A Clean New Year For Me

I CAN'T STAY ON FOR A LONG TIME; it's the end of a long day, I didn't go to bed last night I feel maxxed out and overloaded and stressed and I've just gone shopping with Binky pre-new-year rush and all. I'm getting on with Binky far far better. My fellow blogger-friend Beverly asked (in recent comments (and I didn't reply Bev because I only just got them, they automatically go through moderation once the post is a certain number of days old...) am I loving? Well I think, no. (In a way, at least). What I mean by this is that one thing I picked up from the failed (cancelled) MBT group I was going to was how divorced from my feelings I actually am. In many ways Binky and I are emotional opposites. She inhabits her emotions, I can, at times, tend to want to sit opposite mine feeling ironic and slightly superior. I mean, for years one of my most favourite words has been "entertaining" which one ex-friend once admitted to me, during a blazing argument, that she really found irritating because it seemed to epitomize me as a sneery supercilious person. I'm not sure that I was, but she thought I was. I'm more an emotionally deadened person who plays it tonge-in-cheek a lot of the time for want of any other way to play it. It may sound weird to talk of emotional detatchment when I've been so prone to mood problems over the years, but moods and emotions are very different things. Binky'snot to feel emotional. A lot of depressed people tend to claim they don't actually feel... that they can't feel; that their feelings are more frozen than painful as such... Do you see what I mean?
mental problems seem to focus around emotional dysregulation; whereas mine have often seemed to involve some dysregulation of mood. Mood is to do with your predominate feelings, so it's possible to use mood as a way

Why am I banging on about distancing self from feelings? Because I feel that, in a sense, I have treated Binky too callously in the past, shutting myself off from her. I can't put my finger on what it is I did wrong, but I know I do really find it difficult to engage with people in any kind of really "emotional" way... I don't know why, it's just something I've noticed over the years...

... And of course heroin, my addict drug of choice is inherently about not feeling things. (People don't really take heroin to get "high" as such, more not to feel low, not to feel real, not to feel the immediacy of life... or perhaps more literalistically you could say it seems to blunt off life's sharp edges and that's what I relied on it for far far FAR TOO MUCH.

Both Binky and I are making new year's resolutions NOT TO USE AGAIN. And it's 3:42pm ~ about eight hours till the new year and I think this year I actually am going to watch those review of the year shows and counting in hogmanay on BBC. In previous eras I haven't had the slightest interest in a change of date from one number to another, but I DID make and very largely keep a new year's res to give up crack cocaine some years ago (you know it could well be five years ago now) and was so impressed by my success there that I'm into making another resolution this year to knock heroin-taking on the head for once and for all. For so many reasons it is not a good thing. Why would I even state such an obviousness? Because there's a part in me who asserts that heroin has made me feel good, helped me cope (emotionally), killed my pain, that I have every right to the pursuit of my own happiness and if that has to involve a reliance on heroin then so be it... yes I have indulged in that line of thought in the past. I've been feeling really really horrible at some points over recent weeks (probably with depression though I'm so wearied of all that I've now largely dropped labels, except where absolutely necessary)... I'vat all...) More recently life has become confused and I so want to move on and be CLEAN in so many ways. Physically clean, drugsually clean, emotionally clean, psychically clean, spiritually clean... know what I mean?
e felt shit and taken heroin I've felt shit and not taken it. I was doing REALLY REALLY WELL late 2010, early 2011 (even though mentally deranged I was not touching heroin or any illicit drugs

So that's my resolution for 2014 TO BE CLEAN IN EVERY SENSE...

Am I blithering on in my usual self-centred way yet again? Well this IS a blog. By a drug addict desperate to stop... so what else do I write about?

I just think the heroin I've still been using has confounded an already confused and confusing situation, that it has to be taken out of the mix, that I would do better to focus on cutting down and giving up methadone ... etc etc. I have a LOT of ambitions for a new life and yes I HAVE put in the legwork to change my life, it's not just talk. I predict my life will alter in the next couple of years beyond all recognition....

And I sit here and hear myself "the heroin I've been using"... like I'm talking about drinking cups of tea. Yes I know we live in a drug-addled society but still HEROIN ~ the dirtiest and hardest and most disreputable of drugs. I'm so ashamed to say it has still been playing a part in my life and that part has been far too big. (If you don't need heroin, my advice to self and to others is DON'T TAKE IT. So that's where I'm going. Back to not taking it at all.

And like I say, I've started to feel genuinely and deeply ashamed about my drug use. I'm unhappy enough about being on methadone, but heroin is beyond the pale.

By the way I think I should add that here in London there is no scene around synthetic prescription opiates like OxyContin or Dilaudid as in America. In London, opiate abuse means heroin abuse. (Of course prescription drugs must go around, but in my approaching 15 years of addiction I've never seen pills or vials of illicitly obtained opiates. Ever. They're that rare here and that's a side-effect, I'm sure of having an NHS. Where patients are not paying customers, doctors feel far less pressured to cough out spurious pain medication prescriptions ~ that's the fact of the matter, I'm afraid.

Well I've gabbled on enough and I have to go. I just want to wish you all a very happy and successful new year 2014 and to pass on my love and best wishes to you all XxXxXxX

Oh PS I wish I knew how to post up drawings. Would you believe it my art is coming on in leaps and bounds. I actually managed to copy a picture of a puppy this afternoon at Binky's that encapsulated all the cuteness and furriness of the doggie, who was jumping for joy...

Herebelow is another person's brushpen art, just to show how the instrument can handle, though I paint in a far heavier black-&-white style...

GREAT SONG for the new year: MADONNA'S HUNG UP
You know this went to number one in some incredible number of countries... just about everywhere EXCEPT the United States, (how weird is that?)...

O and another song for the new year. I love this one: Abba Take a Chance on Me

O and this one Abba Chiquita

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