Monday, 1 October 2012

Desperately Seeking "Normality"

THE WEEKEND IS OVER. And I only feel slightly better. I tried to resist the urge to take That Stuff but my resistance only lasted until this morning when I walked for half an hour each way in the rain to get a £10 bag. Heroin is the only thing that makes me feel better. Also I have heard several times that methadone can actually CAUSE depression, or at least make it worse. This definitely seems to be the case with me. So I'm going back to the druggieclinic next week and asking whether I can have something else. Not Subutex/Suboxone. No way am I prepared to go sick for something that I know is going to disrupt my mood, shrink my sleep down to four hours and make me feel unnaturally wide awake all the time and probably hyper. The two other options are dihydrocodeine, better known here as "DFs" [short for DF118, their old brand-name] and extended-release morphine pills, known to the junkies as "MSTs" [Morphine Sulphate Tablets]. My worker recently dropped into the mix the fact that they CAN prescribe MSTs, if they really want to. I was anti-methadone enough, a few months ago, to consider going private just to get morphine pills on prescription as an alternative to methadone. Apart from the fact that you feel way better on them (and I know this because a few years ago somebody gave me a bottle of Oromorph syrup, which I drank in 250mg doses (wasn't tempted to inject, amazingly) and which made me feel way way better than methadone ever has; morphine is easier to reduce and detox off than methadone. They love saying how much more addictive methadone is than heroin ONCE YOU ARE STUCK ON A SCRIPT. Yet nobody EVER warned me of this beforehand. Which sometimes puts me in a mind to sue the clinic for clinical negligence for this, and that they know I have a history of depression and that methadone makes that depression considerably worse.

 I wish I hadn't said all that stuff about antidepressants yesterday because someone like Anna Grace will think I want a psychotic episode. This is not what I was saying. I only ever want to be manic when I'm down because that is the only sort of "happiness" I can conceive of. I do not, by the way, and never will, accept feeling run-down, pissed off and mildly depressed and constant low-grade sickness as any kind of "normality" because it is NOT NORMAL AT ALL.

 The ONLY time I have ever felt truly "normal" in the past two years or so has been in the immediate aftermath of short hypomanic episodes. And they do have to be mild and short. I didn't feel at all normal following true mania. I felt really confused. Couldn't remember things like appointment times. And I remember thinking at the time that this was worse than concussion ~ and I say that advisedly, as I was once hit on the head by a truck and kept losing track of where I was and what I was doing for days afterwards. No fewer than THREE people took advantage of me when I was recovering from that breakdown ~ always other addicts and always in connection with drugs. I just thought You wait. Just wait until the Vehemence hits me again and I'll open my mouth and blow the full force of the whirlwind right at you and you'll never know what hit you.

As for dying: the lower down I go the less I believe I will ever die. Thoughts of suicide become ever more torturous as I am obsessed by the horrific possibility that suicide may fail. All I have ever wanted is 100% certainty of death, and that cuts down the number of possible avenues considerably. I knew two people who managed to top themselves in spring 2010. One jumped in front of a tube train. The other took every bit of psychiatric medication and methadone she had. Neither of these methods bears a chance of death anything like high enough for me. To die on modern antipsychotics and SSRI antidepressants you have to be really, really freakishly lucky. And a person with longstanding, heavy opiate addiction could easily take several hundred milligrams of methadone and feel nothing more than heavily stoned. Tube trains enter the stations very slowly (they only seem to rush in so rapidly because you're close to the train in a confined space) ~ plus there's a whacking great trench under the live rail, meaning a massive chance that you'll fall down there and live, but probably get clothing, hair and limbs tangled in the wheels ~ a recipe for a complete medical mess. A Muslim once told me that if you stab yourself you will spend eternity in hell stabbing yourself over and over. Which narrows methods of suicide down to only one: deliberate opiate overdose. I can think of better ways of spending eternity. But shooting up gear for ever and ever would be a good compromise. The gear now is so weak, it wouldn't surprise me if I coudln't take a half-ounce all at once and live. That's another reason I want to be OFF methadone as quick as possible. It has nothing to do with wanting to live clean and everything to do with wanting to die clean. I have always known I would never be lucky enough to overdose myself accidentally; have always known I was going to have to make it through right to the bitter end. I don't want to live, but I know I have to.

See everything goes negative yet again. I saw my worker today. I had to tell him I was feeling crap because he keeps trying to con me into group therapy, which I'm not doing any more. He asked if I had any mental problems and I said no. Feeling depressed isn't really a mental problem, just an emotional problem. As for any chance of my dying, I wouldn't worry about it. To stand any chance of success at suicide you have to prepare very carefully and the more depressed a person is the less strength and volition they have to put plans of any type into action. Especially really complicated ones like suicide where you have to write notes, lock and barricade all doors, switch off phone etc etc etc it's all too much to get right.

Well there is nothing else to talk about. Crap weekend, crap week: same shit, different day.



Illustrated: Oromorph and suicide ~ I seriously doubt this method would work. You have to shoot straight through at least one brain hemisphere and that shot is way too low to assure death




*******


ANYTHING to get off the subject of death. Here are 2 tunes. I'm afraid the first is technically funeral music Mozart's Requiem: Lacrimosa. But it doesn't sound funereal to me. The non-techno versions are all crap. Nowhere near loud enough.



Celine Dion Celtic Women: Ave Maria
I'm not Roman Catholic but I like the tune...



*****

4 comments:

  1. Hi Gledwood, My Brother was very successful in suicide, no failed attempts. Go to the top of a 12 storey building, or higher if you're not convinced . . . And jump. Job done.
    With love as always x

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  2. People who jump from buildings usually land on their feet. I would want to land on my head.

    I saw people jumping out of the Twin Towers who somehow managed to spin as they fell. I don't know how they did it.

    No way would I consider 12 storeys high enough! No way!!

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  3. I love that picture of the woman blowing her brain out. You know the only resin I don't shot myself is because I have the same worry you do. I live and am an in valed (spelling). I guess if you use hallow point bullets to blow your head off, a 12gauge shotgun in the mouth will most likely succeeded in killing your self.
    I've looked into using helium to do the deed, but I want to of on heroin more than anything.
    This is morbid. I should not be discussing suicide with you.

    ReplyDelete

Shoot!