Grandiose? That's me baby...

OOO. ARR. Folk seem to be missing my point re: depression. I have never tried to say (though perhaps I did say it unwittingly) that I couldn't get clean because I was depressed. Neither did I ever think there was no point to getting clean because I was depressed. What I did feel (very much because I was depressed) was that there was no point LIVING ~ clean or dirty. So the despair I felt very much revolved around that point, not whether or not I could ever manage to clean myself up. I know I will do that. That isn't and never has been my major worry.

In my life, as in so many others, the misery came before the addiction. I'm scared of going back there. That's what I'm scared of.

As for whether my depression is any different from anybody else's, how can I know that. I think that, at some points in the past, it probably has been. At some point, all the drugs and the depression must have addled my brain, because I started seeing things and hearing things. And getting paranoid. These phenomena are minority experiences to the depressive population. I'm not as bad now as I used to be. But I still don't feel well. I have been sleeping for ridiculous periods. That's the first sign of depression (in me)...

By the way, the professionals call using drugs because of, or in tandem with, depression or any other mental "affliction" "self-medicating". Not my word (I thought that sounded like the perfect excuse never to stop. But by the time they used it I really did want to stop). Their word. And now they tell me to keep popping the heavy-duty antipsychotics they prescribe to me like sweets. Those pills are so strong that on a bad day you can barely function at all.

Heroin addiction is by its very nature a "chronic, relapsing condition" ~ and this is not an excuse, merely a description which captures perfectly the longterm and fluctuating nature of drug dependency. From what I've seen, heroin, the drug with the least exciting effect is the hardest drug to kick. It's about as difficult to stop taking heroin as it is to give up eating. You don't "need" to eat. You could have a glucose IV-line put in your arm. Or pulped-up babyfood could be poured through a tube up your nose. But I bet that wouldn't stop the average person getting the munchies!

I have never known anyone with years of heroin addiction behind them say they are going to stop and succeed first time. Ever. Always they do what I do, and this inevitably involves a lot of whingeing and moaning and self-contradiction. By the end of their drugtaking career most junkies do not trust themselves at all. That, I'm afraid, is the nature of the beast.

Hmmmm... so the subtitle under my blog has become a lie... should I alter it?

I'm so fed up with heroin (again) that it'll probably be truthful within a week. I mean, it's truthful now, but how long must I go without it to be "off heroin"? I don't know.

Sometimes I catch myself talking as I do (and mostly talking to myself, it has to be said...)... "I don't take ANY DRUGS now ~ except HEROIN!" and believe me I do know how ridiculous that sounds.

Do I really make so many excuses? For years I just accepted I was an addict and totally dependent on illegal heroin and was never going to stop. Now and then I did say I wanted to stop, because in a distant, philosophical sort of way, I wanted to. But in no practical sense was I ready to give up the one thing in life that ever made me happy. Maybe I should go back to how I was then. No matter how miserable I might have been ~ least I was straight down the line with it. And not a miserable, whingeing liar I seem to be now.

By the way, have you heard of the Russian street gear called Crocodile? Desomorphine, cooked up from codeine pills and iodine liquid. One of the most horrendous street drugs in the world...

PS the gradiose schemes for learning langugages... I AM learning languages. Schemes are currently in practice. But graniose? Throughout most of the world polyglossia is the norm. Only in the Anglophone world is it seen as something unusual or special or any kind of intellectual achievement.... As the title says YES THAT'S ME!