Bad Ear/Electricity/UK Heroin Purity/Methadone Detoxification and Anti-Methadone Clinic Worker Rant...

TO GET TO THE METHADONE INFO, SKIP THE ITALICIZED SECTION...

I HAD REALLY ITCHY EARS yesterday so I tried to cure them by poking a cottonbud in the right one. It went right into the excess wax and ~~BAMM!!!~~ DEAF AGAIN! Just like last time. So I'm back on the Otex peroxide and vegetable oil mixture in a forlorn attempt to cure the 50% deafness in that ear. They say if you're not OK within 4 days you should see a doctor. I'm making an emergency appointment on Monday. Last time my ear got so infected I wasn't sure I didn't have a perforated eardrum. And the antibiotic spray she prescribed appeared to make the situation even WORSE. One day my hearing improved so well it was practically back to normal. Then I sprayed in the prescribed preparation, like you're meant to for two days after it heals and ~~BAMM~~!! DEAF YET AGAIN! At one point I hiccupped and the hearing came straight back. Which totally did my head in as the packaging of Otex says DO NOT USE IN CASES OF INFECTION. Which I didn't realize I had. Then the antibiotics said DO NOT USE IN CASES OF PERFORATED EARDRUM. Well somehow the situation seemed to have spread from outer ear to middle ear which it can surely only do if the eardrum is perforated. Otherwise how can an influx of air through the eustachian tube (which trails from middle ear down to throat) fix anything. O I don't know. I'm seeing a doctor anyhow.

I've turned my fridge off to try and save money. My friend Pinky told me this must be the major cost. SOMETHING is costing over 40p a day, even with radio, phone charger, CD player, everything except telly, satellite box and DVD player is unplugged. All my bulbs are energy-saving and at my calculation should cost no more than 3p each per 24 hours. My electricity costs about 12.5p per Kilowatt Hour. The meter told me so. There's a standing charge of about £1.15 per week ~ ie about 15p per day. O I don't know what's what....

... If you're wondering why I've gone so housewifely with posts about washing up, washing up liquids, laundry detergents and softeners, fridge defrosts and so on, it's because I'm so terrible at cleaning and basically doing any practical thing round the house I have to turn a lazerlike focus to obsess on the subject. Otherwise nothing ever gets done.

METHADONE CLINIC RANT:~~~~~~~

I'M SO FED UP with the drugs clinic it's unreal. The crap these workers come out with. Like "'clucking' (ie the opiate withdrawal state) is mostly psychological". Yeah ~~ and?? So what? Another one tried to imply that anybody with any habit should be OK on just 30mg methadone. That is ridiculous. They come out with all knowlegeable-sounding claptrap like "Britain is the furthest North-West corner of Europe so the heroin gets here last and is weaker than anywhere else on the continent. Maybe this is true now (after the Great Heroin Drought of late 2010 to early 2011) but it was never true before. I know people who have used all over the continent and they all say the same thing: gear was more expensive here but stronger. Greg Arious went to rehab in Amsterdam. He messed it up, as most people do (by far the majority of rehab patients "relapse" within the first year. Anyway he said Dutch crack was better than ours. But the gear was about the same. All the figures I unearthed when curiosity niggled at me: how strong WAS the gear? It used to be 40-50% pure. And it's either imported specially from Afghanistan to here via land and sea or it comes from the Netherlands.

In 2010 (the year of the drought) the mean UK retail purity of heroin, based on 5528 samples, was 34.9%; Holland was 44.5%. France was only 13.2%! In 2008 the UK mean was 37.5%-42.8%, (based on 6241 samples), the Netherlands was 40.15; France just 11.8%.

I'm fed up of them spouting crap. I told them the story of when I took 50mg methadone ~ this in the form of Physeptone tablets still in the strip, so it couldn't possibly have been watered ~ and how within about 15 hours I was in pretty severe withdrawals. They don't want to believe the truth, because it's not in their interests to believe it. So they come out with smug, glib comments about heroin addiction being mostly in the mind ad nauseum. And next time I hear such crap I swear I will be physically sick.

Last time I saw him my worker was questioning me about my reservations regarding Subutex/Suboxone and I told him how my sleep withered down to 4 hours per night and how very very wide awake I was all day. And he said, What do you feel you need something to keep you doped down? And I said No. My tiny dose of methadone is hardly going to keep me in any way "dopey". Drug workers will talk about "switching to Subutex" as if it's as simple as just switching on a light. Subutex is an agonist-antagonist to opiate receptors, so you cannot safely take a dose until you're in pretty florid withdrawals. If you do take it early, it will throw any heroin, methadone, morphine, whatever off the brain's receptor sites and make you very sick indeed. My reservation is that when I did go on Subutex some years ago it put me into a state I now know as mild hypomania. My sleep was very poor. My mood was elevated. If it managed to do that years before I ever had obvious bipolar symptoms, what on earth will it do now? It could easily blast me up into full-blown mania. Every single time I have tried to detox, or to switch meds, or to rapidly reduce medication, I have experienced manic-depressive symptoms. I'm not saying I had full-on mental breakdowns, or even "episodes". But I did have definite symptoms. EVERY SINGLE TIME. I'm not willing to discuss this with a drugs worker who barely seems to know what bipolar is, let alone schizoaffective disorder. None of them give a crap for my wellbeing. They just want clients on their books who do justice to their position as a good drugs worker. Clients who tick all the boxes: who give up injecting, give up using on top. Who successfully detoxify themselves on methadone or Subutex "in the community".

The Government was parping away a couple of years ago about how they disapproved of longterm methadone and how they were going to push addicts in to rehab. I said at the time "well good luck paying for it" because most people need three or more stints in rehab before they ever achieve any lasting recovery ~ and full rehab costs something like £10,000 ($16,000). Now, surprise-surprise, they're restricting funding for detox/rehab places because they can't afford it and their number one recommended "pathway" for longterm addicts is methadone/Subutex detox "in the community" ~~ just like I chose to do, with no input from them. I'm the only person I know who isn't happy stuck on a methadone script. Nobody else appears to want to come off it.

O yeah and by the way: the most ridiculous thing I think I've ever heard came from the mouth of the guy who was conducting the weekly antidrugs meeting. Somebody was complaining of problems he'd had in a detox unit and he said "your detox was too long". How can you possibly wean somebody off notoriously addictive substances like heroin and methadone "too slowly"? The big BIG reason I'm against going into a unit is precisely because they rip the stuff out of you FAR TOO FAST. I went into detox units twice in the same year (2004, if I remember right) ~~ ended up spending vast amounts of time in the counselling room, crying. Missed all the interesting stuff, because I was in that counselling room weeping so much I'm surprised I didn't get dehydration. Left early both times (within days). Spent entire nights wide awake looking at my snoring "peers" who would later claim not to have slept a wink either (well they did a really good impression of sleeping). Sleep deprivation is famously both a symptom and a cause of mania. These ignoramuses don't seem to get it: if I try and come off opiates too fast, or even switch myself from methadone to Subutex, there's a really good chance that I'll set myself off bigtime into another manic psychotic episode. I don't see why I should have to spell this out to someone who should know about schizoaffective disorder if he's going to treat a schizoaffective "client".

Another new policy of the new Liberal-Conservative Coalition (ie de facto rightwing Tory) government is that they're not allowing longterm methadone maintenance any more. This is no problem for me, because I don't and never did want methadone maintenance. Don't see why I should live my life beholden to any bastards at any drug clinic, be tied to a chemist, have to ASK PERMISSION to see my own family ~~ or to travel anywhere for any length of time. The old clinic even kept me on a level, supervised dose of 110mg against my will. The doctor seemed to think I was hypomanic and said if I was forced against my will to stay at 110mg when I wanted to reduce, some "pattern" might become evident. There was no pattern, and their drugs test gives yes-no answers to a range of substances. No dosages or dates ~ ie no pattern ~ ever can become visible. I hate methadone and do not see methadone-addiction as any substitute for stability or normality. I'm the only person I know who seems to feel this way. Since I gave up using heroin at every opportunity in late 2010 my mental health has plummeted. It's my view that methadone is a noxious toxin and I want me and it separated as rapidly as humanly possible. But this is going to take some time. At the present rate, I won't be off it until sometime around early 2013. AND I REALLY CANNOT WAIT FOR THAT.

FOR BEVERLYBABE AND ANNA GRACE
Here's the Manic Street Preachers' Design For A Life performed live at Glastonbury ~ our biggest rock festival ~ and it SHOULD PLAY IN THE USA...




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