The Depressing Red Bucket Affair

COUNSELLING: IS IT A GOOD THING? As regular readers might know, I'm currently undergoing group therapy towards an end known as "Mentalization". (Aka MBT.) But mentalization involves not just jumping to conclusions regarding the thoughts, feelings or motivations of others and "mentalizing" ~ ie thinking them over and, in many cases asking. Eg: "What is it you meant when you said that? Could you explain?"

Well I'm starting to think that if NOT FEELING is my coping mechanism, and if THINKING TOO MUCH is a personal fault in many people, not just me, then undergoing this group is going to achieve nothing except a persistent erosion of my mental health. I mean: are they actually TRYING to send me nuts? It's a question worth asking. I've been wondering just WHO I can trust in the world. Friend. Family. Anyone. It makes me really sad to think this way and maybe I am extraordinarily narcissistic and self-centred but I do feel certain people out there ~ namely doctorly-type people and employees of drug clinics are DELIBERATELY trying to do my head in. All saying different things that I cannot thrash my way out of.

Eg my druggieworker keeps saying she's worried about me and that if I'm not careful I'm going to have another mental breakdown. And she says I should see a psychiatrist again. I'm much more straight and open with her than I would ever be with a GP. But my (new) GP who has only seen me twice, says he thinks I'm totally OK. I didn't feel at all OK when I last saw him. I was very upset that day. Binky says I should "bring my feelings into the room". But how can I possibly do that? If you go around appearing as OK as possible (like any normal person who isn't a teenage girl with emotional problems would) then suddenly act out in a dr's room isn't that self-indulgence bordering on fakery? She also said that in answer to his question what could a psychiatrist do for me (which I took to mean I was beyond help. Because I don't actually believe he thinks there's "nothing wrong" I think he wants me to think that's what he thinks (mind games again) ~~ in answer to his question I was meant to say "to get a proper diagnosis and the right medication". Well I don't want yet ANOTHER diagnosis, which, knowing my luck would be added on top of and not replace the existing one. And as for even more pills. No I don't want MORE. I'd rather be off everything!. The absolute last thing I want is something that's going to completely block any "high" moods and "higher" states of consciousness. Obviously I want to be ("bipolar") high all the time. I just don't want to lose my mind as well. If I could break the light barrier again I'm hoping I will never ever ever come down. I'm talking about mind and body sublimating to a Higher Level. But I obviously DID come down. I just can't believe that I had to... Why does life have to be SO SHIT~~??

You see the great thing about blogs. Because nobody supposedly knows who I really am I can speak what I actually think and mean. No way in hell would I say something like the above to a friend, let alone any doctorly person.

I told Binky some weird ideas I had had when I did have a mad episode and she laughed until it looked like her sides were going to split. She said (hopefully jokingly, as nothing involved potential harm to self or others) that if I ever told a dr anything like that I'd get sectioned and never come out again. (To those on foreign shores: a "section" means involuntary commitment and it's REALLY HARD to overturn a British sectioning under the mental health act.)

I NEARLY had a "nervous breakdown" just now over picking a bucket to wash my clothes in. I'm still feeling ridiculously depressed. (Ridiculous, considering it's JUST A PLASTIC BUCKET~!!) I DID used to own a bucket, but it got filled with paint after I took dodgy heroin some time ago and kicked dregs of a can of paint over in my hallway. I need this new bucket to wash my clothes in, because it's cheaper than going to the launderette. But the launderette costs £4, whereas this bucket was £3. For £2 they had a round black bucket, but that one doesn't have mop-squeezy-out attachment. Then I looked at this bucket after purchase and it does look RIDICULOUSLY TINY. I don't know how many clothes I'm going to be able to wash at a time, but not many.

Well it's been raining most of today. It matches my mood. All weekend through Monday we had spectacular weather but I stayed in to avoid it. I really wasn't in the mood. Then one night, completely at random, I did start feeling "high" and couldn't sleep at all. But I made up for it by sleeping most of the day yesterday. Plus 2:30-6:30am. Then methadone (eventually) sent me off from 8:30 to about 11:30.

My life is so depressing. I know nobody wants to hear this. I just don't know how to get out of it all. Giving up drugs is very much JUST a first step and it never really helped that much in the past. It wasn't as if I stuck to methadone and was miraculously OK. Oh but the drugs clinic NOW say if you have other issues or health problems, methadone isn't even supposed to help with those (even though heroin does ~ it makes just about any affliction of mind or body feel better). This OF COURSE SUITS THEIR AGENDA. Which is all about deception and lies. They can't handle it when I tell the truth unvarnished. Now they don't just WANT to, they NEED to believe I'm nutty because otherwise time has shown them out to be LIARS. Ie "if you stop crack you won't be paranoid any more" (I've been way more paranoid months and years after stopping it than I was on it). And "alcohol is a depressant so that's what is making you depressed. If you stop drinking you'll feel better". Well lots of ANTI-depressants are also CNS depressants (eg dosulepin (Prothiadine), mirtazapine (Remeron)) and I certainly did NOT feel better after kicking alcohol. I've felt just as bad, if not worse off it than on it. I could go on but this is the gist of their lies. Of course they want to conveniently forget the times eg that a floating duty worker snapped at me that if I stopped heroin I would "feel much better". (In what time-frame? I was certainly NOT OK before I got addicted to heroin age 28. And I don't think I'm that unusual. There are LOTS of people using methadone clinics who feel permanently run-down (as a symptom of hep C as much as anything else, suffer from constant or recurrent depression. And have terrible presents eg involving imprisonment or the threat of it, and children in care (often both). Plus horrendous pasts (very often involving sexual abuse) they still want to escape from. I think, compared to people like that, and there are a LOT of them out there, I've got it easy.

I don't think I had any period of adult life, and probably not teenage years either when I was "OK". Growing up I had almost zero self-esteem or self-confidence. And almost no "social skills" either. And I do mean almost NONE. Everybody, friends included, thought I was a "weirdo". I was prone to depression but wouldn't characterize myself as depressed all the time. I managed to catch what was then called CFS or ME and is now known as CFIDS. I was not "on drugs" when I came down with that particular condition in late 1995. In fact I became intolerant to alcohol and wasn't well enough to dance all night at raves (only types of drugtaking I was interested in back then). I never knowingly tried heroin until 1997, although I may have taken it once in 1993 ~ I don't know for a fact that actually was heroin (not knowing what to do I snorted and ate the greyish powder that looked like it had bits of demerara sugar in it). Whereas the 1997 stuff looked like heroin, melted on to silver foil just like it, smelt like it and had the effects generally ascribed to heroin so I'm pretty sure that stuff WAS it.

O am I ranting again..? I don't know. I have to go. 

I've given up on Spanish and am now learning Italian. Very very very very VERY slowly!!

(Molto molto molto molto MOLTO lentamente.)

BTW: I've just found out MBT (the therapy I'm doing) is for BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER. I keep wondering whether I've got that and now they've somehow got me into therapy for it without even telling me!!!  (They just told me they thought it might be good that I did it.) 

Yesterday Naomi, the Dual Diagnosis lady, called offering me a place in a drama therapy group she's doing. So hopefully I shall be doing both. Surely you can't have "too much therapy"...? CAN YOU~??!?

 

WISHING YOU A PLEASANT DAY!!

Mental Issues

I SLEPT a long, long time on Wednesday night, but last night, although I went to bed exhausted around 10:30 I woke again at 4 and could not, and barely even tried to, get to sleep again. I had a plate of two-day-old "wild mushroom" stuffed pasta with broccoli and cheese beside me that I've been finding increasingly revolting. Partly because I was stupid enough to buy stuffed pasta even though I knew I had been going off it. Partly because I've lost my appetite enough to be able to go on just one meal a day for the past few days.

I made a mistake, by the way, in yesterday's depiction of a severe manic spell: the starbursting ideas I mentioned may be irrelevant. That I can vouch for when memories are examined under the steady glare of sanity. But at the time, everything seemed ultra-relevant and important and sparkled so dazzlingly it was all too compelling and THAT is why I got so lost in the blizzard of my ideas. It was absolutely impossible to separate wheat from chaff, to examine any one idea and most especially to think out a stream of consequences in stages. Which meant that when truly stupid ideas grabbed me (example: to take a flying leap through the upstairs window) the full folly of my compulsion never dawned on me until many weeks later. Which I still find really disturbing and I'm extremely glad my Dad brought me up NOT to be impulsive. If I had been an impulsive person, and had given in to just one of the deluded ideas upon which I thought at the time I ought to act out, I'd have got into trouble deeper than I could ever have imagined. I can just imagine Advocacy for the Prosecution painting me as the most evil person alive, when I was too ill to calculate anything and most especially to analyse or think out the consequences of anything further than one single obvious stage.

Books and websites say a manic person is extraordinarily distractable. That may be; but it felt to me like I could not keep my mind poised enough to focus on any single topic at all without every possible eventuality bursting out at me all at once so that I was swept so far away, I'd forgotten my destination anyhow. And found myself completely lost, but just as happy to be in the new place as wherever I had been, or been going... Couldn't say anything succinctly. And if there was an and, but or because in the sentence I seemed to get blown so badly off course that I'd start out saying one thing and finish saying many things utterly different and unrelated. The psychiatric social worker who interviewed me in the mental hospital, where Naomi, chair of the weekly Nutter Club (a dual-diagnosis meeting for drug-addicted people with serious mental issues) had driven me. Nothing to do with wanting to get admitted. I didn't want to go into hospital. All I wanted was somebody to bear witness to the state I was in, because I hadn't slept in days, hadn't been to bed for about 48 hours and counting and knew something about me was Drastically Different. My mood, for one thing, which was high and kept going higher, in complete contrast to the various shades of unhappiness and depression I had floundered in for years...

I wanted someone to vouch that my fluctuating mental state was real. And not an exaggeration or a lie. Because that's how I felt: that for years I had being taken for a liar, someone who felt it necessary to embellish my own experience and turn run-of-the mill depression, which millions experience, into something more fascinating. When in actuality I was doing all I could to downplay my increasingly extreme moods, lest I end up with a terrible diagnosis with a title like Bipolar, swinging round my neck, like a Gold Medal from Hell. Then of course the consultant dual diagnosis specialist told me I had "manic depression and schizophrenia". And despite my "elevated mood" and excitement, I was devastated. I had only just come to terms with the notion that I might actually be a manic-depressive junkie. Or worse still, if I listened to the voices who told me this: that I really did have schizophrenia. That's the only time I've ever got home after a doctor's appointment and cried. All afternoon long.

I don't consider myself a special case: especially crazy or confused or complicated. Every time I have found myself with one sickness or another: Depression, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Psychosis ~ I have known another person who's had what I have, only far worse. Pinky is probably the most tangled and traumatized psychiatric case I have ever met. Her Borderline Personality Disorder is severe and it seems to me that at least 75% of her pain and suffering is caused by that, and not clinical depresion and not her enduring paranoid schizophrenia. She's now on TWO antidepressants: Venlafaxine (Effexor) on top of Mirtazapine (Remeron), both at maximum doses, which they never prescribe anyone unless they're truly in dire straits. Two weeks ago she was so upset, almost screaming in mental torment and agony. Yet there was nothing I could say or do that would make her feel any better. She only ended up in hospital because she did something impulsive and the police bundled her in there... Now she has a massive burn on her leg, which is at least second degree, because it's broken out in gigantic blisters. It's only bandaged, so she tells me, because another patient troubled to do that for her. (But how did she get hold of the bandage?) The nurses did nothing. She never even got to see a burns specialist for two days, because the nurses could not be bothered to care for her, even in the most basic way. She set fire to her pyjamas. Which to me seems to be another sign of the impulsivity powered by her Borderline Personality Disorder. Which fuelled her depression and psychosis, creating a complete emotional mess. Apart from being burnt, she seems about as well now as she ever gets; that is: she would probably pass as "normal" to most people. Less than a week ago she was definitely not "normal". Wandering about in a daze. Repeating her sentences over and over. Too frightened to go in the lounge, because she said the TV was talking to her directly and telling her what to do. I can cope with my friend, because she is my dear friend and has nobody elsewho can help her, eg withdraw money without thieving it from her, bring in cigarettes, without which she would go into true meltdown. Etc etc... What I couldn't cope with was the heavy atmosphere on her old ward. The other patients seemed extremely disturbed compared to times past when I've been on mental wards. Eg FOUR patients on one-to-one supervision. Tired-looking nurses stationed outside open bedroom doors, all in a row. I've never seen that much one-to-one "care" (though it's pretty obvious they don't care. Don't care at all.)

When I told the doctor how stressed I felt, she asked me whether Pinky had anyone else who could help her and I said no. That is the most terrible thing. Her best friend, who I named "Perky" committed suicide and we all thought that was the end of Pinky, but she survived, because she is a Survivor. She just hates being alive, because life has dealt her the most dreadful hand of anyone I have ever met. When a person who already has paranoid schizophrenia gets extremely depressed, to the point where they don't speak to anyone any more, they call that schizoaffective disorder (depressive type: my type is bipolar). So on paper, our diagnoses sound the same, yet our experience is vastly different. She has had far worse depression than I've ever had and for longer. Yes I have gone right down to the bottom, but I only stayed there for hours and days (in different episodes). Pinks has been depressed into stupor for months on end and had to have ECT. That's why I didn't see her as that severely ill this time round, because she was still able to communicate. People with extreme depression usually barely speak or even move at all...

O man yet AGAIN I end up on the same subject. I'm just finding it hard. Really hard to deal with this. I force myself to go visiting when really I don't want to go visiting at all. Now that she's in company of less disturbed people it's a lot easier. Over the years they seem to have tightened up their procedures so that only the very most desperately disordered (or dangerously deluded) people get admittance to a ward. No matter how upset a person might be, if they're not judged to be a suicide risk, or a danger to others, they probably won't get let in. No matter how much they beg, plead of cry, they are turned away. And the staff who do it know that if they misjudge a situation, they may well be the very last person that patient asked for help. Another sad truth is that psychiatrists cannot really help people who are "just" upset, or stressed past breaking point, or bereaved. Even if they're really, really upset and suffering intolerably. If it's not mental illness, doctors usually can't help. They can treat schizophrenia. Ordinarily they can bring down a manic episode quite easily. Clinical depression they can treat with a choice of over forty antidepressants, or mood stabilizers (there are four main ones) or antipsychotics (about 28 types) (quetiapine, which I'm on, is a treatment of choice for bipolar depression, because it does not elevate the mood the way antidepressants do ~ which can easily trigger a manic episode). If all else fails, there's always ECT. But no way in hell would I ever submit myself to that, no matter how bad I felt.

But my point is, I've seen extreme cases of psychosis clear up entirely within a few weeks. Yet people who come in to escape bad relationships, or bereavement or simply because they cannot escape loneliness and pain, probably will not be helped, and that's very sad...

I've heard people talking about antidepressants just "taking the edge off" the symptoms, but cannot relate to this. Whenever I've taken antidepressants for long enough, and it only takes about two weeks, my mood improves distinctly and depression vanishes completely. (Which kind of implies some chemical imbalance was the cause and disproves the notion some of my old drug workers liked to harbour, that I was only depressed because I was addicted to heroin). The problem tended to be that I became too hyped up and excitable (and sometimes, plain agitated). Then the last time, when I took mirtazapine, after the brief 7-day high I went crashing down, far lower than I'd ever been before I took the pills, and ended up in a terrible state for over a month. It was my old druggieworker who took one look at me and said "it's those tablets you're on" and sure enough when I stopped them I improved drastically.

The one single good thing about having a nasty label like "schizoaffective" is that if I ever do become seriously ill or desperate, I know that psychiatrists will take my case seriously because I've got the second most serious psychiatric condition there is. (Schizoaffective disorder is said to have an outcome worse than ordinary mood disorders, but better than schizophrenia.) So if I do ask for help, they turn me away at their peril. I've not only been turned away from the psychiatric Emergency Department in years past and told to come back when I was "actively suicidal", but TWO psychiatrists have summarily chucked me off their lists. The first time I had the impertinence to SMILE while recounting how dysphoric I had felt and I suspect that doctor (who had never seen me before; he was taking over another doctor's clinic at the University I used to attend) assumed I must have been stoned on cannabis. Which I was not. I was only reacting to his manner. I had the not-uncommon condition named "smiling depression". Most of my laughs and smiles back then were faked anyhow. The second time a medical student didn't seem to know what to make of me and so called in her supervisor, who was a notorious hater of junkies. He told me I was on so much methadone that antidepressants wouldn't help me anyway, which was an utter lie because I did get successfully treated with mirtazapine once. It was the second and third times I tried to go on it that I became hypomanic and all the trouble ensued... All that was BEFORE I got any diagnosis except depression, then CFS, then depression again ~ and I spent years knowing "something" else was wrong, yet no idea what it actually was... So any trust I had in psychiatrists has been long-since lost and even though my last one was a very good doctor, as a group, I don't trust them at all. Dr Lovelace is booking me an appointment with a shrink. As much as anything, I think I really should see one as it's been eighteen months since my last appointment and I can't tell Dr Lovelace that it happened in a methadone clinic as I don't want "drug addict" back on my notes...

Where am I going from here? I don't know. I'm just trying to say, there is one good thing about having a horrible psychiatric label pinned on your forehead and that is if you need desperate help, you're more likely to get it fast than someone with a less "severe"-sounding label like "anxiety and depression". Even though anxiety and depression is far more horrible than any schizoaffective episode I've had. When my depression goes very low, I feel so dazed and out of it I'm almost anaesthetized. But the depression I had when I was younger was more horrible. I didn't want to die, and so I lived in terrible pain. I was a loner and yet I could not stand to be alone. So I would go visiting people who weren't my friends, get there and have nothing at all to talk about. So I'd sit in the corner, silent, wondering how anybody could think up any conversation at all. My university years were the pits. It's just amazing that I managed to make friends at all...

Well I have to terminate this long and rambling piece here. If you're wondering why so much psycho-talk, it's because I have spent so much time on mental wards visiting my friend, and it seriously started to do my head in... But I think I'm better and she's better now. So that's good. If I can only get my sleep and my mood back to normal, because it's still too low, then all will be FINE!


ETTA JAMES: STORMY WEATHER



***

Fridge Defrosting...

I WOKE UP in a real bad mood, seeing as I have "given up heroin for ever" (yes this is only setting me up for yet another fall, so stay tuned for much amusement when it happens)... anyway I have no intention of ever touching that noxious crap again.

All that bullshit they come out with at methadone clinics, that if you are going to use brown you should smoke it. I cannot feel anything at all from any method of ingestion except intravenous injection, and then I just feel a flush of life flowing into my veins (that's what it feels like anyhow, you may think of it as death, but I always felt it as kind and gentle and fluffy. And when I did take it again after several hours' enforced abstinence (as I'd been out on the streets begging up more B-money) and came back cold and drenched and knackered, it really did feel like life itself rushing back into my veins.

Anyway that's all in the past. So I was in a bad mood over that. And the fact that my drugs worker had gone and made me a 10am appointment. When such early appointments are made I'm always extremely glad to have them early and out of the way with. Then the day comes and I don't want to get out of bed. 300mg of quetiapine really doesn't help with this.

My worker was being all sarky telling me to wake up etc, when I felt completely brain dead and empty and just not with it. All this could easily, by the way, be a part of my "illness" as much as it ever was drug-induced, I've never actually needed drugs to feel gone-out and wuzzy (CFS makes you feel like that in a big way). You just have to look at a room full of schizophrenics (and just about everybody on a mental ward who isn't manic or depressed is schizophrenic) to see how gone-out the condition can make a person. As for feeling hyped up and excited, I don't need drugs for that either. When it happens naturally it's just called a "manic episode", or if milder, a hypomanic one. So I don't need drugs for any of this. All through the years I've been accused loads of times of being on drugs when I was totally off them. (I'm talking right back through the years before I was on heroin.) Partly this is because my friends seemed to make the annoying assumption that my depressed self was somehow the real me. So when I'm suddenly dazzlingly sparky, witty and more with it than they'll ever be I absolutely have to be on drugs. Actually THAT is the real me. I'd love to be able to say the realest me only manifests in full-on mania when it reaches mindblowing intensity. But if that's so I'm a very self-centred person who doesn't give a flying crap for anyone else's thoughts or feelings or anything they have to say. In fact when I really was manic my capacity for empathy nearly disappeared. When you feel multiple trillions of volts of energy flowing straight through your brain you do tend to get like that.

Well anyway so life is really boring now. No heroin for ever. It's not like I didn't make the decision before ~ and stick to it for weeks ~ but back then I had a consistently "elevated mood" (my psychiatrist's diagnosis) (in other words I was really manic for ages and ages, I felt so up I couldn't imagine being depressed ever again ~ ha! How wrong I was..! What I'm doing now, if you want to know the difference, is I'm making a commitment to stop heroin for good. If I don't do this, I'll never manage the full community methadone detox.

The only excitement of today is me defrosting my fridge with a gallon to a gallon-and-a-half of ice in it. It's the really oldfashioned type of fridge my nana used to have with a tiny ice-making compartment just about big enough for a tub of ice cream. Most of the meltwater went on the floor until I realized that if I took out the salad compartment it could drip directly down into that. So the floors shouldn't have collapsed with sogginess when I get back.

The guy diagonal from me in this internet caff is watching some really dirty porn set in an expensive-looking Mediterranean villa. I think if the owner came back suddenly he'd be disgusted to know where his antique silver candlesticks have just been! How come the swimming pools in these places are always a mandy shade of blue? When I get my own I'm having electric blue with laser lighting. Or bright yellow. Or maybe purple and yellow in the deep end, electric blue in the shallow end.

O well there's nowt more to write. O yeah except my electric meter seems to have something wrong with it. It went to emergency what feels like two days ago and already I'm on £3.95 debit! (The emergency limit is £6.) Meaning it's probably going to hit that limit about twelve hours before it's convenient to do so. I know I could stop watching Judge Judy but how barren would life be without Real Housewives of New York and Orange County and her? Only Real Housewives show I liked was New Jersey with that very damaged woman ~ the one at odds with those cliquey Italian sisters. I could never work out whether I liked her or loathed her or just felt sorry for her...

The satellite shop said they could put in German TV, dish, box, everything for £150. That's not bad. And you get at least 90 free channels. You can also get French and German TV from the same dish, if you get a multi-satellite feed (not a motorized dish: the dish stays in the same place but it has multiple dinkadonks on it receiving different satellite positions) so maybe I'll ask for that. If it's just £10 extra. Which I don't think it will be...

Well I gotta go now. Listen to this top tune. Lots of DONK-DONK-DONK...



IF YOU WANT 3 HOURS OF NONSTOP DONK, CLICKONTHIS:~~~
The first 4 mins is crap, so bear with it...
BEVERLYBABE, this is for you. Keep it on and keep it going LOUD... The best traxx are at 17 mins 20 and 47 mins...




Illustrated: this is what my fridge looks like; German TV Guide; electric key-meter, like mine......

☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤☢ ✔ ➝✚ ✞ ☨ ╬❤

Vincent Van Gogh: Bipolar On Canvas

ヴィンセント·ヴァン·ゴッホ：キャンバスに双極性障害



  WHEN I'M MANIC, THE LIGHTS LOOK TRANSCENDENTLY BEAUTIFUL...

WHEN I HAD SEVERE "CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME" IN THE 90s THE WORLD LOOKED LIKE THIS: CROOKED AND DROWNED IN PHOTOPHOBIC COLOUR...

SOMETIMES THE ENTIRE WORLD SEEMED TO BE CRACKLING WITH MANIC ELECTRICITY...

WHETHER OR NOT VAN GOGH WAS CLINICALLY BIPOLAR IS ALMOST IMMATERIAL; HE CAPTURED THE EXTREMES OF THE CONDITION ON CANVAS.

HERE THE FIELD IS BURSTING WITH A BLAZE OF MANIC GLORY.

THE SKY SEEMS OMINOUS. MOODS ALREADY MIXED, THREATENING DESPAIR...

DEPRESSION AND DESPERATION WERE NEVER FAR AWAY...

HE CUT OFF HIS EAR. AND LOOK AT THE BACKGROUND OF GLARING ORANGE;

THE MOOD IS CYCLING YET AGAIN

EIGHTEEN MONTHS AFTER CUTTING OFF HIS RIGHT EAR, VINCENT VAN GOGH DIED OF SELF-INFLECTED GUNSHOT WOUNDS.

HE SOLD ONLY ONE PAINTING IN HIS LIFETIME.

Methadone, Heroin and Mood Swings

I HAVE YET ANOTHER DRUG WORKER ~ my fourth in less than a year , if you include the titration nurse (who never titrated me at all, as I came there from another clinic, already on methadone). Anyway, I'm to come in next week when my methadone, which is currently 30mg a day, should be coming down to 25.

 The detox unit idea hasn't gone out the window, by the way, we just barely had any time to discuss it. My one problem with such units is that they tend to take you off too quickly ~ 5mg every 2 days, instead of 5mg every 2 weeks, as I was doing until up to a few weeks ago, when I messed it up by taking too much heroin. If anything is going to disturb my mood, a too-rapid detox will do. I have never managed to drastically reduce, or come off, or switch to Subutex (which involves going through some withdrawal) without depressive or manic symptoms or both.

 I emailed one of the top rehabs in the country, which I'd only get into if they made an exception and let me in free ~ which I was told unofficially WAS a possibility, if I could prove my motivation. I told them I was diagnosed "bipolar schizoaffective". They warned me by email that the methadone might be acting as a mood stabilizer. If this is true, it would explain why I've always had such trouble coming off. My worst withdrawal symptoms were always psychiatric, not physical.

 If methadone does have a mood-stabilizing effect, it's markedly weaker (on me*) than heroin, which in the early days pressed my constantly undulating mood to a near-flat line. years later it was still acting as a potent antidepressant. The days when I didn't take it, and relied on methadone instead , I was so low I barely did anything at all. Then the Great UK Heroin Drought hit in 2010. I decided I had had enough of the "gear" anyway. And 24 hours after my last hit of heroin (but on easily enough methadone to eliminate physical withdrawals) I was floridly manic!

 I am NOT suggesting anyone use heroin or any other opiate to treat mental problems of any sort. If you need a mood-stabilizer, take lithium, valproate, carbamazepine (Tegretol) or lamotrigine (Lamictal), or use an antipsychotic. Get your pills on prescription from a doctor. All heroin did in the long term was make my problems far wrose , to the point where I was completely held hostage by the drug. For years I fantasized about being able to get by on just methadone and live a normal life, but it wasn't to be. I went weeks on just methadone but had so many episodes of high and low mood in a year, I literally lost count. In bipolar terms that makes me a "rapid cycler".

 The meds the doctors gave me seemed to cut out the highs better than the lows. I have tried 2 antipsychotics in the year and a bit since getting diagnosed. I had to stop both thanks to undue side-effects . Risperidone (Risperdal) seemed to cause anxiety and panic (on and off, not all the time) and might well be responsible for the lump of breast tissue that grew on one side. (I have a scan regarding that tomorrow.) Seroquel (quetiapine) made me so faint, dizzy and exhausted (amongst other things) it was like having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome all over again. Risperidone seemed to do a better job of keeping mood swings and voices at bay . No medication has ever helped me feel more motivated. The tiniest things feel like massive chores. Somehow the illness, the drugs, or both, seem to have knocked the stuffing out of me.

 So I'm now on the look-out for a third medication. Olanzopine (Zyprexa) may be the one. It is very commonly prescribed over here. I've met loads of people on that and no-one ever complained of side-effects. Whatever I take must not be too sedating, must not cause anxiety or insomnia and would ideally not make me pile on the weight . Which is probably all too much to ask. To anyone with knowledge or experience on the subject ~ please, some advice!

*Everybody is different. Anna Grace in Wisconsin, who is diagnosed bipolar, says methadone actually makes her feel better than heroin and helps her depression more. "I find Methadone the perfect fix for my addiction,"  she says. I only wish I could feel the same, but I don't. My plan is to get off methadone as quick as I can, which may well take weeks or months, but I'm determined to do it!