Real Housewives of Backwards American Healthcare Reprimand

IT'S SO LATE... Real Housewives of Washington DC's about to come on on ITV2+1 and I can't miss it. I really like the braying, posh English gal, Cat, who everyone else thinks is rude, eg because she goes to a wine-pressing session, decides she is bored and instead of being all pathetic, American Washingtonian and full of smiling BULLSHIT, she just says how she finds it and GOES HOME ~ like a normal British person would!

Also I really loved it when she laid into that airheaded Republican blogger about America's frankly primaeval healthcare system ~ saying how uncivilized she found it. And quite right, too! Apart from Guantanamo Bay, what makes me really not respect America is their exclusive, expensive, elitist healthcare system... so bad that people like Anna Grace say they're considering declaring Health Debt Bankruptcy!

I slept a good 12 hours last night and have had just ONE cup of tea and yet here I am all excited about today... though what's to be excited about except Real Housewives ..? ... I have no idea it is SO FREEZING COLD you can literally snap the air like an icicle out there. And I've had to top up the (pay as you go) electricity AGAIN.

Do they have pay-as-you-go electricity in America? BeverlyBabe, please answer me on this point. Also any horror stories about the backwards American health system that flatter my perspective would be much appreciated too XxxXxxX

I LOVE THIS TUNE

CYGNUS X: CLOCKWORK ORANGE THEME



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Beady-Eyed, Bushy-Furred Akitas and other Doggies Including Anna Grace's, who is Recovering from a Doggie Breast Cancer Op... Plus My FabMag

ANNA GRACE, my online cyberspouse, has been worrying herself ragged because her tiny pet porkshire terrier, Elle (short for Eleanor Rigby), has been diagnosed with doggie breast cancer and went under the knife at the weekend.

I just left a comment telling Anna the worst thing her doggie will now have to endure will be wandering about Green Bay, Wisconsin for the next week or so dressed as a furry light fitting. Doggies get just as embarrassed as we do when they think they look silly. Our late dog Glodemmer, who looked like a silvery furry seal, once had such bad "diredalls" as we called it (diarrhoea) that she had to have a fur-cut around her backside to get rid of all the "cagal" ~ as it's called in Welsh. (As far as I know there is no English word meaning "dried dung on animals' backs".)  

Poor Elle has had to have the surgery all down her chest ~ with dogs having up to ten teats it all has to go. I told Anna I don't think Eleanor will be in that much pain, especially by now, as the surgical invasion is superficial as operations go. (Less than a centimetre deep ~ surely?) My friend's landlady once had a quadruple heart bypass and that was agony, but only because they'd gone so far in, and to get in had to saw her ribcage open. So every time she breathed post-surgery she was in agony... Eleanor Griggsby's surgery is superficial in comparison and I reckon that by now she'll be fine.

When I went to buy my lemonade from Sainsbury's this morning I saw a cute scruffy terrier with beady chocolate drop eyes tied up by the automatic doors. This doggy's eyes were so beady you couldn't see any whites to them. I so much wanted to kidnap the shaggy swine and take it home. But alas an old lady who looked like her name was Marge appeared with pats and kisses and yummy tripe dinner ~ and that was just for me! When she saw Chocolate Drop's lead in my hand (because that's what I'd renamed him) she started screaming like a wicked witch passing a kidney stone and security chased me right down the high road. No I'm just kidding. I always fantasize about taking the little doggies outside supermarkets for a walkies all the way home. And sometimes the great big ones. One time I came across this giant akita with the bushiest white fur,

but there was no chance of making off with it. The dog was so enormous I'd have had to drag it away. And being an akita, the most faithful of all dog breeds, her eyes were fixated ceaselessly where her very bourgeois owner was gliding up and down the smoked salmon and bagle isles. And I do think she was a "she". That's what I've always wanted. A gigantic female akita with really bushy white fur. Or toitoiseshell brindled fur. Or brown fur. Or grey fur. Or black for that matter. Or any kind of fur, really ~ just as long as it's ultra bushy and she has slanty kindly caring faithful Japanese eyes. My business model in owning an akita was to make sure she did NOT get spayed. And I was going to make sure I got to know the whereabouts and walkies habits of every male akita in the area. So when she did come on heat ~ hey presto! A basketful of snaggling, wailing, baying bushy-furred akita puppies! Which cost anything up to £1000 ($1597.50 each these days (which is why I can't afford one). I have looked in the local animal shelters' sites but they NEVER have akitas. Basically these shelters are running (and barking and baying and whistling and groaning) over with STAFFORDSHIRE BULL TERRIERS and I really don't want one of those. They've always been "a bit common"... and now just about everyone seems to have one. And more to the point they DON'T HAVE BUSHY FUR. I want a doggie with really thick shagpile-style fur. And it must be enormous with Japanese eyes and a tail that piggles up on its back. In other words it must be an Akita!

I went and bought some glossy magazines for inspiration. I have always wanted to own and edit a magazine since my teens. Yesterday I got Vanity Fair. Today I got GQ and i-D (which used to be a lifestyle magazine, but has transmogrified into a fash mag. But it's cutting-edge fashion. Not the kind of dull fashion-victim crap British Vogue seem to specialize in).
I also got a title called Hero which seems to be men's fashion. But this is ultra-cutting-edge, with arty paper and ideosyncratic text layout. Whoever is head of ad sales for that title should get shot between the eyes with their head on a plate for apart from the back cover, there was not a single ad to be seen throughout the entire publication. For my magazine I want cutting edge photography, artwork and overall layout. It needs to have a real "picture book" style to it, so you can just flick through and be transported into a different world. But then you flick back and the text is in-depth and full of the intriguing details we all wanna hear. I will specialize in really really long features about fascinating things and people. I can't be more specific than this as I don't want Condé Nast nicking my ideas! Some of my concepts are fabulous. Eg I thought of doing a society magazine for the rougher elements of the lower classes. I was going to call it Second Class Socialite. And I'll cover the social scene in places such Essex, Coventry and Manchester's Moss Side ~ don't you think that would be a massive seller?! We'd be over-run by ads for Ratners Jewellers, herpes creams, pound shops etc. Our restaurant reviews would focus on KFC, McDonalds, Burger King and the like ... hey what am I saying ~ KFC's far too "posh n pricey" for my readers! And we could do "Crack House Couture" "The World of Council Flat Interiors" and fashion spreads of stuff stolen from the charity bins. O, I can really see this taking off...

Now I MUST GO I never slept last night and my mind is bleary. Any submissions ~ text or artwork for Second Class Socialite are gratefully accepted. You can save money on wages by just taking on loads of interns, all desperate to work in "the media" who'll slog their guts out for free! Each month we'll put all contributors' names in a bucket and the winner will get a £5 ($7.99) Argos voucher! How does that sound...?

Talking of fashmags here's Linda Evangelista ~ the most Superbly Superlative of all Supermodels in her time...

  Illustrated: Anna's Porkshire Pooch ~ the original Eleanor Rigby; beautiful white akita pup; Hero magazine...

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Shrinking in the Night

I WAS GRIPPED by an attack of terrifying illness last night. Basically I hadn't been drinking and I wasn't high ~ well, I was no higher than usual ~ and yes I had taken heroin a couple of hours before... But suddenly I came over all nauseous and dizzy and when I closed my eyes my body was shinking, so I took to biting my thumb nail and yet my thumb was huge and I felt completely unreal. So I went to look in the bathroom mirror and I was pale and fabulous. I looked so much better than normal ~ so maybe I was hallucinating~? Then I had to take a bucket to bed just in case I puked.

I lay in bed, trying to enjoy feeling ill (well I did used to enjoy being sick as a kid, ya know ~ so I could skip school and everything), but it was an uphill battle. I'm just too old to revel in sickness. And yet Anna Grace calls me a complete hypochondriac!

Because I hadn't slept on Monday and wasn't inclined to sleep last night, I woke up incredibly late. After about one thirty. It was most inconvenient. And I kept thinking about that vulgar name I had thought up for my club night and I felt really guilty and contrite for being so vulgar and crass. But can I say in mitigation that the names were the product of an extended brainstorming session and obviously most of what you brainstorm will fall flat. I think the best one I came up with was Hillary Pillory, but I probably couldn't use that, because people would think I was taking about ecstasy pills...

Here's what I said to Beverly on the subject:


I just read that again and thought you were talking about an old friend named Sandra. Who was coming visiting! Man I can be so slow at times!

I mean, I read it the first time and fully understood, I read it a second and I'm up a gum tree! What is wrong with me?!

This is my 2nd attempt at commenting because I left half a sentence out and the old comment was just crap. Ha!

Can you think up a good name for my nightclub? I posted up a rude one on my blog and probably everybody will hate me because of it. Maybe "Slutbox" would be better... what am I saying I hate names of bands etc with sordid sexual references you know like Courtney Love's "Hole" it's just so trashy and amoral and tasteless. I need to think up something fabulous and was joking about "Gnome Brigade" and "Itchy Swine" but what CAN I call it???

It's always been an ambition of mine to have my own club night. Also I want to release a record, appear in a French film (it must be a speaking part)... and do loads of other things nobody would really believe of me...

I wonder what it was that happened to me last night? I felt kind of mentally and physically ill at the same time. And why do these things happen to me? I mean, it's happened to me a few times this year: my physical, mental and energy bodies become misaligned and distorted in space... what is that? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?

When this happens and you're half asleep it's called hypnogogia ~ but it happens to me when I'm wide awake. Is that why the doctors call me schizo?

Oh by the way, don't worry about my shrinking. My clothes still fit, so I can't be that much smaller than before...

*******


THIS IS A SPECIAL VIDEO FOR ANNA GRACE
who is having doggie troubles, because she thinks her Porkshire has cancer and is dying and I can't think up a single nice or friendly or reassuring thing to say to her

The short film tells the story of Hachkō, the most faithful dog of all time, whose owner died and yet he turned up at the railway station every evening for ten years, waiting waiting waiting for him to come back... and eventually they meet up in Japanese paradise or the Buddha Fields to remain together for all time...

Binky and Berky, Dr Lovelace and Helene Fischer

I AM thinking of changing my friend Pinky's name to Binky. So it's now "Binky and Berky". And Berky was a berk: she went and killed herself, leaving Binky totally bereft. And to be honest, everyone thought that spelled the end for her, too.

Ukh: I don't know what is happening. My sleep is getting WORSE. I either wake up what feels like far too early, although some nights I've slept eight hours which is supposed to be all a person needs. Last night I managed to fall asleep in the most uncomfortable position on the couch, with the telly babbling in German (which probably helped me drop off).

Then I crawl into bed and cannot sleep at all!

So I went out and scored heroin at 1am.

Managed to fall asleep ~ or gauwch out, as the junkies say ~ whilst trying to wash out the syringe under a running tap.

Went back to bed ~~~ and STILL could not sleep. And when I did, I had that horrible sort of sleep, when all you know is that time has gone past, but you don't actually feel like you slept at all. I never experienced anything like "proper" sleep till it was well past dawn. Then I did fall into a comatose slumber, waking up at 2pm. Which I think is most louche of me.

I didn't even want to get up at 2, but I did. Also, I can always tell when I'm all slept out. And wow!~ I thought I was depressed no more. But as the next three hours passed, like a dingy old photograph, it developed itself. So now I feel a bit ugh. I'm not super-depressed, as Anna Grace put it. O crap, and I just remembered I have to see Dr Lovelace tomorrow at the super-early time of 9:15. That alone will probably put me in a bad mood. Then she's going to think I'm depressed worse than I am and send in the headshrinkers.

Anyway I found a singer named Helene Fischer with an excellent voice ~ better than Celine Dion. She was born to German parents in the Soviet Union in 1984. Which makes me feel really old. In 1988, the year BEFORE the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet government mysteriously allowed her family to move to Rheinland Palatinate in West Germany. (I thought they never let anyone out..?)

This is AVE MARIA with lyrics in German.
By the way, I was wondering why the tune is so good: it's because it was written by Schubert.




*******

Drowning in TV

EUROPEAN TELEVISION has arrived at last! They finally turned up yesterday, one day and three hours late, put a whacking great dish on my house, drilled yet another hole in the wall ~ there is now a spaghetti junction of wires behind the TV set from 2 satellites, telephone and cable (I don't subscribe to cable). I get so many new channels it took eight sides of A4 to list them all. About 200 in German, 22 in French, 12 in English and a scattering of others in mysterious Eastern tongues. Remember the other day I was moaning about foreign stations not subtitling in English? Well I now do get Chinese documentaries and Korean soaps with English subtitles. I didn't know what to expect from German telly before I got it, but it's better than I thought it would be. Basically I get for free the type of programming you'd have to pay for if you wanted it in English. Lots of diving with the fishes, ice-cave exploration and documentaries about Madonna. Years before we actually had the digital switchover I remember a British government spokesman proclaiming how British multichannel TV would be the best in the world. Well he's a liar. He failed to mention back-to-back Judge Judy,

Coronation and Emmerdale repeats (terrible British soap opera) and endless Jeremy Kyle (famously rude and bigoted talk show host whose programme consists almost entirely of lie detector and DNA tests for rowing lower-class families. I even found a German equivalent to my favourite programme which is called Judge Barbara. She's a criminal court judge with dyed red hair and the witnesses say "Scheiße" a lot. (It's not reality TV, it's actors.) In fact Germany seems thankfully largely devoid of reality TV and what they do have involves far more interesting perpetrators (eg the animals of Frankfurt zoo). I do miss Judge Judy though. If she hadn't been a lawyer, she should have been a hand-model. She has the most beautiful hands in television.

I haven't given up on English TV forever though. How could I when the most important event of the 21st century occurred last night at 9pm on Channel 5 yes DALLAS IS BACK. The only soap I ever watch. That Bobby Ewing is a loser. If you had TWO BILLION barrels of premium-grade crude under your house wouldn't you get drilling away? When brent crude is currently going for £114.55 a barrel? (And a barrel holds 42 gallons; 159 litres.) By the way I think Lorimar are really racist: premiering the series in America on 29 June yet making Britain wait till September 5 ~ as if we are some unimportant backwater when really America is in the middle of nowhere ~ both geographically and economically.

I can't wait till I'm emperor of London. The policies of my government shall be simple: rainbow streetlights and the tallest buildings and fastest trains and low taxes for the rich. I would get rid of the "Green Belt" that is strangling this city and have London expanded in size until the population tops 100 million. I would scrap restrictive building regulations and leave just 2. No tower blocks permitted of less than 150 storeys. No buildings, apart from houses, allowed to be less than 25 storeys. Everywhere would be mixed use. No zoning, which kills cities and leaves dead zones. I would get Boring green spaces like Hyde park transformed into stately formal gardens.

On a more serious note, I would love to study town planning. However my opinions on the matter are so strong (I'm in favour of high-density mixed use with residential properties built on top of businesses) I couldn't handle the powerless, thwarted feeling of having my views ignored. Which is why nothing short of the job-title "Emperor" will ever satisfy me.

I have infection in my ear yet AGAIN and I've just seen a nurse-practitioner who prescribed me antibiotic pills (I don't want to spray anything else into my ears. They've had enough of being tampered with). She also gave me a Seroquel (quetiapine) refill ten days before the due date. I had been taking half doses to make my supply last and already I'm feeling constantly excited over nothing (ie the manic feeling is coming through). When you look up my medical notes "SCHIZOAFFECTIVE DISORDERS" comes boldly through (as if I've got more than one of them). Thankfully "raving junkie" does not. I'm extremely careful not to mention my drug habit, or the fact that I'm still knocking back methadone every day beause I don't want prejudice and I don't want them refusing me sleepers when I need them (I really cannot see a connection between addiction to heroin, which is an opiate and taking sleeping pills occasionally, which are not opiates, never make me high, and cannot substitute for them. And yet my old GP, who was snotty and condescending said "I am not prescribing drugs of addiction!" when I asked for humble ZOPICLONE!!)

Why did I steer all through the controversy on Anna Grace in my last post which was only there to say 1 she has put up Youtubes of herself and 2 she sounds like a cartoon character ~ really cute. And yet there I am ranting about personality disorder issues. Totally irrelevant. And I don't even think I was manic when I wrote that. (Mania being a primary cause of tangential expositions.) I hope Anna isn't annoyed with me. It wasn't meant to be a hatchet job, although it kind of looks like one. Also I insisted in calling her pet Porkshire "Eleanor Rigsby" after "Mr Rigsby" in Rising Damp. Knowing all along that Elle's actual name is Elean or RIGBY ~ after the Beatles' song...

Well I have ranted enough for one day. I really must get back to have Iceland Chunky Cod fillets with American Crisscross Fries and my very own Tomato Surpise (the surprise is that they're chopped up, doused in black pepper and vinegar and... well, that's that. Tomatoes in vinegar are much nicer than tomatoes on their own...)

Illustrated: Judge Barbra Salesch; Judge Judy being a rudy, as per usual; the Burj Dubai, also known as the Burj Khalifa, currently tallest skyscraper in the world putting London's tinsy-winsy 72-storey "Shard" to shame; a satellite dish on a German building; Anna Grace cradling her Porkshire...


VIDEO: JUDGE BARBARA





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Anna Grace On Film!

ANNA GRACE YOUNG ~ a real-life cartoon character!

Yes Anna Grace has broken her Youtube virginity (as she puts it) and posted up a couple of really entertaining videos of her being hyper. She's especially hyped in the second one. She says it's because she was on her ADHD medication, Aderall (which contains neat AMPHETAMINE!!) And she is bipolar. That is: full-on bipolar 1 with psychotic features in mania and depression. I said I'd ask my psychiatrist for her what he thought of her amphetamine+bipolar combination. And whether prescribing amphetamine to a bipolar sufferer was a very "doctorly" thing to do. He did not approve at all, saying it would make her "really, really manic". When I said well she gets really really depressed, he didn't sound surprised about that either. Anna has a borderline personality disorder, just like my friend Pinky. During my Heroin Years I met loads of people with personality disorders and many more who were undiagnosed yet personality disorder seemed the only way to make sense of their odd behaviour.

Anna once pretended to be dead. A blog post appeared by a "friend" saying she had finally done it: put a gun to her head and squeezed that trigger... I believed her. I didn't feel upset; I felt completely numb. Then I realized other people had looked up her mother's Myspace or Facebook which contained new postings with no mention of a dead daughter and then I realized what was up with Anna was more than bipolar disorder complicating an opiate addiction. It was then that I began to suspect personality disorder. The psyche nurse at the druggieclinic began to suspect I had a personality disorder too, so I was given the mission of looking them all up and deciding which could be me. I picked Borderline Personality Disorder. The nurse thought Avoidant Personality Disorder. Neither is true in my case.

Anyway back to Anna Grace and doncha think her voice is drop-dead cute? She sounds like a real-life cartoon character. BeverlyBabe says she's like Betty Boop.  I'm hoping she's going to put her cutesy-pie Porkshire Eleanor Rigsby in her next one. Especially when she's just had a puppy cut. (That's the fur-cut that makes Porkies look really cute. I used to think there were nice porkshires and horrible ones. The horrible ones having ridiculously long hair. But no. Basically all owners of Porkshire Terrorizers have to give the swines regular fur-cuts, otherwise they just look ridiculous. Like a bush with wild eyes and trotting legletts. I think Anna Grace should get a job as an actress, or at least as a voice-over artist. She'd love that. Anna can also sing coloratura soprano with ease as her voice is so stratospherically high.

She says she's having a squeakesome moment because she was nervous. I hope she mentions me in her next video as I'm amazing. Also she is my cyber-wife. Even though I'm having a torrid affair with bleached blonde beach babe Bev ha ha!

Here's a mental health joke:

What do you call it when you talk to God? Prayer.
What do you call it when God talks to you? Schizophrenia.
What do you call a person who thinks they ARE God? A psychiatrist...

... wah wah waaaaaahh!!!


So come on Anna Grace Old and post up some more Youtubes. Next time crooning with your Porkshire! AND TALKING ABOUT ME!!

ANNA GRACE 1



ANNA GRACE 2



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The Sparkling Shower, Burton-Taylor and Sweeping Statement Bipolar Reprimand

I AM VERY GRADUALLY cleaning my house to professional standard. I bleach the toilet bowl every day so it smells like a swimming pool down there. My sinks sparkle with a surreal gleam. I cleaned the shower cubicle inside and out and it's ~ mmmm! ~ so zesty lemon-fresh.

I have a new neighbour down the hall. I've yet to set eyes on him but already I have him pegged as a dodgy bastard as there are constant comings and goings till past 6am. Intuition tells me "crackhead" ~ just like the last inhabitant of that room, who had BO so bad the left-behind clothes thta filled the dustbins weren't just hummin' they were honkin' with human odour...

I just met a half-Chinese crackhead by the payphones, who hit me for money (as per always). If I'd have said, "isn't Chinese a poetic language as 天氣 (simplified: 天气; Japanese 天気) ("the weather") literally means "the mood of heaven" ~ he'd have gone: "DUHHH?!"

Well I've just come back from a meeting with my Support Worker Donny, who is way more professional than Deshane, the old one (who diagnosed me with OCD and had the cheek to tell my psychiatrist he thought I had "COD" ~ not realizing, presumably that those initials stand for "Cash On Delivery" ~~ ukk, ridiculous.

Donny photocopied some exceedingly verbiose sheets I had to fill in about my medical conditions. I was hypomanic when I wrote my descriptions, so they got it with both barrels, straight between the eyes.

Like just about every mental health/drug/support worker before him, he asked whether I was hypomanic when I am plainly NORMAL. What I said was "last time I took antidepressants they made me really hyper and high" and he tried to sneak the question past me by enquiring "are you on antidepressants now?"

If I ever did take antidepressants again without a bulletproof mood stabilizer I reckon I'd be on a one-way trip to the psyche unit in Cloud Cuckoo land.

I'm glad some people liked my last post on Bipolar Misconceptions because to me, writing about Bugerlugs and Anna Grace felt creepy and weird. But only, of course, after I'd invested two hours in penning the piece and hitting publish and walking away after the internet café had closed... Anyway, I have a "no embarrassment" policy with my blog, which is why nothing ever gets taken down, no matter how lurid or sad.

By the Way: CLICK HERE for Bugerlugs' Camping In Wales photographs... aren't they amazing..!

I never detailed most of the misconceptions re Bipolar in my swiftly-written thesis. They range from brain-dead sweeping statements like "if you don't have problems with sex and shopping you're not bipolar" ~ which doesn't take into account the 43% of patients who do NOT experience "signature hypersexuality" and that in extreme mania a person might just be too ill to go out, remember they're bound for the shops and generally get it together to go on a massive spending spree. The statement also takes for granted that all patients have access to credit cards, which might be true for the New York urban élite the "mild bipolar" article was written about (and to have enhanced powers of concentration during hypomania your condition must be very mild).

The most ridiculous statement I have ever read is that Bipolar 2 and Generalized Anxiety Disorder are indistinguishable. Considering that I had what was then known as "free-floating anxiety" with depression years before I ever showed definite signs of bipolarity, I have to disagree. Anxiety usually paralyses you with fear; mania animates you. Anxiety makes it hard to sleep but mania can make sleep impossible for days on end. Also most manic people feel "high" even if irritable or dysphoric at the same time. Depression with anxiety is probably the commonest condition in all psychiatry; bipolar disorder, despite its current trendiness, is relatively rare (affecting about one person in a hundred).

Well it's such a sweaty day, the mood of heaven is switching from sultry heat to random rain. The kind of rain you get when humidity is so high the saturated air just lets go... The world is buzzing loudly around me as we speak; I cannot believe it's Tuesday already. I picked up Pinky a pair of UK size  eight trainers (that means sneakers in size 10.5 to you Americans) or deck shoes size 42 in continental Europe). They were discarded by a bin ~ presumably by the sort of chav who think's it's classy to wear everything boxfresh new and unblemished.

I'm about to go home and watch the Burton-Taylor epic Cleopatra on "Director's Commentary" (didn't even know there was a director's commentary until I chanced upon the fact on the side of the casing).

By the way, I'd often wondered how Richard Burton, on a "mere" half million dollars a movie ever managed to buy Elizabeth Taylor a 69.42 carat diamond costing over $1 million, plus the most spectacular Bulgari necklace - bracelet - earrings - ring emerald-and-diamond suite, which begged the question: ~ Unless he had no living expenses, never paid taxes and saved up for years, how on earth could he afford it all?

That's because the multimillionairess divorcée widow Elizabeth Taylor picked out and paid for the poshest pieces herself!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Illustrated: my shower looks just like this, except there's payphone inside it; Elizabeth Taylor sporting a decent set of emeralds...


THE DAY AFTER: NUCLEAR ATTACK
Don't know why I chose this but...
This ABC made-for-TV movie was one of the highest-rated broadcasts of all time, attaracting 38.55 million viewers...
I like the bit with the skeletons... there is just something about nuclear explosions... exhilarating and horrifying at the same time...



ELTON JOHN: SORRY SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST WORD
Official video
The tune came on Pick TV (the only channel Pinky seems ever to watch)... reminding me how much I love this tune...



MADONNA: NEW YORK FRAGRANCE LAUNCH
Don't know why I'm posting this, except Youtube offered it, so here it is...



♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

(Bipolar) Mood Swings and Misinformation

TO SKIP to the main part, ignore the first three paragraphs...

I KEEP having recurring dreams about me on the first day of university and instead of signing up for lectures, checking out the library, shopping for books, I am down town, armed with the name of a contact I don't really know, and I'm on a quest to score gear. The entire dream consists of the never-ending rigmarole you go through in a strange town to get drugs off someone you don't know. Sometimes, when the dream gets completely ridiculous, I end up in a succession of increasingly lilliputian shops until I'm eventually curling into a ball to fit into a wendy-house-sized haberdashers. The dream ends and I've wasted day one of a supposed new life without ever getting my hands on any gear.

I woke up feeling panicky with thoughts of death. I'm not clinically "depressed" (well I don't think so). I've just been in a strange mood for days.

After a week with exceedingly poor sleep and barely any appetite at all ~ when it took all afternoon to polish off a plate of pasta ~ and me getting repeated bursts of manic or hypomanic excitement, my sleep and appetite have come back with avengeance.

Bugerlugs has come back from a mystical break in North Wales to constant depression. Like me she gets a lot of mood "issues". She sounds like she's bipolar, or at least cyclothymic. (Cyclothymia entails constant shifts between hypomania (that is: mild mania ~ no psychosis) and depression that doesn't meet the full criteria for a "depressive episode". I'm not a doctor, but if a person feels truly dreadful for days on end, especially if their sleep and/or appetite is affected, it probably is clinical depression, in which case she might be bipolar, type 2.

The difference between bipolar depression and the "normal" type is that a bipolar person cannot just pop antidepressants, which can cause the mood to switch poles or to cycle rapidly. Antidepressants are only ever used for bipolar disorder in conjunction with a mood stabilizer.

The self-help books and sites dedicated to bipolar problems will often mention that the condition typically goes undiagnosed for an average decade or more ~ and then proceed to spout the very generalizations and misleading statements that have long helped such a situation thrive!

For example, many sufferers dislike the term "bipolar" ~ encouraging, as it does, the idea that the illness is somehow a fluctuation between extreme happiness and sadness.

Mania actually means "excitement". Although they do typically feel "high", manic people are usually agitated and irritable as well, especially as the mania gets more severe. Euphoria and depression often intermingle or alternate speedily so that a severely manic person might laugh, cry and rage within the space of a few minutes ~ like a bad drunk.

There is such a huge range of feelings and behaviours associated with (hypo)mania ~ from increased energy, enthusiasm and creativity at the mild end of the spectrum to frenzied overactivity with incoherent thought and speech and delusions and hallucinations at the other that it is hard to generalize at all.

In the textbook form of the illness, mania and depression may follow one another, lasting months each, but there are usually years of normal (or nearly normal) moods between episodes. An average sufferer has "only" eight episodes in a lifetime.

But bipolar conditions can take rapid cycling forms with periods of high, low or mixed moods lasting only days or hours or minutes. Rapid cycling is more common in women, and more common still in people with substance abuse issues. Many if not most of the bipolar bloggers out there are rapid cyclers. Presumably the more of the time you experience manic-depressive symptoms, the more intertwined the illness will be with your own identity. Hence the preponderance of rapid-cycling bipolar bloggers.

It's fashionable to label the condition a "brain disorder", as if as separate from one's Self as diabetes or heart disease. But in many respects a disorder of moods must be a disorder of Self. We are our moods, after all. Descartes could more accurately have phrased his dictum: "I feel therefore I am..."

Not everyone with manic-depressive illness seems to want to present themselves this way. Anna Grace, for instance, prefers to portray herself as an Addict ~ even at the cost of attracting Haters ~ and even though she sticks loyally to her methadone, not touching street drugs for months at a time. Her bipolar problems are compounded by ADHD and a Borderline Personality Disorder, which make her mood symptoms even more unstable.

Originally I had wanted to post something to dispel the misleading generalizations about mood disorder that seem to congregate online. I'm not sure I have managed this.

Really, I wanted to write about moodswings as they affected other people; I'm bored of talking about myself.

What more is there to say about the type of "mental illness" where just about everything you think, feel, say or do can be construed as a "symptom"?

(Probably so much more, if the truth be told, that if I continued writing without stopping, I could die of old age in forty years' time with half the subject still not covered!)

So I will close the Subject here...

★ ★★ ★★ ★★

It has been boiling hot here in London. The weather Picture-Perfect. I hope you're all having a GREAT WEEKEND...



Illustrated: Bugerlugs is a breeer of Roborovski Hamsters; Anna Grace in the Rubik's Cube of time...



☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

GIVE ME ALL YOUR LUVIN' ~ MADONNA FT. NICKI MINAJ & M.I.A




☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Satellite Television, Anna Grace, BeverlyBabe and "Cycling"...

THE SATELLITE shop down the road have just reconnected me for the cost of £40. The dish was already on my wall and the Freesat box plumbed into my television: what was missing was a few yards of coax lined up from A to B with "F-Connectors"

(and that's about all I know of the issue ~ I did invest in F-Connectors, pliers and a wrench some weeks ago, and I tried to line up a satellite signal where the cable guy had bodged it up, unscrewing two lines, adding a double connector where none existed previously (I think it was a double female lead ~ ooo Bev, that's like Lesbian Passion between you and Anna Grace!) ~ well, whatever. It never worked.

I have been in a funny mood since I don't remember when. But an Official Funny Mood since a doctor's appointment at an unearthly pre-9am hour Wednesday.

From days on end without sleep I have switched back to sleeping right round the clock, and thinking how to suicide without upsetting anyone. NB I did not just say I wanted to kill myself. All I said was I had tried to figure out how to do it without upsetting anyone. Two separate and entirely different issues.

I must have been at least slightly hypomanic when I last posted ~ all those Lucky Stars! ~ and didn't Madonna look as luscious as a newly plucked grape in that video. And my New Doctor looks luscious as a newly ripened Nectarine. Considering she's sacrificed her bet years to being a Medical Student she doesn't half look good. She kept alternating between my Christian and Surname. That's because I too look amazing for my age. Especially being a manic-depressive junkie and all.

I no longer feel like posting my every heartbeat to an ever fascinated world. I'm turning into Anna Grace in that respect. She goes days without troubling to post anything at all. Mostly because I used to think she was out mountain-biking, though she and her pdoc, (as Americans call a shrink (what is wrong with the simple term "psychiatrist"~? Why must you Americans complicate everything?))~ actually called it "cycling". In the United States, cycling means "having a bipolar episode". Well I don't know whether I'm cycling or not and/or if I am whizzing on my bike where on earth I am going!

Have a Cheering Weekend Everyone!!

Manic in the Night

I STARTED CYCLING in an antidrug meeting yesterday. In case that brings to mind imagery of me circling the group on a bike, that's not what I mean. I got the expression from Anna Grace,

who's also bipolar. I mean my mood became exuberant and hyper and I became very talkative and went shopping for DVDs. That's how I ended up with five Orbital albums for the bargain price of £16. I didn't really think I was anything more than very slightly hypomanic.

Night fell, however, and my mood went shooting up. I found myself doodling sentences in Japanese till past four a.m. At one point I got very jittery and anxious, so I went down the shop for a cyder. Glugging it back I managed to relax, which is just as well, because I continued going up higher and higher. By five a.m. I felt exactly as if I'd just got home from a night clubbing on Es and whizz and that the drugs were still going full-on.

Of course I had no luck sleeping. Lying in bed helped me relax, but sleep was nowhere on the horizon. Eventually I did end up conking out intermittently. I had to get up at eleven to pay my friend Pinky £40 she needed back today. My mood has gone down a bit, but it hasn't switched poles. I was very jittery earlier, but now I just feel weird. It's five to three and fatigue has caught up with me. It's too early to sleep and too late to do much with the day.

Has everyone been watching the Olympics? I should be very excited about them, being as they're going on in this fine metropolis. I heard they had twenty-four Mary Poppins aerialists at the opening ceremony. Was it any good? Did we put China's Spectacular to shame? I've yet to connect the satellite dish to my television. It seems a cable TV installer cut the wires, so I need to reconnect them. The hole in the wall through which they trail is big enough for a baby mouse to set up home.

I don't know whether I need to see a doctor: I felt really ill this afternoon. Physically done in.

I know I was manic last night because when I walked to the shop I felt like someone ws pushing me all the way there, like when you have a strong wind backing you up from behind...

Well I'd better go; I'm really tired now.

Take care Everyone...


Illustrated: Olympic cycling; Olympic Mary Poppinses; "Rapid Cycling and Mixed States as 'Waves'"

*******

MUSICAL BREAK

CANCER RESEARCH FEATURING EVA CASSIDY: FIELDS OF GOLD
This is the only TV advert that's ever made me cry...




EVA CASSIDY: FIELDS OF GOLD




Diagnostic & Statistical Manual: Psychiatry’s Deadliest Scam
I found out about this from Madinsanecrazy's blog. But she didn't post the video up, saying it wouldn't fit for some reason. Maybe it's something to do with Wordpress..?

  *

Back In The Wars

IT'S INCREDIBLY BRIGHT AND SUNNY. The sunlight is shining right into the back of my head, giving me blind spots. My Seroquel/quetiapine is still making me sleep twelve hours per day and I have mild chronic fatigue symptoms. I put my back a bit out on Saturday by lifting my right foot to tie a shoelace. It hasn't been the same since.

Yesterday, full of craving for heroin and miserable with my bad back I just went back to bed and slept all day. Then I woke up in the evening and scored, felt all right this morning, and have an inkling that from now on I should be OK without any heroin. The gear has got progressively weaker over the past week. Yesterday's dose I barely felt at all. So I've weaned myself off it unintentionally, purely by buying bad gear. I look to the future and see no drugs in it.

I'm fed up that all my friends are drug-takers. Even Paddster, who had a 35 year plus heroin habit, is on Suboxone, though he uses no illicit drugs. Everyone else I know uses heroin or crack or Valium-type drugs ~ usually in an on-again off-again manner. I don't want to be taking drugs even occasionally. I hate crack. Heroin is too weak plus it's addictive, plus I haven't the veins for it. Valium is unnecessary when you have something like quetiapine blocking any anxiety. I do drink alcohol, albeit sparingly. I'm just fed up of feeling half-ill all the time. I have diarrhoea. I feel dizzy. My eyes react badly to the bright sunlight (photophobia). They also react badly to overhead lights at night. I still get the bizarre thoughts that are supposed to be associated with the schizophrenic component of schizoaffective disorder. That is, I feel thoughts popping in from outside. Loud, bizarre thoughts. I still hear voices occasionally but they're quiet ones. I still get paranoia and have to remind myself that that's exactly what it is... And I feel constantly this low-grade depression that I cannot really snap out of. I am sure that without Seroquel I would be far more depressed.

When I last tried coming off antipsychotics at some time over December-January I felt suicidally depressed as well as paranoid and irritable and the traffic started talking to me one day, calling me a pervert. I would really like to be able to come off all drugs all together. It feels strange to me to be so focused on getting off methadone, yet knowing I'll likely have to stay on quetiapine. Maybe this summer I'll give coming off all meds one more try. By then I should be off methadone completely. The rate I'm going I should be off it in just over 12 weeks. I no longer feel feverish and excessively sweaty ~ symptoms that crop up randomly every few weeks and seem to bear no relation to my methadone dose, or whether or not it has recently been lowered, or whether or not I have recently been at the heroin. I think it's just some undiagnosed low-grade medical condition I have giving me chills and sweats like that.

Anna Grace says she's going to stop her main blog at blogger because she's fed up of the spiteful anonymouses making snide comments. I think she should never say never and just carry on, even if she does start up another blog elsewhere...

I'd better go now; my head's spinning like a top...


Illustrated: migraine aura ~ I still get this a lot, even though I'm lucky enough not to get the headaches these days...

Mystery Illness

I HAVEN'T POSTED because I was sick all last week with some mystery diarrhoea and flu type illness that had me sweating like a swine who hadn't had enough methadone. My methadone is down to 35mg. Unfortunately I got back into the habit of using heroin on top which I am trying hard to stop. Some days I only used the traces left from the day before. But any using is too much using. I want to be free of all drugs altogether, so this is what I'm trying to remind myself. The heroin took away the sweats and chills from the flu-type illness. And that made me feel that I was getting addicted to the heroin again, so it's all a mess. I'm taking my methadone as late in the day as possible so that each day I can move the time of dosing forward, and the methadone should hold me all the way through. Well that's the theory.

I am now on 200mg quetiapine (Seroquel). This is for schizophrenia, mania and bipolar depression and it makes me extremely drowsy. Every day this week I have had to get up early for some reason or other and today it caught up with me. I slept all afternoon through to five o'clock. The 50mg quetiapine I've been on for the past fortnight is an exceedingly low dose and I don't think it has insulated me well from the bells and whistles (or slings and arrows) of madness. Strange things happen. For example, yesterday lay down and tried to have a nap for an hour but I couldn't sleep because my body was shrinking into space. I clicked my thumbnail under my front teeth and my thumb was massive. The rest of my body was tiny though. Nothing could make this illusion go away, except for getting out of bed and losing the opportunity of sleep. I also keep getting manic flash-backs. That is the memory of specific symptoms comes back and hard. For instance I tried to post on my blog one night and could only write strings of rhymes. My mind was racing so hard. I don't think I am becoming manic. The mere thought of going mental like that scares me because I totally lost my mind in the peak of mania. The only good thing about it was the euphoric high. My self-esteem soared while my mind fell apart in a way it has never done during depression.

Because I was ill everything went to rack and ruin yet again. So today I cleaned the floor. It looks amazingly stark and light now that 75% of the dirt is gone. I have to quadruple the dose of these antipsychotics tonight but am not looking forward to fighting to stay awake all tomorrow.

Anna Grace asked why I have slowed down on my blogging. It is because I no longer have a working computer at home and because I have been ill and depressed. I am refocusing on the goal of getting off methadone all together. I really hate methadone. It's too much of a compromise for someone like me to accept. No lovely needle. No instant fix. And yet still the slavery of being totally beholden to a yucky artificial chemical and the corrupt clinic system that deals it out. I think methadone clinics are corrupt because they subtly bully clients into lying and saying they're doing well when nearly all of them are doing badly. The reason they are doing badly is that methadone is no real substitute for heroin. It's not until I got to the end of the line that I ever had motivation to steer clear of heroin for any length of time. I want to come off methadone so that I can visit my family without having to ask permission at the clinic for a week's take home medication, which you need to ask for at least a fortnight in advance. Sometimes they refuse to cover even one week, insisting you pick up half the methadone from a nominated chemist once you get there. My family live in a small community. I don't want gossip going around about who's on the Mean Green Methadone Machine.

Well it's past 7pm and I'm tired. Yet again my thoughts have turned to scoring. How am I ever going to get out of this vicious rut? I think I should remind myself that I'm practically the same on heroin as off it. And what nasty nasty stuff it is. I wish so much that I could be treated on anything else but methadone but the only thing else on offer where I live is Suboxone. I've been on Subutex and the switchover is very disruptive. My sleep shrivelled down to four hours per night and two weeks later I was still getting no more than six hours. I didn't realize at the time but my mood was on something of a high. With my history, if I let that happen again I could easily get manic. And as I said, I don't really want to lose my mind.

Well I have to go now. Outside, London is trundling past. I wonder where all those people are going? My finger is almost normal again. I can type almost normally ~ something that felt it was never going to happen again when I broke my fingers. Take care everyone... ;-)...

Thinking Forward...

WELL that was a depressing last post wasn't it! I only feel as bleak as that when I look forward in life. Looking forward makes me full of angst. I never used to look forward when I was using heroin every day, except to make unrealistic goals. Strangely, as a constant drug abuser, I lived much more in the moment than I ever do now. NA talk about learning to live in the moment, but I did learn to do that ~ on drugs. I have to say, it was only when I was stoned that I really lived in the moment, but still. (When I wasn't stoned I just looked forward to getting and taking the heroin.) I'm finding it very hard getting used to life without that stuff, even though I still use it about once a week it's not as integral to me as heroin once was. Unless I get the stuff right into my collapsing veins I really cannot feel it. I've tried and tried smoking it but feel no effect at all. I can't help wondering whether smoking heroin is just psychological in other people too. I haven't felt smoked heroin since right back in the early days, and even then as I built a habit up, the high faded into practically nothing. During the peak of my using the only effect I really felt off heroin was the buzz as it went straight into my vein. The after-effects just felt like tiredness and heaviness making me sleepy ~ not even a particularly pleasant drowsiness. I don't know. I've wasted years chasing after that stuff. I'm determined to learn to live life without it.

I always told myself I would give myself two years of positively trying to go somewhere in a drug-free lifestyle before I ever gave up and decided life really wasn't worth living. I know it's partially depression that made me feel that way. But it's also having little purpose in life, nowhere secure to live and little social life that depresses me on top.

My finger is way better though it still won't straighten out properly. I don't know whether it ever will. I shook hands with someone the other day without being put in agony, so that was a good sign. Plus I can type with that finger without it feeling too much of a stretch. I have to remember to keep doing exercises where I stretch the finger out and spread out then clench a fist. I don't think I'm doing them enough. I can do 100 fist clenches in a row without pain and I can push my bad finger down and straighten it out without it hurting either, so those must be good signs.

I have found out a bit about the Mariana Trench. Apparently it's not just a crack in the ocean floor the way you'd imagine ~ no steep sides. It's more like a hollow that starts about 20,000 ft down, plunging another 15,000 ft (3 miles) further. The hollow is actually 43 miles wide, so 43 miles by 3 miles doesn't look like a pit. Even though it's called an abyss, it actually has gently sloping sides. Although the Mariana Trench is only 43 miles wide, it's over 1000 miles long.

I hope y'all liked the Netflix hamsters ad. I was looking and looking for the British one because it has cuter voices. But I cannot find it. Someone please put that advert on Youtube!

My internet junkie friend Anna Grace is in Hawaii now and using black tar heroin out there. She's lucky enough to get to swim in tropical seas ~ even though they are infested with box jellyfish, at least they're nice and warm.

I hope you have a charming weekend everyone. I have to go and do my laundry now. I have a doctor's appointment next week, where I'm going to ask for an appointment with a psychiatrist, and try and change my medication to Quetiapine. Please please let me change to quetiapine...

Take care everyone :-)