Failed Blood Test

I HAVE JUST COME BACK from my GP where I have been poked, scratched and prodded by a poor nurse who couldn't even get a vein in my NECK. I have never injected into my neck, so the veins there are pristine. The trouble with my veins is they roll around, collapse, move and generally do not play ball with any needlesticker. She got blood half way down the tube, but none in the bottle.

I also had to get up really early for this torment and I still wish I was in bed now.

So I have to go to the phlebotomy department at the local hospital. All this for a useless glucose and cholesterol test!

Also that quetiapine (Seroquel) is making me faint and dizzy all the time. This at a mere 200mg. And I feel physically sick. The other day I saw a huge green cricket in my chicken ciao main but I think that's caused by bad eyesight. There was nothing there by the way but it really put me off the food.

The methadone is still at 35mg. When will I ever get off it? All I want is to be clean.

I've got to go. I feel like I'm about to throw up.

Back In The Wars

IT'S INCREDIBLY BRIGHT AND SUNNY. The sunlight is shining right into the back of my head, giving me blind spots. My Seroquel/quetiapine is still making me sleep twelve hours per day and I have mild chronic fatigue symptoms. I put my back a bit out on Saturday by lifting my right foot to tie a shoelace. It hasn't been the same since.

Yesterday, full of craving for heroin and miserable with my bad back I just went back to bed and slept all day. Then I woke up in the evening and scored, felt all right this morning, and have an inkling that from now on I should be OK without any heroin. The gear has got progressively weaker over the past week. Yesterday's dose I barely felt at all. So I've weaned myself off it unintentionally, purely by buying bad gear. I look to the future and see no drugs in it.

I'm fed up that all my friends are drug-takers. Even Paddster, who had a 35 year plus heroin habit, is on Suboxone, though he uses no illicit drugs. Everyone else I know uses heroin or crack or Valium-type drugs ~ usually in an on-again off-again manner. I don't want to be taking drugs even occasionally. I hate crack. Heroin is too weak plus it's addictive, plus I haven't the veins for it. Valium is unnecessary when you have something like quetiapine blocking any anxiety. I do drink alcohol, albeit sparingly. I'm just fed up of feeling half-ill all the time. I have diarrhoea. I feel dizzy. My eyes react badly to the bright sunlight (photophobia). They also react badly to overhead lights at night. I still get the bizarre thoughts that are supposed to be associated with the schizophrenic component of schizoaffective disorder. That is, I feel thoughts popping in from outside. Loud, bizarre thoughts. I still hear voices occasionally but they're quiet ones. I still get paranoia and have to remind myself that that's exactly what it is... And I feel constantly this low-grade depression that I cannot really snap out of. I am sure that without Seroquel I would be far more depressed.

When I last tried coming off antipsychotics at some time over December-January I felt suicidally depressed as well as paranoid and irritable and the traffic started talking to me one day, calling me a pervert. I would really like to be able to come off all drugs all together. It feels strange to me to be so focused on getting off methadone, yet knowing I'll likely have to stay on quetiapine. Maybe this summer I'll give coming off all meds one more try. By then I should be off methadone completely. The rate I'm going I should be off it in just over 12 weeks. I no longer feel feverish and excessively sweaty ~ symptoms that crop up randomly every few weeks and seem to bear no relation to my methadone dose, or whether or not it has recently been lowered, or whether or not I have recently been at the heroin. I think it's just some undiagnosed low-grade medical condition I have giving me chills and sweats like that.

Anna Grace says she's going to stop her main blog at blogger because she's fed up of the spiteful anonymouses making snide comments. I think she should never say never and just carry on, even if she does start up another blog elsewhere...

I'd better go now; my head's spinning like a top...


Illustrated: migraine aura ~ I still get this a lot, even though I'm lucky enough not to get the headaches these days...

Mystery Illness

I HAVEN'T POSTED because I was sick all last week with some mystery diarrhoea and flu type illness that had me sweating like a swine who hadn't had enough methadone. My methadone is down to 35mg. Unfortunately I got back into the habit of using heroin on top which I am trying hard to stop. Some days I only used the traces left from the day before. But any using is too much using. I want to be free of all drugs altogether, so this is what I'm trying to remind myself. The heroin took away the sweats and chills from the flu-type illness. And that made me feel that I was getting addicted to the heroin again, so it's all a mess. I'm taking my methadone as late in the day as possible so that each day I can move the time of dosing forward, and the methadone should hold me all the way through. Well that's the theory.

I am now on 200mg quetiapine (Seroquel). This is for schizophrenia, mania and bipolar depression and it makes me extremely drowsy. Every day this week I have had to get up early for some reason or other and today it caught up with me. I slept all afternoon through to five o'clock. The 50mg quetiapine I've been on for the past fortnight is an exceedingly low dose and I don't think it has insulated me well from the bells and whistles (or slings and arrows) of madness. Strange things happen. For example, yesterday lay down and tried to have a nap for an hour but I couldn't sleep because my body was shrinking into space. I clicked my thumbnail under my front teeth and my thumb was massive. The rest of my body was tiny though. Nothing could make this illusion go away, except for getting out of bed and losing the opportunity of sleep. I also keep getting manic flash-backs. That is the memory of specific symptoms comes back and hard. For instance I tried to post on my blog one night and could only write strings of rhymes. My mind was racing so hard. I don't think I am becoming manic. The mere thought of going mental like that scares me because I totally lost my mind in the peak of mania. The only good thing about it was the euphoric high. My self-esteem soared while my mind fell apart in a way it has never done during depression.

Because I was ill everything went to rack and ruin yet again. So today I cleaned the floor. It looks amazingly stark and light now that 75% of the dirt is gone. I have to quadruple the dose of these antipsychotics tonight but am not looking forward to fighting to stay awake all tomorrow.

Anna Grace asked why I have slowed down on my blogging. It is because I no longer have a working computer at home and because I have been ill and depressed. I am refocusing on the goal of getting off methadone all together. I really hate methadone. It's too much of a compromise for someone like me to accept. No lovely needle. No instant fix. And yet still the slavery of being totally beholden to a yucky artificial chemical and the corrupt clinic system that deals it out. I think methadone clinics are corrupt because they subtly bully clients into lying and saying they're doing well when nearly all of them are doing badly. The reason they are doing badly is that methadone is no real substitute for heroin. It's not until I got to the end of the line that I ever had motivation to steer clear of heroin for any length of time. I want to come off methadone so that I can visit my family without having to ask permission at the clinic for a week's take home medication, which you need to ask for at least a fortnight in advance. Sometimes they refuse to cover even one week, insisting you pick up half the methadone from a nominated chemist once you get there. My family live in a small community. I don't want gossip going around about who's on the Mean Green Methadone Machine.

Well it's past 7pm and I'm tired. Yet again my thoughts have turned to scoring. How am I ever going to get out of this vicious rut? I think I should remind myself that I'm practically the same on heroin as off it. And what nasty nasty stuff it is. I wish so much that I could be treated on anything else but methadone but the only thing else on offer where I live is Suboxone. I've been on Subutex and the switchover is very disruptive. My sleep shrivelled down to four hours per night and two weeks later I was still getting no more than six hours. I didn't realize at the time but my mood was on something of a high. With my history, if I let that happen again I could easily get manic. And as I said, I don't really want to lose my mind.

Well I have to go now. Outside, London is trundling past. I wonder where all those people are going? My finger is almost normal again. I can type almost normally ~ something that felt it was never going to happen again when I broke my fingers. Take care everyone... ;-)...

Dullard

I WENT TO THE HOSPITAL for physiotherapy this morning. My mangled finger is much better and nearly straightens up, if you push it. Came back. Went to Valium Marilyn's house. She was lying on the couch in bedclothes complaining that she wanted pills: Valium, temazepam, zopiclone (sleeping pills and tranquillizers basically). I said I would go down the road with her later if she likes, but I don't want any pills myself. On quetiapine I don't need them. This new antipsychotic made me extremely drowsy the first couple of days that I took it; now I feel OK. Just slightly drowsy. I wish time would hurry up so I can be OFF METHADONE. That's my one goal in life, to get off that nasty stuff. I really cannot understand how someone like Anna Grace in Hawaii can go to all the trouble of coming off it only to run screaming back to the noxious crap. That's why I'm reducing slowly, to reduce the chances of relapse at the very end.

Anyway it's the weekend now. I hope you all have a good one.

Illustrated: Valium. Which I do not want...

14 Weeks to go

I SAW MY DRUGGIEWORKER yesterday. At the rate I'm reducing, I should be off methadone all together in 14 weeks time!

I saw my GP today and got a prescription for quetiapine 50mg daily. That's not very much, but you're supposed to up the dose gradually over time. Quetiapine is the medication I always wanted to be on. I'm going to take it all at night, when it should knock me out into good sleep...

Now that I'm not using heroin all the time another addiction has got me: hambugers. I use the drug needle to inject Lea & Perrins right into them which makes them really yummy.

I hope y'all are OK.


DEEP TRANCE MIX



DJ TIESTO: LORD OF TRANCE

Thinking Forward...

WELL that was a depressing last post wasn't it! I only feel as bleak as that when I look forward in life. Looking forward makes me full of angst. I never used to look forward when I was using heroin every day, except to make unrealistic goals. Strangely, as a constant drug abuser, I lived much more in the moment than I ever do now. NA talk about learning to live in the moment, but I did learn to do that ~ on drugs. I have to say, it was only when I was stoned that I really lived in the moment, but still. (When I wasn't stoned I just looked forward to getting and taking the heroin.) I'm finding it very hard getting used to life without that stuff, even though I still use it about once a week it's not as integral to me as heroin once was. Unless I get the stuff right into my collapsing veins I really cannot feel it. I've tried and tried smoking it but feel no effect at all. I can't help wondering whether smoking heroin is just psychological in other people too. I haven't felt smoked heroin since right back in the early days, and even then as I built a habit up, the high faded into practically nothing. During the peak of my using the only effect I really felt off heroin was the buzz as it went straight into my vein. The after-effects just felt like tiredness and heaviness making me sleepy ~ not even a particularly pleasant drowsiness. I don't know. I've wasted years chasing after that stuff. I'm determined to learn to live life without it.

I always told myself I would give myself two years of positively trying to go somewhere in a drug-free lifestyle before I ever gave up and decided life really wasn't worth living. I know it's partially depression that made me feel that way. But it's also having little purpose in life, nowhere secure to live and little social life that depresses me on top.

My finger is way better though it still won't straighten out properly. I don't know whether it ever will. I shook hands with someone the other day without being put in agony, so that was a good sign. Plus I can type with that finger without it feeling too much of a stretch. I have to remember to keep doing exercises where I stretch the finger out and spread out then clench a fist. I don't think I'm doing them enough. I can do 100 fist clenches in a row without pain and I can push my bad finger down and straighten it out without it hurting either, so those must be good signs.

I have found out a bit about the Mariana Trench. Apparently it's not just a crack in the ocean floor the way you'd imagine ~ no steep sides. It's more like a hollow that starts about 20,000 ft down, plunging another 15,000 ft (3 miles) further. The hollow is actually 43 miles wide, so 43 miles by 3 miles doesn't look like a pit. Even though it's called an abyss, it actually has gently sloping sides. Although the Mariana Trench is only 43 miles wide, it's over 1000 miles long.

I hope y'all liked the Netflix hamsters ad. I was looking and looking for the British one because it has cuter voices. But I cannot find it. Someone please put that advert on Youtube!

My internet junkie friend Anna Grace is in Hawaii now and using black tar heroin out there. She's lucky enough to get to swim in tropical seas ~ even though they are infested with box jellyfish, at least they're nice and warm.

I hope you have a charming weekend everyone. I have to go and do my laundry now. I have a doctor's appointment next week, where I'm going to ask for an appointment with a psychiatrist, and try and change my medication to Quetiapine. Please please let me change to quetiapine...

Take care everyone :-)