The Depressing Post

FINALLY the shit arse methadone clinic I am forced to attend has allowed me to pick up my dose three times a week instead of every miserable day. The sheer drudgery of that empty routine was getting me down beyond words. HOWEVER, they are still insisting that when I come in to pick up, I have to drink that day's dose under supervision, which made me HIT THE ROOF when I was told about it. The entire point of taking methadone home is to be able to drink the dose in bed in the early hours, so that when you get up the dose is going good and strong. Otherwise you get up feeling crap and on top of that have to trudge down to whatever God-forsaken chemist you have been allocated (from a ridiculously tiny list) sweating, hot, cold, miserable. Wait for up to twenty minutes as old ladies are given advice that's plainly written on the side of their prescriptions etc etc. Then I have to sit in the public library for over an hour as the methadone very slowly takes effect and the sweats gradually diminish. If I don't get better soon, I'm taking out a formal complaint against this clinic, by far the worst I've ever been to.

Either that, or I'll go private. A friend of mine gave me the number of a private treatment centre that prescribes Subutex, injectable methadone and morphine sulphate pills as well as the usual ineffectual oral methadone. I'm too scared to change over to Subutex as last time I was sick beyond words during the change-over and barely sleeping at all a full two weeks afterwards.

I'm very much in two minds about whether or not to go into this detox unit. I've been in such places before. The dosing, scheduling and in fact every rule is in place for the convenience of the staff, not the patients. A usual detox involves reducing 5mg every 2 days, which is quite steep and even if I do take the nasty antipsychotic quetiapine (which I have given up on as I feel more ill on it than off it) there's a good chance that I will not sleep at all, for days on end. The only light at the end of that particular tunnel is that a continued lack of sleep might induce bipolar mania, which I'd really like to have in a detox unit. It would totally distract me from the horrific job in hand, that of coming off opiates and produce lots of fun fun fun, with a severely elevated mood and lots of hallucinations. The risk of course, is of being carted off from detox unit to mental hospital.

My book's going OK. I wrote 800 words yesterday and have been editing chapter one. I feel very little joy from this or anything else in life. Every second I am awake I feel gloomy, hopeless, irritable. I'm glad that I'm still sleeping a good 12 hours per day, so at least I have the horror of fewer waking hours to deal with.

I have decided to compose a living will, so that if anything ever goes seriously wrong with me, medically speaking, I have it in writing, signed and witnessed that I want NO LIFESAVING TREATMENT, only paliative care. Hopefully in the form of high-dose opiates. The way I see it, if I'm struck by a fatal illness, it's my sign that my time is up. I'm more fed up with life than you an possibly imagine. No amount of children's book writing will ever cure that. Neither will walks in the park, listening to nice music or any other of the well meaning but ineffectual suggestions I have collected over the years. Life after heroin is no life at all. It's not that I cannot replace heroin, because I find my writing just as absorbing. And there is no good heroin available to buy anywhere in or near London that I know of.

My time on heroin was the only time I ever felt at peace with myself. Now I am off it once more, I'm back at war. Hence the pressing need for a living will (because anyone deemed bipolar or otherwise mentally ill can be forced into lifesaving medical treatment against their will). What the doctors would fail to understand is that I still want to die whether I feel depressed or not. I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF LIFE AND WANT IT  OVER.

Still, I will not give up on my schemes to make money for my family after I am gone. And that's about all I have to say today. Take care everyone.