Hamsters and Anglerfish

NETFLIX HAMSTER COMMERCIAL
THIS is my favourite TV ad. There's a British version but I couldn't find it...



ANGLERFISH OF THE ABYSS



THE DEEP BLUE
BBC documentary

What future?

I HAVE BEEN TRYING to write a letter to my Mum but it ended up so depressing with me practically saying I was just waiting to die. Since I stopped taking heroin every day and aren't manic any more my life has come into uncomfortably sharp focus and I've realized there is no future at all for me. Sick or well. On or off methadone. On drugs or off them. I feel about 103 and am ready to go into an old people's home. The thought of living to 70 appalls me and I'm not even 40 yet. I don't know what I'm going to do in the future.

Sociable

I GOT TO THE POINT not long ago where I realized I was socializing with nobody at all. And just about everyone I had socialized with over the preceeding years had been a drug addict. No wonder my life seemed empty. I have started to rectify that by hanging out with 2 people who are not using drugs every day. I do drink with one of the people but neither of us has any veins left and I don't think either of us really feels anything off heroin from smoking it so there's little point doing it.

Today I have just got back from my old friend Pinks's house. She has a new place. It is a supported housing mental health hostel with a nurse staying in at all times. The nurse was a nice Mauritian lady who told us about her travels as we watched a documentary about a botched attempt to smuggle $50 million worth of A-grade Double UO Globe white heroin into Australia from the North Korean Pong Su ship on CBS Reality. I did smoke some heroin today but felt nothing from it. I am only touching it an average of once a week now. Really there's no point doing it so it's all psychological. I'm supposed to be moving to a place like Pinky's, which is nice and clean and quiet. But nothing at all has become of it. Just like I've had no follow up from the local mental health clinics since diagnosis, despite having changed my GP to one in the same borough I live in (supposedly making things straightforward re which borough is meant to be treating me). Pinky has the same diagnosis as me: schizoaffective disorder, except mine is the bipolar type; hers is the depressive type, as far as I know.

My broken fingers are feeling less "orthopedic" and my hand feels less like someone else's. I had a follow up appointment at the fracture clinic which I was glad I went to as I was starting to regret having turned down surgery on my hand. The second doctor felt that surgery wasn't necessary anyhow. He forwarded me to physiotherapy. The physiotherapist asked me at some length about my background and said that stuff (the heroin) will kill you. I even told him my nut nut diagnosis and he said "do you use the word bipolar because you feel people will be more prejudiced against schizophrenia?" and I said yes because originally I'd told him I was just bipolar. He said his mother was schizophrenic so he knew the issues.

I have to do hand exercises every day and flatten my bent fingers out. I've got a foam doggie ball to squash and I try and flatten my hand out against my thigh. I can type a lot easier now. The only way of typing I know is the all-fingered version ~ touch typing. Switching back to the 2-fingered method where you look at the keys was really difficult which is why I didn't do too much blogging just after the accident.

I'm feeling less depressed than when I wrote the last post. I still feel that without the medication I'd be having an "episode", which is depressing to think. I know that a lot of my unhappiness is down to where I am in life and just who I am. My friend's girlfriend, who I have known distantly for about ten years said I have changed a lot recently. I seem more confident than I ever was years ago and that's true. A few years ago I lost almost all of what little confidence I had and reduced to a shambling wreck of a human being, a walking shadow where a person had once been. I had almost totally given up on life and was just looking forward to dying. I don't see any amazing reasons to live my life now. Everything I would like to do is out of reach. I'd like to go to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. I'd like to publish my magazine and books. All these things feel like distant dreams. I heard of an expedition to the bottom of Challenger Deep, which is over 35,000 ft down, that was taking paying passengers for a mere £250,000 each and I'd definitely go if I had the money. I'd really like a pet angler fish, too.

My one interest in life, apart from coming off methadone, is deep ocean trenches plus life under the sea in general. I have a book on the world's oceans that I flick through after Jerry Springer and before I go to sleep every night.

I hope you all had a pleasant weekend. The weather here is nearly 18C that's over 65F. Very hot for February. I've taken my Benny hat off and everything.


Illustrated: me first thing in the morning

Down

I'VE BEEN DEPRESSED for weeks but lately it's got worse. I tried not taking my medication (risperidone) but that made me incredibly irritated all the time. (I thought respiridone was making me anxious.) But anyway I'm back on it and feel better today than I have in days so it MIGHT be going away.

My fingers are healing well but still feel crippled especially first thing in the morning. I'm able to wash with my right hand now.

I've been going to an old friend's house. He has a mad staffordshire bull terrier that barks at the TV and chases its tail. Every time I'm there we drink a LOT ~ in fact he asks me to bring drink round. The time before last I drank so much I went home, passed out, was sick and passed out again. Not good! One reason I was so ill is that I DON'T drink so heavily any more so it really hit me.

On a better note my methadone is down to 40mg as of next time and I'm really glad about that. My single goals in life are to live in a clean and tidy house and NOT TO BE ON METHADONE. I hate methadone. I've only had outright mental issues since I relied on methadone alone and not heroin to keep me "sane". It's true I'd had mood swings and hallucinations years before then but they were nowhere near as severe as the ones I had in my outright manic phases last year. I don't know what methadone does or doesn't do that's good or bad re brain chemistry. All I know is I've never liked the stuff and want rid of it from my life as soon as possible.

Well it's weekend already and dark here in London. The weather is far better than it's been in weeks. It actually feels faintly warm when you go outside.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND EVERYONE :-)

Bye Bye Whitney

SO WHITNEY HOUSTON is dead and I'm sure few people are surprised, considering her longstanding problems with crack. The greatest voice in pop was lost to that drug. If it did that to her voice, what on earth did it do to her personal life. The Sun newspaper today claimed that she got so paranoid on the stuff that she made a hole in her bathroom wall to see who was outside. Crazy business, all of it.

We've had a lot of snow since I last wrote. Nearly all of it came down in one night, about 4 inches ~ which is a LOT by London standards. Enough to completely shut down all my TV channels for about an hour. (No direct line of sight to the dish anymore.) Luckily it hasn't been too slippy because the snow turned slushy rather than icy. It snowed again the other night, but only a light covering.

My fingers are "better" in that they seem to be set, but they feel like somebody else's hand, won't close up properly and certainly won't open all the way. I can just about type properly now and I'm meant to practise flexing them.

Psychiatrically I've been feeling crap since I stopped taking my risperidone. I finally got fed up of anxiety and panic, which I found out was a side-effect of the drug. In recent times I've only had a problem with anxiety SINCE going on risperidone, which is too much of a coincidence for me.

I've had NO access to a psychiatrist since I left my old druggieservice late last spring or early in the summer, about 8 months ago. My GP refuses to prescribe anything else but risperidone. There's some complicated rule about what borough you live in and what borough your GP is in, which has bearing on which mental health authority you get treatment from. So today I switched GPs. It was like jumping through a hoop of fire, what with no proper photo ID (expired passport) no paperwork dated later than the end of last year blah blah eventually I dug up a letter dated 11 January 2012 which satisfied them. It's ridiculous. I'm not a foreigner. I'm British-born yet I'm treated like a would-be impostor. ALL I NEED is access to a psychiatrist or someone who will prescribe quetiapine or SOMETHING that makes me feel calmer. On risperidone I get panic. Off it I feel agitated, irritable and suicidal. As I absolutely cannot abide anxiety of any kind I lean more towards under-dosing myself with risperidone until the time comes when I can finally switch meds to something that suits me. It's not that much to ask but you'd think I was asking for the moon the high-jumps they put in my way.

Well I've got to go all this typing is exhausting my hand. Take care everyone XX


WHITNEY HOUSTON: MY LOVE IS YOUR LOVE

Mangled

I TOOK THE VELCRO ties off my damaged hand and my finger looks really mangled, the break is far worse than on the one next to it. I think it's going to take ages to heal. I cannot type the word "loll" by touch without severe agony I can't even press a key with that finger.

The forecasters promise SNOW this weekend, which I am far from pleased about. I really cannot afford to risk slipping over again considering what I did on a NON-icy day.

I have just over 100 TV channels now. 21 general ones, 10 music ones, about 15 shopping, 3 bizarre adult ones where a girl looks bored to music and talks on the phone with the sound down, etc etc. Plus I have 18 variations of BBC1 and 4 BBC2s, a Scottish Gaelic channel (BBC Alba) and a Welsh language channel (S4C) and it goes on and on. My days now consist of Judge Judy, Cops, River Monsters... and of course Dallas, where Jock Ewing has just died. Dallas was always far more popular here than the ridiculous Dynasty. Joan Collins was the only good thing about Dynasty whereas all the characters in Dallas were memorable.

Ukh I keep ,aking ridiculous spelkling mistakes thanks to my amateur typing. It's too cold to venture out without a good reason. Everyone is shocked by the appearance of my hand. My (nonbroken) little finger is really bruised but at least my swollen hand is going down.

I've got to go I'm really tired. Have been sleeping during the day a lot. I don't feel particularly well. Anyway have a cheery weekend everyone ;-)



CRISPIN J GLOVER + PRINCESS JULIA: THIS IS NOT A LOVE SONG



MADONNA: BYE BYE BABY

Brrr

I FORGOT TO SAY LAST TIME I actually dislocated my right ring finger and had to pop it back in on the street, the drs said i'd done the right thing.

IT IS FREEZING COLD HERE! Icy air from Siberia, nasty business. And it could take a month to clear. Snowing last night which didn't settle. Please no icy pavements, last thing I need.

I've been watching Dallas and Dynasty repeats (CBS Drama: Freesat 134) and other crap on my new satellite TV.

Sorry I can't really type long messages to you all I'm really not used to typing this way.




DYNASTY: the famous lily pond catfight