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.