Televisual Tower of Babel

FINALLY I got my Turkish TV turned off and HOTBIRD is coming through loud and clear. After retuning my satbox I found I had 1300 new channels. Minus the encrypted ones there are still about 700. I spent ages pruning these down to about 220. 150 of these are in Italian. But I get a load in German, English and French too. There are some really bizarre things on that satellite. Like a Buddhist channel in with Thai priests reading endless tracts in Pali. Thai gameshows (on another channel). Italian señoritas jiggling their bare mammaries at midday. There was a really manic woman on yesterday at about 1pm vigorously fanning her private parts while taking calls on two separate phones. I try and escape but she's on five consecutive channels! I'm sure that woman was mentally ill or on drugs (or both).

Oh talking about drugged-out mentally ill sex workers, I met my old housemate LAUNDRETTA at the bus stop. Smashed out of her brains on vodka. She has a massive scar across her forehead where she crashed her car during a drunken psychotic episode. She said she's now been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (quelle surprise) and some kind of psychosis. She's on 750mg quetiapine (Seroquel). I'm only on 300. I told her about my manic episode when the dryers were all talking to me down the laundrette and she laughed and laughed at that. I don't know what she's doing now but she's not doing well. Poor lass.

I'm doing really well at my Spanish. I'm nearly a third of the way through the Linguaphone course. They don't seem to know Linguaphone in America but it's basically four books and nine CDs and you learn a vocabulary of 2000 words+. To draw a comparison, Pimsleur only teaches you a few hundred words. I've been watching the news in Spanish and with Spanish subtitles can just about follow what they're going on about. I've got so far into this Spanish I started worrying about what I'd do once the course ran out. So I've already invested in Italian. I want to learn both, but am avoiding all those Italian TV channels, which will only confuse me. I've been reading ¡Hola! magazine with the aid of my trusty Collins Gem dictionary. I'm not feeling too depressed these days... (famous last words, I know!)

O cripes I've got to go ~ about to be timed out.

Hope you're all well... Hasta la vista, baby!

FREEZING BLOODY COLD!!

IT REALLY IS FREEZING here in London. Snow is everywhere. On Saturday it was pretty deep by London standards. A whole one inch (2.5cm) deep. Slush everywhere. Now the town looks like a half-done christmas card with sprinklings of icing sugar on every roof... My plants are not happy. I think they're glad to have been brought inside. Most of them HAVE bloomed already. The muscari look really happy. I thought it was just me because they seemed to be radiating some sort of psychic aura ~ you could actually FEEL them growing. But it wasn't an illusion. They were growing so much that within one week I had to repot them in a giant milk carton because a volcano of roots was erupting from the pot...

O bloody hell I'm going to get timed out yet again and I have to get a Collins Gem Spanish dictionary from WH Smiths so I can read ¡Hola! magazine! Penelope Cruz is in the sea but I don't know where or why...

OK gotta go. Keep warm everyone!¬

Gardening

I'M STARTING a pots garden on my balcony. So far I've only bought a few flowers. They are...

MUSCARI

SENETTI

BLUE CROCUSES  Not sure what mine are going to look like; they haven't bloomed yet...
(I hope they do look this wonderful...)

BALOON PLANT

PRIMROSES

Do you see a theme emerging here? Not that I'm obsessed with blue - indigo & - violet or anything....

HIGH TEA: Feelin' Good and My Theory Behind It

FEELIN' GOOD. Yup, I do feel OK. PROPERLY OK. Not semi-down, not half-depressed and tired but PROPERLY OK.

It's true my sleep cycle has gone and cycled off into a ditch somewhere because since about midday yesterday I haven't been to bed at all. I don't follow any "New Age" philosophy, but one author who's into such stuff says on sleep loss:

Sleep deprivation somehow acts as a blanket neurotransmitter re-uptake inhibitor. Your brain stays saturated with neurotransmitters leading to elevated mood and euphoria.

I have to say I never found that true in the past. Sleep loss has never made me anything else but REALLY KNACKERED. The sleep loss I get now happens BECAUSE THE ENERGY'S ALREADY THERE. Other way round!

My mood feels THE WAY IT SHOULD to me. I don't think it is elevated. It is Normal. What has gone up is my energy. I stayed up all night last night writing in Spanish.Afterwards, I've decided I'm going to master Italian, Romanian and Portuguese too. And to perfect my French. They're all offshoots of Latin, so it shouldn't be that hard. It's said that it's easier to become fluent in four Romance languages than to master Korean (or presumably any other Asian language)...

I have some theories, based around realizations that came to me fully formed (not as the fruit of interminable pondering) that don't exactly weave together into a magic carpet of Enlightened Truth (they're not meant to ~ they're my Pearls. So I hope that by alluding to them below I'm not casting them before swine...(!)

Earlier on ~ both this morning and yesterday ~ I thought I was High  ~ until I realized I couldn't possibly be, because I hadn't taken anything... But I had! I'd taken tea and tea is laden with caffeine, theobromine and so-on. Stimulants. I've had two cups of caffeinated tea today. Yesterday I had one tea and one coffee. I now drink Nescafé decaffeinated but I can still feel hyper on just that. Turns out there IS caffeine in decaffeinated coffee. Just less of it.

I've tried drinking Cup-a-Soup as an alternative, but that's laced with MSG and that perturbs the brain's glutamate receptors (inhibiting them, as far as I know). There is a connexion between glutamate, GABA, serotonin and dopamine ~ the two main monoamines that regulate mood. So I'm doing myself in there as well. Sometimes I switch to lemonade. My folks point out that most lemonade is chock full of aspartame and acesulfame K ~ both of which are "sources of phenylalanine" which has a supposed mood-elevating property. (Aspartame has also been implicated as a causative factor in a whole range of mental disorders.) Well I absolutely loathe the taste of artificial sweeteners so the lemonade I drink is Sainsbury's own, which is sugar-only. But sugar is well known for making kids hyper and I'm nothing if not a big kid. Which casts sugar out the window too...

Which leaves me with plain drinking water. Sugar-free, non-calorific and (presumably) undrugged ~ water is actually one of the Greatest Energy Sources of All. Water is a compound of oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen being, of course the very breath of life itself. While hydrogen ~ as the lightest of all elements ~ is fundamental to the most powerful nuclear reactions in the known universe. The sun ~ a humungous ball of liquid hydrogen ~ produces heat and light via continuous nuclear fusion... has been doing this for about 4,600,000,000 years, and has an estimated 7,000,000,000 years of fuel left.

Controlled nuclear fusion is the "holy grail" of nuclear scientists. If we did ever manage it, we'll be able to power the entire planet on just water. Human blood is 83% water. The Bible says that our life is in our blood. Water is described in the Bible as "living".

I don't know how I did it, but I have accessed a special source of energy and power not open to or attainable by most other people. I think in the future all humankind will drink from the same Fountain of Life. Hey maybe I got a little sip in advance...?

This is a time of Rising Energy. Spring is springing as we speak ~ can't you feel it? I woke up one morning last week and, despite feeling otherwise completely horrible, I felt this weird sense of light behind my eyes... in my head... I don't know how to describe it but I get it every year and it makes me feel "weird". OK, I know people who live Down Under can't. But everyone else...? Does anyone get what I get? This semi-migrainey sensation with ultra-intensely saturated field of vision and a sense that the weird flickery multicoloured visual effects of migraine "aura" are just about to intrude. I had this for about four days straight. Right before (and especially behind) my eyes, the building blocks and motifs of the phone game "Edge" were everywhere. So some days I was seeing the computer game on the pavement as I trotted to the methadone chemist...

Yes: I think I had been playing Edge a bit too much. I completed level 46 and that's the top level.

(Edge is a game where you roll a cube around a surreal world. There are no baddies and you don't have to shoot anything and that's why I like it. Your "enemy" is the edge: fall off and you die and have to try again. But it's really really really addictive... and it reminds me of a recurring daydream I used to have as a child... Very psychological...

Well that's all I have to say. Somehow it has taken an hour to write something that came to me in a flash earlier on. I AM going to try sleeping. It's supposed to be good to sleep it's just that... sometimes it seems such a WASTE OF TIME. You know what I mean?

Oh I just remembered I'm due down the druggieclinic tomorrow where I've 99% persuaded a lady called Marjorie to be my new Worker. Me and my old worker don't really click. The missing 1% is all down to me. I have to remain abstinent from heroin or Marge won't have me. Ukh: I'd be so ashamed if I used and she found out. Marjorie was BRIEFLY my worker in about 2009 when I really wasn't tuned into cleanliness or sobriety in any sense of either word ~ so we didn't click at all. I'd just sacked Maple Syrup ~ bullying Bitch Worker From Hell and found it hard to open up to or trust anybody at all who worked at a methadone clinic. Marjorie has been Duty Worker for the last few weeks. This means she's the person you see when you miss your keyworking appointment. Or if you're like me and your worker never makes the appointments to start with then vanishes off sick with no explanation. (I think he's got "Depression" by the way. Everyone seems to be depressed nowdays...)

Uuuuuurrrrrr... I've lost my thread. Yes ENERGY and LOTS OF IT. Back again. I wish I could Return to the Source and STAY THERE. That's the big reason I gave up on drugs of the Transcendent variety. The gates of paradise are opened. The E-pixie grabs that pot of gold at the rainbow's end and pours it out all over you, bathing you in stardust. Then come Tuesday morning you're bedridden, crying, totally distraught and feeling lied to. What was so wonderful has now turned to shit.

What I want from life is some value that lasts for ever. I'd rather have just a little bit of that than a whole load of Money. Though to be honest, it would be nice to have the money too...

OK I hope my musings weren't Too Amusing. I've got to go and find another Pot of Golden Pixie Dust...

COMPUTER GAMES

There is something intensely dreamlike about computer games. The kind I like are relatively sedate and do not require lightning reflexes!

This is the one I'm talking about. EDGE. This is the PC version. The phone version has the theme music but no other sound-effects...

POOYAN プーヤン (Konami Arcade game: 1982)

I got the top score on this down our local arcade. And doesn't it look incredibly primitive 31 years after its conception...? I was only good at it because you go up, down and shoot. I LOATHE games with complicated controls.

JET SET WILLY (Platform game for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Programmed by school boy Matthew Smith. Released 1982).

This was only fun when you nobbled it to get infinate lives, protection from death by falling, cured the "attick bug" and neutralized the "sprites"... really great fun. I used to spend hours just wandering around....

Selfridges/New Pope/Siberian Weather in London/etc....

HEY DEPRESSION GONE!! I FEEL (relatively) "NORMAL!" again! Wow. And not high as a kite either. My sleep cycle is all over the place, it has to be said. Getting up at 4am yesterday and staying up till 4am again. Then I'm waking up twice an hour and in bed till one. Missed the group session I was fully intending to go to at the druggieclinic.

IGNORE yesterday's "I want morphine" rant. Really, I probably don't. My worker told me yesterday I don't "fulfill the clinical criteria". I'm pretty sure this means I'm not in physical pain. He also said my methadone dose, at only 20mg a day, was too low. I know someone in Austria where morphine pills are regularly used as an alternative to methadone and she said the standard ratio was 8mg morphine to 1mg methadone ~ which would put me on 160mg a day. If I really wanted it, I would fight. In the past, I have been good at overturning official hurdles. But I don't want it enough. If methadone is like swimming in cold water (when you're used to warm), I'm hoping it's preparing me for the chill waters of life stretching endlessly to the blinding horizons...

BINKY has been lying in bed for FOUR DAYS now. Yesterday she looked in a terrible state, but I couldn't tell whether the pain was physical or emotional (or both). She now goes shopping on a mobility scooter. The other day, she said, the sleeve of her coat got caught in the accelerator right when she needed to brake and she knocked a man over and went careering into a moving car. The man, who had gone flying to one side like a bowling skittle, said tangled coats were "no excuse". Yeah because he's an angel. Never gets his sleeves caught in passing door handles, or scooter handles, like the rest of us...

Anyway I've got to go. London is FREEZING COLD. Yesterday it was snowing quite liberally. The air feels like liquid nitrogen. Something to do with a cold front drifting over from Siberia.

Oh and the World is about to get a new pope. Here's my prediction: a politically correct African pope who says his aim is to "unite all Catholics". And I bet he'll be Francophone African. The Roman Catholic church doesn't seem to like the English language that much... Let's see whether that one comes true. Or if not African then South American. Preferably with tribal blood...

Has anyone been watching Mr Selfridge on ITV, Sunday nights? Why did no-one tell me how good it was? Like Downton Abbey in a shop. Selfridges is London's largest department store ~ after Harrods. Harry Gordon Selfridge was an American, who brought the novel concept of the department store across the Atlantic. He ran the store for thirty years, becoming the most talked-about shopkeeper in London. But he squandered so much of his fortune he practically went bankrupt. And spent his final years travelling about London day and night by bus... Sounds like one of my friends then...

Well I've got to go and harang the council about the bloody Turkish television that is still being beamed against my will into my flat. Wish me luck: I will need it.

O, and I'm rereading Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence. We did it at school for A level English. I love his descriptions of nature, they're lush. He describes the local cricket pitch glowing in the sun "like the bed of a sea of light". Wow. 

OK gotta run bye.

Illustrated: Selfridges, Oxford Street; arctic wastes; Harrods, Brompton Road, Sons and Lovers...

¡Quiero aprender español!/+ my "love affair" with HEROIN: how it REALLY BEGAN!

YESTERDAY I DUG OUT my old £30 ($44.70) Spanish Linguaphone course and had a bash at hablando en español. I did moderately well. Spanish is "cognate" with French (both languages being forms of "baby Latin") and I have a French A level (higher school certificate). But a lot of the little words you'd use day-to-day are different. Eg bed = le lit = la cama; apple = la pomme = la manzana; town = la ville = la ciudad; suitcase = la valise = la maleta and so on. Other day-to-day words are cognate with the French but not English eg customs (at the airport) = la douane = la aduana. But the higher vocabulary is similar to both English and French eg electricity = l'électricité = la electricidad; Liberty - Equality - Fraternity = liberté égalité fraternité = libertad igualdad fraternidad.

As far as I know, Spanish is the easiest major language for native speakers of English, after Italian (Italy is one European country I'd really like to go to. The Hungarian support worker at Binky's halfway house says the Italians "have everything: beautiful countryside, beautiful art and the cities: Venezia, Bologna, Milano, Napoli, Roma...

All I have seen of Spain is a tiny part of the Costa del Sol around Málaga: Mijas Costa, the (inland) clifftop town of Rhonda... I have spent just under an hour in Madrid, where I left the railway station to wonder at the vastness of the city stretched out on the plain below me as far as the eye could see... oh yes and Algeciras and the boat to Tangier from where I took the trains to Marakech, Fez, Rabat and Oujda but my 1991 Moroccan adventure is another story...

¡Well my depression seems to have cleared! ¡And I actually felt a rush of Spanish-induced excitement! ¡¡Wow!! ¿Do you like my Hispanic upside-down punctuation marks? Bloody hell I'm glad that shitty mood has cleared. Some days last week I was starting to feel truly horrendous. I phoned my folks who seemed to think the dismal voice was drug-induced. But I was wide awake and a hell of a lot more cheerful than before I banged up smack just to make it through the day.

I'm engaging with groups a lot better at the druggieclinic I attend. I'm not sure methadone is "working" for me as well as it's meant to. I told my worker that if I can't make an improvement I'm thinking of going to a private clinic who will prescribe XR Morphine Sulphate Tablets (MSTs as they're known on the street). My worker said that any improvement is down to me. Fair dos, but methadone is supposed to be a "heroin substitute" and if staying off the gear is really such hard work, requiring iron willpower and I feel so drastically better on street gear then the methadone really is NOT substituting for heroin at all. It's just masquerading as a substitute. It's hard to get MSTs on the NHS in the UK, but in other countries like Austia and Australia they're used routinely as the second-line treatment for patients like me (there are a lot of them) who don't take well to methadone treatment. MSTs are time-release pills, taken twice a day. I have experience of oral morphine in syrup form. I drank about 240mg, fell asleep in the late evening, and woke up feeling about a hundred times better than I'd ever felt waking up on methadone (which usually entailed a gasp of panic as my body, supposedly held on the "substitute" drug, cried out for lack of heroin. I didn't "gauwch" (no heroin-induced stupor) and I wasn't "high"; I just felt perfectly OK. They like to tout methadone's "lack of heroin-like 'high'". But nobody I know talks of a heroin "high". When you're as opiate-dependent as I am, heroin is a drug for survival. Junkies who want to get "high" will pipe crack ~ and I haven't done that in a long long long long time.

My biggest thing against MSTs is that other people, on coming off methadone or suboxone ~ neither of which make you feel very good ~ say they feel "really depressed". So depressed, in fact, that two people I know ended up back on methadone/suboxone within weeks of detox and a third went screaming back to heroin. (That was Lucky, my good friend who died.) I do feel really depressed (episodically) on methadone. My hope is that, in sticking with a drug that makes me feel shitty as methadone does, I'm facing the inevitable misery upfront ~ before detox, rather than after... (There is some logic in this?... Surely...) That the transition from very little methadone to none at all will be easier for me and less of a psychological (not to mention psychiatric) step down...

The final matter is that ALL my severe mental problems flared drastically and really came to the fore the time I gave up heroin for many weeks, living on methadone alone. For all I know methadone could be causing all this manic-depressive psychosis. And at its peak it really was full-blown delirious manic psychosis ~ with me so incoherent I couldn't even speak English. At all I didn't even know it was possible to go crazy like that.... If I DO find out methadone has caused all this I SHALL BE VERY UPSET INDEED. And will seriously consider suing the clinic for malpractice. Because I SAID how dodgy I felt on methadone and NOBODY EVER LISTENED. 

My prospective new worker says MSTs are completely out of the question and says if I need to up my dose of antipsychotics that's for my GP to do. Well I don't see that I need to see a GP to take even MORE drugs to counteract SEVERE side-effects of another drug (methadone) I never really wanted to be on (would never in a million years have chosen that if the clinic had offered a true range of alternatives)... oh I don't know I'm just really unhappy on my progress on 20mg methadone. I should be far happier. Should be 100% clean and off all drugs by now (somehow I knew that was never going to happen).

I suppose my point is this: having seen over years many people of different ages, intelligences, backgrounds etc doing pretty much the same on methadone ~ ie, they take it when nothing better's on offer but as soon as they can get their hands on heroin, they do it. I've seen old people blowing their pensions on gear. Then they go back to the clinic thinking they've failed. Well MAYBE METHADONE HAS FAILED THEM! All I know about methadone is I WANT TO GET AS WELL CLEAR OF THAT SHIT AS FAST AS I POSSIBLY CAN. I hate it, resent it, LOATHE MYSELF FOR COMPROMISING ON A DRUG THAT IS WELL KNOWN TO BE EVEN MORE ADDICTIVE THAN HEROIN AND HARDER TO WITHDRAW FROM! (The clinic never told me that little fact before putting me on it ~ another thing I might sue them for.)

And you know, with a convoluted life story like mine, it's very difficult to remember the precise whys and wherefores... well:~~~ THE TRUTH ABOUT ME AND HEROIN came to me yesterday morning, first thing on awakening. The ONLY REASON I ever asked someone to get me heroin in the beginning was that I was so unhappy I wanted to kill myself.I truly was dead-set on dying. ~ And I knew heroin overdose was supposed to be the nicest way to die. You fall asleep and never wake up. So I gave an Indonesian man (one of the few non-students I knew) £50 to get me half a gram (back in 1992 heroin cost £10 a point and if he could have got it for any cheaper than £50 I didn't begrudge him pocketing the difference. I fully intended to snort the whole lot in the bath. If I didn't OD, I hoped I'd drown...

A few days later he came back to me saying he couldn't get it (couldn't be bothered, more like). I still had a ridiculous, botched attempt at overdosing and drowning myself. It obviously didn't work (well I'm still here, aren't I?) But about FIVE YEARS LATER this same person sold me a £20 deal of powder cocaine at a rave in Norwich (only time I've ever scored snorty coke) saying he "had a bit of brown in a drawer" if I'd like to come back to his. Of course I was round like a shot ~ I'd always wanted to sample heroin purely out of curiosity. He was dealing the stuff by then and said I could have as much as I could smoke. So I smoked a full £20 deal, which astonished him. Then I went home with another £20 deal. And that was my introduction to heroin. My point being: if I hadn't sincerely wanted to kill myself I'D NEVER HAVE GOT INTO HEROIN TO START WITH. You see ~ IT WAS ALL ABOUT DEATH TO BEGIN WITH!

I'm sorry to end on a negative note. I'm thinking maybe I ought to write out my life story. I find telling the truth distances me from the facts. I want to be as remote from them as possible... I'll retell my life to avoid EVER RELIVING IT AGAIN. I mean, it doesn't matter if no "real" publishers are interested: I'll dump it on ebook, told by "Anonymous"... (or "by Gledwood": whichever).

I'll leave my closing paragraph to Google Translate:~~

Entonces, espero que tengas todo bien. Lo siento, no he visitado ninguno de vosotros. No he estado alrededor. Me siento mejor ahora. ¡Guau, me siento bien de estar vivo!

So, I hope you're all well. Sorry, I have not visited any of you. I have not been around. I feel better now.Wow, it feels good to be alive!

Illustrated: Rhonda; Mijas; 30mg morphine XR; methadone bottle; methadone 20mg;  brown heroin; death; e-reader ...

LINK: WHY METHADONE DOESN'T WORK (Guardian newspaper)
 

Methadone is a highly addictive synthetic opiate, more addictive than heroin and harder to withdraw from, but it survives the digestive system and so does not need to be injected. Most addicts loathe it. They call it green gunk and grimace as they swallow. All of today's addicts have been coming to the pharmacy for months, some for years. And that's the problem.

And what of those heroin addicts not in treatment? They visit me regularly for clean needles to inject filthy brown street heroin. There is growing evidence to support treating these long-term relapsing addicts with pure heroin. A blueprint for the requisite regulatory changes has been created, but until the laws are changed they must remain thieves and prostitutes, rather than patients, victims of legalised social neglect.

My Average IQ

HEY I just did an online IQ test and my intelligence is FIVE POINTS ABOVE AVERAGE! A score of 105. I feel super-brainy now! Binky did one on her phone last week and told me she's 120. I'm not surprised I'm thicker than her. Certain people appear to think I'm ever so bright. But I'm not. I'm terrible at maths, cannot do anagrams to save my life (almost all "word games" rely on spelling and I'm no good at spelling either). Oh, and they're obsessed with sequencing things. And I'm no good at that either. Ie I'm thick. I just happen to be fairly articulate with an OK vocabulary. Trust me, if I really were intelligent I'd be working as a doctor as we speak. (Fair enough maybe a doctor with one arm in the morphine cabinet but a doctor through and through...) 

But medicine never was on the cards. In my day, to qualify for any undergraduate medicine course you need to be able to get three As at A level in all three sciences ~ or physics, chemistry and maths (which would be even HARDER). Nowadays, apparently, the prerequisites are softer: chemistry and biology only (which would give me half a chance). I did once manage to get on to a BSc psychology course (if you wonder whence my fluent psycho-babble originates, it's from there. But psychologists need to understand research methods and statistics (which WAS hard and bored the pants off me. You need to be able to assess data against the odds of the same results occurring randomly ~ something to do with a kappa value, whatever that may be...) oh yeah and psychobiology. Which is brain science. And I thoroughly enjoyed witnessing the pain of my fellow classmates as they attempted to grapple with something TANGIBLE AND REAL. Yes it was funny. And also REALLY REALLY HARD. I'm not at all impressed by my drug workers' babblings on dopamine and serotonin. Ask them to draw molecules of these neurotransmitters and to provide intricate details of 5-hydroxytryptamine reuptake at the synaptic cleft and they'll no doubt be baffled. Quite possibly not even realizing that 5HT is serotonin! You see, you really need to know your stuff to be "knowledgeable" in this area. (And I'm certainly not "knowledgeable": I wouldn't know the difference between a dopamine molecule and a parrot dropping!)

Well I'm TRYING to keep away from the Nasty Heroin. I went back to it because I was feeling so intensely crappy. And I've used it this morning. If I hadn't, and had been feeling the way I have felt without it, I wouldn't be here writing at all. Anything I did write would be intensely gloomy and morbid.

On a lighter note I finally got my Disabled/Pensioners' Free Bus Pass. So I took the bus everywhere today...

That's about it. I SO WISH I could kick the gear out of my life for good. But past experience has left such a bad taste in my mouth. Promises promises ~ all broken. I cannot trust myself at all. And haven't been able to since I became dependent on heroin (for years it was all going to end "tomorrow" or "next week" ~ I seriously believed that!)

I hope you're feeling good. Spring is springing. I can feel it light up my brain like a drug. A drug that doesn't make me happy, just weird... but hey, all things change. Turn turn turn....

Illustrated: me as a doctor; London Freedom Pass...

Mired in Melancholia

I HAVEN'T posted because I have been a bit depressed. Veering into quite a lot depressed. My new flat is half redecorated. Paint spots everywhere. Including on my clothes. The new"bright yellow" hallway (brightest yellow out of the eight popular colours offered by the council's Free Paint Service) looks very homely with the hall light on. (I hardly ever turn it on: too stingy about power.)

A bloke came round today and gave a new lock to my balcony door. Which is just as well, as it was unlocked with no key. And he locked my bathroom window, which had also been unlocked with no key, making me feel very insecure. Aparently it's just a standard key number I need. Though I've no idea what number that was... I was so ashamed about the state of my place. It was in terrible condition already. I really have to fix things up. I have been feeling too lousy to bother doing anything. A kind of "depressed" state I don't want to think of as "clinical depression". When I have somebody to talk to I don't feel anythign like as gloomy. But I'm still very irritable and moody. That makes me think the so-called "depression" wasn't real to start with. I don't know. I just feel very, very moody, negative, and easily annoyed.

I've been reading a postgraduate medicine book bought for £1 from a charity shop. All the body's vital functions are included: heart, gastrointestinal system, skin, kidneys, liver and pancreas, brain and nervous system... and I think that's it. (No paediatrics, no ears-nose-throat, no bones, no section on general practice...) But in brain diseases it does mention no fewer than four psychiatric conditions believed, in 1971, to manifest as low mood: "reactive depression, endogenous depression, manic-depressive psychosis and involutional melancholia". Reactive depression was also known as "neurotic depression"; endogenous depression was "psychotic depression"; my old self-help book on the subject listed the two conditions in entirely separate chapters (psychotic depression lumped together with manic-depressive psychosis). I never could work out which type of depression I supposedly suffered from but always assumed I was far more neurotic than psychotic. Which would mean I have neurotic depression alternating with psychotic mania ~ a real psychiatric conundrum! Involutional melancholia, by the way, just means extreme agitated pschotic depression in the middle-aged and elderly. An absolutely horrible condition.

Back to this postgraduate medical manual and my favourite diseases are ulcerative colitis and Crohn's. I was window-shopping for conditions, wondering which speciality, as a doctor, I'd go for. I'd always assumed neurology was most interesting, but in actuality there's probably nothing more satisfying than excising a full yard or so of pussing, ulcerated bloody-diarrhoea-producing bowel. My Australian cousin, who has Crohn's, had more than a metre of her large intestine removed. I had a good flick through dermatology for abscesses and burns but neither is featured! Most junkies I know love a good pus-ridden abscess to squeeze out ~ specially when it's on someone else!

Talking about addiction, I've just come out of a really good anti-drug seminar at the clinic. I needed to go: I have not been coping well. Without gear I am feeling extremely low and suicidal. I can't believe I'm taking heroin just to give me some will to go on. But I am. The heroin is no symptomatic cure. (On certain occasions in the past, I have taken heroin while feeling depressed and my low mood has vanished entirely all day and all night, only reappearing upon awakening the next morning.)  If I hadn't done any gear today then I wouldn't have bothered with that drugs meeting (yes very paradoxical I know but that's what full-blown addiction IS: a state where one is unable to function without one's drugs). Also, without heroin I wouldn't be writing this now. The heroin is no cure... I just feel noticably better on it than off it, but the misery lives on in every pore. A visceral sense of hopelessness and irritation. Last week I was feeling good enough to paint my house; this week I just cannot be bothered. I try playing games on my new phone. But they're not much of a distraction and most of the time they just irritate the hell out of me. I have always wanted to postpone my death until after I get over my opiate addiction. Lately, however, I've been telling myself not to bother waiting, to just do it now.

But that was yesterday, in the shadowy depths of the Valley of No Drugs. Now I'm back on my drug of choice yesterday's thinking seems mood-twisted.

I keep wondering, should I even take methadone, if it's making me feel this bad..? For all I know, all my mental problems could be down to methadone. Strange coincidence that the VERY DAY (in late 2010) that  I took to relying on methadone alone was the SAME DAY I plunged headlong into schizoaffective manic-depressive psychosis!

O I don't know. I don't know what to make of anything now...

I know I shouldn't be talking like this, but this is the truth and isn't my blog meant to tell the truth? If I don't say this then I don't know what to say at all...

Illustrated: depressed and hypomanic brains, ulcerated colon (so glad I haven't got that disease mental illness is so much easier to cope with); syringe on drity hands from The Last Days of Chinese Drug Addict Wo Guilin ~ very depressive text-and-photo-montage, if you care to click HERE.