fragrance. And a jewellery designer with lines on sale via Bulgari (for the real stuff) and the home shopping channel (for cubic zirconia). My other ambitions are to design a bestselling board-game and a computer game. To appear in a French film. To release a hit single and make an album. And to become a great poet with my works appearing on teeshirts, mugs, fridge-magnets etc (far better way of making money out of poetry than books! Who buys poetry books nowadays?) And to make bestselling poetry CDs with the poetry performed against a backdrop of whooshing ambience with chirping birds, whalesong etc in the background. These are just a handful of my ambitions. And they are real ambitions. You can think what you like, but with half a chance I will go for them all ~ and I'm fully intending to contrive that chance myself. But failing that: working for someone else. How the hell am I meant to explain on whatever form I have to fill in (and surely it's NOT the initial application form; that would be just too brutal) that I'm supposed to be a schizophrenic manic-depressive? Who the hell's going to want to employ me then? That's why I need this chat with the temp agency. I'm going to walk in somewhere and give the unvarnished truth (no drug references though, and no medical details except the names of the conditions, of which I have to inform potential employers, in order to qualify for protection under the Disability Discrimination Act 2005. So I was thinking about this, and musing on what the hell would happen if I suddenly became manic enough to believe I can say and do precisely as I please no matter who's watching? Or so depressed I can't be bothered to change clothes or shower for weeks on end? And my life and the prospect of anything better seemed such a morass that I switched off and switched the TV on instead... Somebody somewhere, please give me some perspective on this. I'm not really mad, (...) right~~? I could go mad again... or I could not. I still hear voices every day, but they're not the ultra-real voices ~ utterly indistinguishable from a real person right next to me telling me things wonderful or irrelevant about myself and the world... I know my voices now are not accoustically real. Example: yesterday the following information beamed at me from the pavement: You are looking wonderful! So I told the pavement, Oh yes I know ~ even if I do say so myself! But I knew this was a psychic dream, not the reality of ordinary people. As long as I can keep the two realities: that of relatively low-grade "symptoms" and that of everyday working people, separate then surely I should be fine enough to work amongst the People myself..? What should I do? Should I follow my heart, my head or my Dreams? I want to commence writing a novel. But which novel to write? I have ideas for at least four that I could pen tonight. And another ten more ready for next year... I'm only hampered by a wavering sense of morality plus my own inextricable laziness. But ~ ha! ~ come to think of it, I know what I'm writing: VALERIE: THE PRISON EMAILS ~ my "respectable" Australian heroin-addicted narcotics-trafficking housewife and mother's outermost rants. OK so it's all settled ~~ but before I get a book advance big enough to buy a four-bedroom flat opposite Harrods, should I get a "normal" job too? And can I even do one? The more I think about it, the more terrified I am. I remember office politics. And I remember the stultifying culture of enforced "normality" that prevails in the corporate workplace (two of my old jobs were with large corporations, the type of place that uses its own custom-made software so a weeks' IT-training is required before you can really begin...) Akh. Ukh. I don't know I don't know I don't know. And the British system is NOT kind or understanding to anybody who ever needs to vacillate between work and benefits (which I really wouldn't want to do, but face it there's a chance I might HAVE to...) plus I haven't even considered the fact that I'm still on methadone, still sporadically chipping at the Heroin, still not clean from that drug. I don't drink. At all these days. And I touch no other intoxicating substances apart from heroin and caffeine (the caffeine gets me way more out of it these days anyway)... what am I going to do? And what if I have a cup of tea at work and it makes me suddenly go bipolar?
SOMEBODY GIVE SOME ADVICE, PLEASE!
Music ~~~~~~~ Barber's Adagio for Strings I love this tune...
William Orbit/Ferry Corsten mix
Longer version of the same (sans video)
Sung version by the choir of Trinity College, Cambridge with transcendently beautiful, mind-expanding cosmic visuals by NASA
BINKY keeps telling me I'm "really mad" and I keep telling her I'm not. I mean, I'm not paranoid, not depressed, not anxious even and so what if I feel high nearly all the time? I'd taken heroin in the night and hadn't slept so when I went round Binky's at 7:45 this morning, I was a bit hyper. I was trying to think up names for my fabulous clubnight and she kept getting offended by my wonderful ideas like "Slut Vagina". [I would never give my club such a vulgar name; it just seemed like a good idea at the time...] And when I took to recording random snatches of conversation. So for a while I was thinking of naming my star-spangled party "Are you on that toilet for long? Because I really need to go." ~~ I think that would be a brilliant name! The other top two favourites were "Gnome Brigade", "Dillory Pillory" and "Itchy Swines".
So what does Binky mean when she says I'm mad? She seems to think I ought to know, but I don't. Everyone in her house is insane anyhow, because it's a psychiatric half-way house. And yet when I loudly said I'd been hearing voices in the night again ~~ and I mean all of two voices saying no more than two words each ~ nobody was willing to take on board the fact that yes, I might hear the odd voice now and then ~ but no, I most certainly am not clinically crazy. Especially compared to the rest of the nutters I know.
Grizzeller, the one guy in Binky's house full of nutty girls is in such consistently slow motion that if, for example, you wanted to visit the house at 9am and knew he'd be the only one in, you'd have to phone in advance at eight to give him enough time to shamble along the hallway and get the front door open. Now that is bonkers. I am not!
When I was talking to my very young and beautiful GP, Dr Lovelace about the inconveniences of psychotic breaks and happened to opine that "hearing voices is supposed to be a sign of madness," she quite inaccurately corrected me saying, "well, hearing voices is a sign of schizophrenia". Well yes, of course it can be that, but it can also be a sign of bipolarity, a sign of psychism (clairaudience) and a sign of nothing at all! I'm really surprised Dr Lovelace doesn't realize that 15% of bipolar 1 patients hallucinate. Hallucinations are not, per se, signs of schizophrenia. In this country we have a national Hearing Voices Network brimful with people experiencing daily extra-sensory perceptions and the majority of them claim not to be mad, and do not experience the symptoms of psychosis (paranoia, incoherent thought, great difficulty engaging with life).
The British Mental Health Foundation obviously know their stuff. Binky insists all her voices are absolutely accoustically real. Well many of mine aren't. When I really was mad they did sound exactly like invisible people speaking next to me, but nowadays they're more like random words precipitating from an idea-saturated atmosphere into my consciousness:
It is also common for people to hear voices as if they are thoughts
entering their mind from somewhere outside themselves. This is not the
same as a suddenly inspired idea, which people usually recognise as
coming from themselves. These thoughts are not their own and would seem
to come from outside their own consciousness, like telepathy. This isn't precisely my experience, but it's similar. When I tell Binky I may be "just a bit hypomanic" she says, "you've been hypomanic for two weeks now". And when I point out that hypomania is just very mild mania, she says, "then hypomania is mild madness". You see?! Every move I make I'm already snookered. That girl has been in the mental health system for far too long and she knows too much.
Then she takes issue with me for wondering aloud what is wrong with other nutters and why they act the way they do. Well that's just me being me, I'm afraid ~ always fascinated by what makes others tick...
Hey! I'm not doing Christmas alone with an Iceland sweet chili chicken pizza this year because I've been invited to Binky's for Xmas Lunch with all her cuckoo-clock friends. How brilliant is that?! We're even allowed vodka, which has been banned for the rest of the year after Binky got me to buy two half bottles, drank the lot and then ended up lying in bed throwing a near-delirious pity-party of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was really not pretty.
Speaking of alcohol, I idiotically went and wasted 95p on a can last night which I mixed with my Polish fruits of the forest drink. I had one single sip and now it's sitting in a giant mug untouched and untouchable and I don't know what to do with it now. I'm very much into the waste not, want not philosophy and cannot in all good conscience pour it down the drain. Like I've said many times ~ although yes, I did used to drink enough alcohol not to be consuming any nonalcoholic drink at all and to be getting daily blackouts. But on the other hand I never had that "once I start drinking I won't stop until I'm passed out cold" thang going on, like most alkies seemingly do. I was your archetypal "top-up drinker" ~ drinking to keep a moderate level of intoxication going through every waking hour. Not to plunge myself into oblivion. Even with the drugs, most of the time, I wasn't using gear in pursuit of unconsciousness, but as an escape from pain. Now that I'm no longer in constant psychological pain I feel far less need of the gear. See it's all deep, psychological and mysterious. At yesterday's anti-drugs group we had a cheeky chappie with what are nowadays termed "mental health" troubles but what always used to be called "emotional problems" ~ from what he said, his primary problems appeared to be anxiety and depression. This might very well be the "vanilla" version of mental illness, but let me tell you, anxiety/depression is just about the most unpleasant psychiatric affliction going. It's much more unpleasant than manic-depressive psychosis and of course the doctors take anxiety far less seriously than psychotic illness, which makes no sense, as severe anxiety is far and away more intolerable than any psychosis I've ever experienced. The doctors never, ever take it seriously, and they will not prescribe anything for it, except drugs along the lines of Prozac ~ which always made me many times more agitated than I'd been before. Anxiety doesn't generally agitate me. When it was severe, I was frozen in terror. As the psychologists say, it's "fight, flight or play dead" ~ which is very true as I always played dead. Though I've never seen a person with an anxiety disorder fighting. If anxiety really did make you fight, the mental hospitals would be full of people with panic disorders underSection for fighting instead of "flighting", or playing dead like me!
Anyway this guy with the terrible affliction happened to mention to me something about confronting the issues that have caused or fuelled my past depressions. What issues is he talking about? Do I even have any? Binky says yes I do; I said, "do you mean my massively unstable self-esteem?" and she said yes. But post-psychotic trauma aside, I'm not sure I have the type of issues that a skilfull counsellor could tease out of me so that in the future I'm going to magically not be depressed. I'm not sure my depression is like that. If it were mostly issue-based then how come the first sign, and usually the most prominent symptom is massively increased time spent asleep? Can a thorny tangle of emotional hang-ups really make you sleep more? And how come half the time I actually feel better than usual? So my mood is now elevated ~ and what has become of my issues now? Are they actually making me feel happy? Or is another set of personal hang-ups doing that? Or is it just that when I'm on the hypomanic side simply more in touch with my own fabulosity and that's what makes me feel fabulous all the time? Because that's what I think is going on... Righty-ho it's ten past six and I have to go to Iceland to get a sweet chili chicken pizza. Writing about it has made me wanna munch it! With cheese-flavour coleslaw as a side-order. I luuuurve cheese coleslaw! I barely slept last night and must catch up before I fall asleep at the screen...
What's happening with Sandy, this humungous great tropical storm they said might flood or flatten New York? Is it really that bad? And why, if it only made landfall around midnight London time. With the time difference currently a mere four hours, that means New York was OK until eight at night their time, so why close down the subway and the stock exchange all day yesterday? Also, with New York being so low-lying, I don't understand why they hadn't long ago built seal-up-able subway and road tunnels to prevent any storm-surge getting into them... I woke up yesterday morning feeling so incredibly repentant for having been too excited about the idea of a giant hurricane hitting a major metropolis and not having my thoughts with the householders and the businesses who will suffer because of it. I can sometimes be incredibly shallow and I really felt guilty for having not taken Hurricane Sandy seriously. Also I wrote a comment to my fellow-blogger, Syd saying "so you live in South Carolina? Isn't that the land of hurricanes?" ~ no sooner had I said that than that Sandy appeared and I was terrified that Syd would get blown away because of what I'd said. So all isn't right in the world. I keep thinking of all those people in New York, New Jersey and so on who will be dealing with massive flooding and power cuts. I mean, it's disconcerting enough when the power goes down for just a couple of hours and it's candles time and no television but what happens when a whole metropolis goes down for days at a time? I used to be in touch with a recovering addict named B Melons Lemonade, who was right in New Orleans and actively addicted to heroin when Hurricane Katrina hit, destroying not just the infrastructure of the city we all think about, but its drug supply network. B Melons was so traumatized by events that she went down with a pretty nasty case of PTSD which is by all accounts one of the nastiest mental illnesses going... I pray that New York and everywhere else in the path of this so-called "Frankenstorm" will be OK...
Night-night everyone, wherever you are ~ and BE SAFE!...
THE BRITISH actor Stephen Fry, himself a sufferer, made this groundbreaking 2-part documentary on bipolar disorder in 2006.
It features two other bipolar celebrities, Carrie Fisher author of Postcards from the Edge and more famously Princess Leia in Starwars and Andy Behrman author of the bipolar memoir Electroboy.
Carrie Fisher really reminds me of my dead friend Lucky.
AT LAST I had a proper appointment down the druggieclinic where I have a new worker named Fanny. I gave a clear "suck it and see" style oral drug screen and my methadone at long long last goes down to 25mg per day. I am pleased as punch. Nothing depresses me more than a flat methadone dose with no end in sight. If methadone is there to make me feel "normal" (whoever told Ann Widdecombe MP it was a "state-sponsored high" was barking up the wrong tree entirely. Almost without exception, addicts on methadone continue using herin on top at every oppotunity for years on end. They tend to do that because methadone is NOT making them high at all! It takes an exceptoinal quantity of willpower to give up heroin, even with the dubious "assistance" of methadone.)
... Anyway, as I was saying, if you're going to feel "normal" on methadone, you might as well reduce the dose and eventually live your "normality" without the need for any chemical crutches ~ prescribed or otherwise. I'm fed up of having an elevated tolerance to opiates so that, even on about 35mg of methadone, as I would have been then, the Co-dydramol the hospital gave me for those broken fingers was rendered ineffectual. 10mg dihydrocodeine is equivalent to just 1mg methadone. Of course the 500mg paracetamol (acetaminophen) in those pills still works. So I might as well have bought myself a pot of paracetamol and saved the dihydrocodeine for someone who really would have benefitted from it.
I don't want to have to ask permission ~ and give at least a fortnight's notice to the methadone clinic ~ just to visit my Dad's side of the family, who I grew up with, yet haven't seen in about eight years. Last time I mooted that idea I was told I'd only get four or five days' prescription in advance and then have to pick up the remainder from a local pharmacy in a gossipy Welsh village. No way!
I'm still a drug addict as long as I'm on methadone. I still sweat far too heavily ~ even worse than I did on heroin. The hot summers I used so much to enjoy in childhood are nowadays a slow torture with me perspiring heavily, despite having taken multiple layers of clothing off.
I turned up (late) at an NA meeting last night and had to squeeze into a packed-out, fusty room in pitch darkness. I felt too sweaty, dirty and paranoid to stay long and so left early, telling myself I'd shower for longer before next time ~ and make sure I had fresher clothes on.
Narcotics Anonymous take the view I do, that you're not truly "clean" until you're off all drugs, including drink, and are no longer dependent on methadone. NA is the only place I know to meet clean friends and God knows I need some. I've decided to get a sponsor, work all twelve steps and follow the programme for at least a year, just as soon as I'm finally OFF the methadone.
With NA you only live "just for today" ~ which echoes Jesus Christ's declaration that "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Matthew 6:34).
NA advise that newcomers attend ninety meetings in the first ninety days. Again there's little point putting in this level of commitment until I'm totally off the methadone and able to engage with the programme 100%.
An alternative twelve-step programme that has piqued my interest is Dual Recovery Anonymous ~ DRA. They are oriented towards recovery for drug addicts with psychiatric issues of any type. Most of their meetings are in Central London, so I haven't been yet. But I'm really looking forward to checking DRA out.
Whether I end up joining NA, DRA or both, finding the right sponsor is going to prove a tall order. Your sponsor is like a teacher, someone who guides you through the programme, somebody to turn to in times of trouble or confusion ~ and you supposedly have a lot of them in your first year. In effect, they're a kind of mentor.
I found an NA friend who said he would sponsor me more than five years back, but I wasn't ready to clean up; he wasn't ready to sponsor anybody. Yet neither of us knew this until we were put to the test. It ended up with him dropping out of our local meetings just to avoid me. And me continuing to use heroin and crack and white cyder just as before. My only progress since then has been to knock the crack on the head, cut the heroin back from nearly every day to once every week or two, to cut my drinking to less than a third of what it once was. I'm now a methadone addict, not a heroin addict, and my new prescription is less than a fifth of what it was less than a year ago!
So I'm on the way out. I'm going so slowly, slowly, it drives me crazy whenever I think about it. But slow and steady is the only approach that's going to work for me. By the first week of June, I'll be down to just 20mg per day. I try not to think about any of this too much. I just keep my eyes on the goal. The very idea of being Clean is faintly terrifying for me because it's unchartered territory. My whole life yawning ahead of me, empty and unfulfilled. I could do anything: yet what shall I do? I want to be off the methadone and want to be off all psychiatric drugs too. Then at last I shall know how I really feel. Most long-term addicts say they feel worse in the first year off methadone than they did on it. But most long-term addicts are not bipolar. One upside to my moods is that they've often swung contrary to circumstance. I'm hoping my hard-won Cleanliness if ever, however I attain it, might spark in me a lot more energy than I currently have, along with a better mood.
I don't want to be manic, I want to be happy. I'm yet to meet a happy drug addict. Getting off all drugs is the only thing I can see to do that will truly give me a chance.
And though I'm determined not to fall into a pit of brooding, I now see clearly that dabbling with heroin was the single biggest wrong move of my life. In fact, it's the only big mistake I've ever made. I've lost twelve years to that crap and I'm not willing to lose a single day more.
God grant me the Serenity To accept the things I cannot change; The Courage to change the things I can, And the Wisdom to know the difference ...
*******
And now for a musical break...
OT QUARTET: HOLD THAT SUCKER DOWN BUILDS LIKE A SKYSCRAPER MIX +7% Speedier version of the track I posted yesterday...
HELLO it is a hot sticky Saturday afternoon I'm not in the mood to post anything but I'm here so why not. Oh my computer that I use every day STILL doesn't offer me internet access. If you're wondering why haven't I had it repaired it's because I've been too busy using Microsoft Word to hand it in to some repair person for two weeks. Also I don't want its memory to be wiped. I NEED Word on that machine. I've got a horrible feeling that absolutely every program on that thing is going to have to be deinstalled. Every single one. Wow, that's going to be fun. Because the antivirus or antispam thing is blocking internet access... blah blah it's a long story.
I think that's why I turned to drugs. (Correction: DRUG singular ~~ h
