No news is good news

I'VE BEEN so boring of late. Haven't done any scandalous thing. Have been giving clean tests at the druggyclinic. Wow. The "cleaner" I am the more my mood cycles round and round but I don't care really. I have been concentrating on my writing. I need to learn to draw now ~ to produce lovely illustrations for my stories. Right I've got to go. No internet at my house so I'm very stretched for time here at the internet caff. All the best to everyone ;-)

A Friend in the (Mental) Hospital is a Friend Indeed...

BINKY IS IN the psychiatric unit. Yet again. So is her friend Janet. Janet is almost unrecognizable. Really down and withdrawn and not even the "mentally ill" self she was last time I met her in the hospital. Binky however is her normal self. Talking at the top of her voice and screeching demands and remarks at all and sundry when she's in a bad mood. Then being in a good mood and being quite reasonable. You know all this is doing my head in. The LAST place I wanted to go this afternoon was a nuthouse. The staff, well one member of staff, was being really off with me. People are being off with me all around. 

Eg yesterday I was trying to buy ice lollies from Morrisons. I needed lollies because I was so roasting HOT inside it was unreal ~ like heat inside my body. Then I HAVE to go in the shops; the shops have their heating on full. So I feel absolutely horrible, with a river of sweat pouring down my back. So I try and buy these lollies, but just when it's time for 76p change to come cascading through the selfservice machine it decides to break down. The guy on patrol of these ridiculous "unexpected item in bagging area" devices tells me to go to customer services to get my refund but it was nearly 6pm and I had to get my methadone out of the chemists + I desperately NEEDED to eat an ice lolly just to cool down, so I stormed out. On the way out the security guard started being all solicitous. I have to admit that, despite my bad mood, I thought he was trying to be helpful and help me get my 76p refund. But no. He kept banging on asking for my receipt. I yelled at him that I did not need a receipt and pointed out 76p man. Who said yeah yeah so they let me out. Far unhappier than before. So I get my methadone then come back, having eaten 2 of this lolly 4-pack, a bit calmer. But the woman at customer services treated me like some sort of nutter. Maybe it's because I was eating an ice lolly in front of her in January, who knows but I was boiling hot and sweating STILL. Anyway 76p guy had vanished. Eventually I found him at the other end of the store but he studiedly ignored me. Ie saw me and pretended not to so I gave up there and then thinking it was well worth 76p just to get the hell out of their furnace of a shop. Then I went home. 

But I'm not very happy with anything or any one. Eg the council putting letters through my door about window maintenance. I DON'T WANT MY WINDOWS CHECKED. But they insist so I'm making an appointment for February. I might tell them I'm in the Scottish Highlands and cannot come down before then. You know. And Binky. Everybody = driving me crazy. This is what no drugs does to you. People always think I'm together when I'm on heroin. When I'm off it, they think I'm a drug addict (which is of course true, because I'm a methadone addict when I'm off heroin). And yes the strapline at the top of my blog IS accurate because this blog IS about my life after heroin. What kind of a life it will be, I cannot imagine. Even my own family seemed to assume (over the phone) that I was out of it on drugs during the period I used no gear whatsoever for weeks/months (no idea how long: not into day-counting). (They never actually said they thought I was using, I just got the impression that was their suspicion.) When I went mad about 3 years ago, I wasn't on any drugs, except, eventually antipsychotics. And a tiny bit of methadone. You know I'm pretty sure I know what caused all that madness in me: it's because heroin is a psychic insulator. It closes you down and wraps you up. It always made me feel centred and much more stable than off heroin. Just as a fur coat makes you feel warm in the arctic. Take off the coat and it's no surprise you've suddenly got frostbite. Doesn't mean fur coats "cause" frostbite though.... Do you follow? The drugs that actually make you go whacky all of a sudden are all ones I hate. (Ie everything except heroin and benzos.) Benzos are stuff like diazepam and I get that prescribed in tiny amounts for emergency use. It's diazepam withdrawal that makes people lose the plot, but I've never been addicted, so I can't ever have been in benzo withdrawal... What am I banging on about...?

Ukh it's Binky she makes me feel all UNcentred and agitated. Despite being my dearest of dear friends. I find going into nuthouses rather disturbing. Especially when the staff seem to be treating ME like a nutter. Which she encourages by speaking to them about me in psychiatric terms. Yes it's Binky that I caught labelitis from, at one point. She knows all the labels and very often speaks in labels. Most mental patients these days do. Ie it's not at all unusual to hear a person on her ward tell a nurse "I've got suicidal ideation again"... It's spread into our culture... Psychiatry is the Great Religion of our Age.  It validates and makes sense of the central unhappiness most of us feel living in such a surface shallow hypocritical unstable economy...

If ONLY she could never go in hospital again and never have another meltdown then I might... just might... be able to forget all this nightmare of psychiatricality. I'm so sick of the whole subject. + the groups they pushed me into going to via the methadone clinic, which encourage excessive self-absorbtion (I think). I'd rather think of things outside... Which by the way I have been doing a LOT, by means of my art and literature, but I can't post art up because I don't know how to. And I can't post up my literature, because it's copyright and I intend to sell it as a proper publication. Once it's all finished and ready &c &c &c...

Anyway my biggest problem at the moment is Binky I don't know what we're going to do with her. She's so unstable it's unreal and I can't handle the stress.

Anyway I've got to go.

Sorry for all this burbling. I have really mixed feelings about all the subjects discussed above. Especially "mentality" I just want to FORGET all about that madness stuff, but am never allowed to. Because of Binky going crazy and ending up in the madhouse over and over again...

PS: Hey did you know Michael Jackson's brother Jermaine has a son called Jermajesty Jackson. What a name!!

Illustrated: madness animated; perspiration; window cleaner; Jermajesty Jackson (poor kid; +, like all the rest of the Jacksons, excepting Katherine, Prince, Paris and Blanket, he got nothing at all in Michael's will)...

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

♪♫♪♫♪♫♫♪♪♪♪♪♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♪♫♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♪♪♪♪♪♫♪♫♪♪♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♫♪

The Annoyingest Patient at the Methadone Clinic... (is me)

MY DRUGGIEWORKER is really pissed off with me because I cannot go more than a few days without using nefarious brown powder on top of my methadone. I told her I believe either methadone isn't holding me or else it is poisoning me. I brought in a bottle of Monday's piss saying, "I know this is unconventional but if you like you can test this and it will show I really had gone the best part of a week without using" (could have been anybody's of course; but that somebody would have to be on methadone and not using on top and I don't know anybody like that..!) And she said "When did you last use?" And I said "this morning" and she said why so I said it was because I'd been feeling exhausted, lifelessly depressed, flat, unmotivated and suicidal and she said "oh that's no excuse ~ everyone feels like that" (and she did seem to mean everyone, not just people unfortunate enough to be on methadone).

I could have channelled the conversation down a different route by saying "OK what about a person in severe physical pain. Would that be an excuse to use?" and she would have said the standard "but we're not talking about other people" answer. But I could also have pointed out that I'm labelled with the most serious mood disorder there is and that it is rather patronizing (not to mention dismissive) to label my symptoms as an "excuse". If I'd never been a depressive to begin with I cannot see how in a million years I would ever have got addicted to heroin to begin with, so excuses or not, it really was in a large part about self-medicating. Of course I also took it to get high (in the beginning) because I wanted to know what this legendary heroin high was like. That's what prompted me to try it. And the fact that cocaine-snorting was so in back in the day. Coke was cool and yet the people who were so open to that were closed to heroin and I wanted to try heroin so I went off on my own and I found it. (I never had a group of friends who led me into addiction. I made friends with the local junkies because they congregated at our local tube station every evening selling cheap used travelcards and because I liked to travel on the cheap I got to know them. It was through these people (who also seemed to be so much more accepting of who I was and how I felt than my "real" friends) that I got into hard drugs.

By the way my very first encounter with gear came after a night out when I met an acquaintance who said "come back to mine, I've got a bit of brown in a drawer". Why did he know I'd be interested in brown if I'd never tried it? Because about four years earlier, just before Christmas, I'd approached him asking for heroin and had actually given him £50 to get me a half gram (yes it cost £10 a "point" back then). But a few days later this person (who I barely knew) gave me my money back saying he couldn't get it after all. I only wanted heroin because I was depressed and wanted to die. Heroin overdose was the most painless method I knew of: you slip into unconsciousness and never wake up. But it wasn't to be. I took a bottle of vodka and a bottle of sleeping pills and tried to drown myself in the bath but obviously I woke up again... and the rest is history. By the way it took me YEARS to actually think back and join the dots. That heroin really HAD come into my life because I actively wanted to die. Doesn't sound good... does it?

As for methadone "poisoning me", my point is, I spent years on heroin feeling so miserable I just wanted to curl up and die. I tried to survive on methadone. Which is meant to be safer, better, legal, more respectable ... but misery on heroin translated to suicidal depression on methadone. I found it even HARDER to function in any meaningful way... methadone just didn't seem to work and I seem to have rewound back to that time. Now my worker is trying to tell me that if I will only stick with it and not use on top of the methadone then these feelings will eventually even out. I think this is based partly on the belief that any depression I feel is assumed to be "underlying". But what if methadone is actually CAUSING this low mood? Or making it even worse than it would be on no drugs at all? I've tried to moot this point so many times down the clinic and nobody ever listened. Until yesterday when I used the word POISONED. And her smartarse response was "well if you think methadone is poisoning you you could always go and detox". But as I pointed out, detoxing is sure to make a depressed person feel EVEN WORSE. That's why I don't do it. I've come down from over 120mg methadone a day right down to 15mg... lately I've gone back up to 30mg. I took the 120-15mg reduction better than anybody I know. So I do have some wherewithall. They might not be able to stick to a drawn-out reduction like that, but I cannot handle a 10-day complete detox. I just can't. (If you call not sleeping at all for days on end and wandering about crying, not being able to eat (because appetite-loss aside, food is repulsive to me in the detox state) plus intense mood swings and suicidal impulses being fine then yes I handle it well. I tried inpatient detox TWICE in 2003 and probably monopolized as much of the counsellors' time as all the other inmates put together. Neither time I lasted more than a few days. I'm just not interested in a quick-fix which is going to be very upsetting and probably not last.

My philosophy is that if I can stick to methadone, reducing very gradually "in the community" then I am to all intents and purposes living life "clean". Then, providing it's handled carefully, the transition from 5mg methadone to nothing will not be a jolt (I will make sure of this by reducing something like 5-4-3-2-1-0.9-0.8-0.7mg and so on down to zero).

I felt so lousy last week that I basically lost all willingness to live without drugs at all. I only held out so long without using because I couldn't afford to use. But now I've got my mojo back (temporarily) and I know it is just the heroin because I'm still depressed. Binky thinks I look depressed. I'm just not so depressed I spend all day vegetating on my new couch. (In that state, Binky would never get to see me.)

I do so much want to be able to live free of ALL drugs. I do. I do. I really do. I just don't know HOW I'm going to do this. It's a hard nut to crack. All I do know is that in my case gently does it. Drastic changes tend to provoke drastic reactions. I'm going into the clinic again tomorrow for my MBT group ("mentalization-based therapy") so I can see my worker then, if I want to. I'm going to make sure I'm at least 24 hours heroin-free and hopefully suitably miserable. So then she'll see what I've been like lately. (I dare not hope for any rapid improvement in mood. It just won't happen...)

My poor Worker. I do feel sorry for her. She cannot have known what she was taking on when she took me and she finds me really hard work. She said I was verbally "belligerent" yesterday. Well of course I was. Days on end of stygian misery coupled with anger and then a drug that puts some fight back into my veins will probably come over as "belligerent". Without the drug I wouldn't have said half the things I said yesterday. Misery does not justify itself. It devalues its own experience and devalidates it, telling me that, no matter how bad I feel it somehow isn't real or doesn't count or it's just an excuse. You can't win against an attitude like that... (And how DO you win a war against yourself anyhow~??!?)

So... I don't know. Don't be surprised if I'm posting "I'm miserable" within a very few days. My focus right now isn't on how good or bad I feel. Or might feel. Or anything like that. It's that I really need to convert using heroin about one day in four to ... well, hopefully one day in never. I don't want to be using it. I'm bored of it. I tried the junkie life and it's far too narrow an existence for me. This world might seem hopelessly dark, (sometimes) but it is WIDE... and maybe if I move to pastures new, geographical, spiritual, emotional and psychological I will find something that makes this world not seem so dark and meaningless. If I don't seek I never shall find and I'm a born scavenger. (Sometimes the seeking is half the fun...)

I always told myself that after achieving 100% abstinence from narcotics of all kinds I should give myself two years ~ that means two years of really trying. Just not taking any more drugs is NOT enough... and THEN maybe I can dare to look back and see if it's all been worthwhile... Know what I mean?

Does this make any sense..? Anyone...?...??

New Furniture New Home!

 FINALLY MY FLAT IS FURNISHED!

I got a brick red 2½ seat sofa, a large bookcase, a film director's chair, an occasional table and a TV and DVD stand. All for just £60. ($93.34). The furniture was free. £60 was the cost of hiring a van + 2 people. On reflection the two people weren't probably necessary but I was freaking out so badly about this furniture getting stuck on the public stairwell then a huge fire breaking out and 200 people burning to death because their one escape route was blocked by my flambeéd couch. And I was thinking "but I don't even own an axe to break it up!" Not that I'm totally neurotic or anything...

Last night, around the time I was delivering household rubbish and recycling to their respective bins, my mobile phone somehow went walkies. I felt totally lost without it. The bastard who found it switched it off. Eventually. Giving false hope for several hours that it might merely have fallen into some long-forgotten enclave of my home, only to rouse me with its cheery chirping next time someone chose to call...

What with severe furniture stress, the missing phone was the last straw and I went into a miniature psychotic episode with mental confusion, voices laughing and echoing twisted speech through the sinuous rills of my head and everything. Ultra-luminous bizarre thoughts pinging through my mind, echoing back and forth in an auditory reverberational kaleidoscope. So I took a stonking great dose of quetiapine, the antipsychotic, but still woke up at 5am. (By which time the voices had vanished.)

Binky has been such a good friend to me. Amid much exclamation at the depth to which I'd allowed my living conditions to sink (I had spent weeks camping on a stained concrete floor on uncovered duvets with no furniture to my name except a pine dining chair covered in rubbish). She cleared ALL the junk within the space of ONE single hour. That's absolutely amazing. Do you know it could easily have taken me TWO DAYS, pottering constantly all day, to achieve not even that much of a feat. In the Rubic's Cube of the human genome, the "cleaning gene" somehow passed me by.

All I need now is a fridge-freezer, a cooker and a washing machine. As much as anyone "needs" a nonessential like a washing machine I do need one. Handwashing clothes isn't really ideal and our local launderette charges £4 ($6.10) for 1½ domestic washloads and their dryers are CRAP. 50p (76c) a pop and they barely dry at all!

I'm not bothering with fitted carpets. Never thought particularly much of 'em anyhow. What I'm going to do is collect rugs about the size of a single bed. And just put ten or more of those down. Rugs look très bohème. I used to share a house with a girl who decked out her room au style bédouin what with Indian wallhangings threaded in gold, wooden chests and incense-burners galore... I'm not sure I'd go that far. After all I am a 41-year old man not a 25 year old girl. But it's a good sauce of inspiration...

I'VE FOUND THE BREED I WANT for my ferocious guard-puppy. Like I said, it has to be threatening and agressive (in a totally non-legally-challenging way) to would-be muggers. As for any burglars fool enough to break into my pad, it can feel free to savage them to death, as long as it doesn't ruin by Bedouin rugs with bloodstains. I think housebreakers are scum of the earth. Apart from fierceness, the main characteristic on my bodyguard-puppy wishlist is cuteness. It must have pointy-up ears and bushy fur... In other words what I need is an akita-tosa cross.

Usually when I talk about akitas, people assume I mean the tosa 土佐犬 fighting dog (something like a Japanese pitbull). The akita 秋田犬 is actually a Japanese police dog ~ much more similar, in character and looks, to a German shepherd.

Mix the two together, however, and you get a massive dog who is very cute + very fierce-looking indeed!

Being regulated under the UK 1991 Dangerous Dogs act, I think it slightly unlikely that I'm likely to come across a tosa able to breed with an akita. Which is such a shame. Binky has been driven to the edge of distraction by my ceaseless "attack puppy name brainstorming". Top of the list so far are Qleddebber and Boddlemmer. Neither really "means" anything. I just like the sounds.

If I got a terrifyingly scary, ginormous female akita-tosa I might call her Bloodwin (after the Welsh name Blodwen, which means "white flower"...)

Oh and by the way, if you're wondering what type of inadequate person I must be to want such a horrendous dog, YES I AM. I also want a friend. Dogs are far more trustworthy than any people I've ever met. Also I'm dead set on having absolute control over this baying wild beast. When I click my fingers she rolls over, sits and gives me a paw. She will never pull on the leash. She won't go wild jumping up at strangers (which really annoys me in other people's pets and would embarrass the hell out of me if my attack puppy did the same). She will be intensely stand-offish, just like every akita I've ever met. And she will have a gorgeous bushy coat.

Because the regulations say I'm only allowed ONE dog or ONE cat (not even one of each) ie if she did have puppies I couldn't keep them, I'm not quite so bothered about getting a female now.

Binky says I wouldn't want to be bothered feeding or walking this gigantic beast. But I live minutes away from one of the biggest open spaces in London, where doggies are allowed to ramble freely (no leash laws here).

Hey wouldn't it be fun to rehome a retired police sniffer dog? Then every time I relapsed back on to heroin we could play "hunt the baggie"... Of course I'm not relapsing on to heroin... it's just an entertaining image...

AS FOR MY SOBRIETY I'm not posting anything about being "clean" (ie on methadone but not heroin) until I've managed two weeks flat. I've been told you don't even out until you've done that time... (Which I have, on many occasions ~ only I never counted days and so I never really thought about how long I'd gone "clean" (never really thought about heroin use either. 

Because I've only ever gone clean because I didn't want to use. If I did, I'd use. Simple as!

ANYWAY, it's a cheery, bright weekend here in London. I hope y'all have a great weekend too!

Illustrated: red sofa a bit like mine, tosa-inu, akita-inu, akira-tosa cross, sinuous rills, dirty drug "works"...

video

funky houses
love this



frantic/hardhouse academy 2004
don't know the name of this tune, but I like it...



tony de vit djing at trade club

Too High to Die!/Parlo italiano! Etc ...

SI, IO PARLO ITALIANO MA SOLO UN POCO.

Yes I'm learning Italian. And yesterday, because I had taken DRUGS (benzoated heroin) I managed to stick with it till one in the morning. I wonder how I'm going to manage without heroin in my life any more. Because I've officially dropped it. (Yes I know, yet again.) Only this time it really is THE END. I'm telling myself over and over that if, having experienced the horrible thoughts and feelings (depression, despair, suicidality, extreme cognitive dissonance ~ not to mention the horrible fact that my scripted methadone doesn't really "hold" me properly... That if, having gone through all that + a miniature nervous breakdown and crisis of confidence and self, if I go back to Life Ruining Heroin yet again then that's it. I'm officially a HOPELESS CASE.

I mean, it got so bad a couple of weeks ago. My worker DEMANDED a clean urine. I could not give one. What I went through over this supposedly simple point (I mean I don't even know how many days clean you have to go for your pee to be clean. I've never really "tried" to give clean urine before... Never really cared)... I was suicidal. I came really close to just telling the drug clinic to F OFF and going back to heroin for good. Except there is no "for good". It's all for bad. I'm never going to die on heroin. Never. It kind of annoys me when my family express this fear because I think they know as well as I do IT'S NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. If I die as a drug addict, it will be BY MY OWN HAND. ~ DELIBERATELY. I'm never ever going to get the luxury of dying by accidental overdose and have always known this. Everybody knows this, and I do find it slightly irritating when they affect not to.

So I was going to dump the methadone and just go back on heroin. But seeing as I'm NOT GOING TO DIE and part of me always has wanted to clean up I'm only going to end up back where I am now. So might as well take things forward. Did I really want to get off HEROIN? OFF ALL DRUGS? Well actually, yes. And being as heroin is the ONLY illicit drug left, once I've kicked that, that's the problem licked.

My GP did amuse me last week, by repeatedly asking when I last had a drink. That's so badly missing the point. Alcohol was only ever a side-order for heroin. Everything else was a side order. The other stuff was like butter to heroin's bread or sugar to opiate tea. On their own, butter and sugar are useless. What I mean by "benzoated heroin" is that some mysterious crap is IN the heroin (not mushed up pills }~ neat rohypnol (which is active in a 1mg dose) or something like that. I don't want it. But when that's all there is, what can you do? O and as for crack, I gave that up years ago! 

So me and heroin are separated. I know I shouldn't be writing this on my blog. It's far too premature. But hey. I took a stonking great dose of methadone today. Three times my prescription. (You can buy it quite easily ooff certain crackhead junkies who aren't even trying to do the programme....)

IGNORE the paranoid-sounding drivel of yesterday. I was writing about FEELING lied to by the druggieservice. Whether their lying fits some giant Kafkaesque government-fuelled agenda which is all about Me... that is another matter entirely.

As for mood stabilizers and wanting to be "high". I'm talking there about my own natural moods. Surely there's nothing at all unhealthy about wanting to be on your own natural high?

I have been exceptionally moody of late. The other night I couldn't sleep because I felt like I'd consumed a fishtank full of black coffee. I hadn't drunk any and my coffee is decaffeinated. About an hour later I found myself pacing and thought "I'm manic!" Then I told myself "don't be so ridiculous!" Then I put on Russian and Polish technopop at about 5am and really WAS feeling high. It's wonderful to be that way NATURALLY. Anyway eventually, over a few hours, the mood faded and I slept excessively a night or two later. That's not any type of "episode" that's a "blip" and I get loads of those (though never particularly when I want them).

By the way, talking about death, does anybody know what to do when you want to make a contract/agreement/understanding with your doctors that in the event of life-threatening illness you just want nature to take it's course? I've tried googling and got nowhere. Binky, who affects to want to die, never ever takes me seriously on this point (which makes me question her psychology, not mine). Well being as my GP is trying head games with me I can put him into a real checkmate with this one. Ie (for various reasons) there's no way he can get out of agreeing to what I want. If I'm ever seriously ill I just want palliative care and that's it. Because I have a horrible mental diagnosis I have to get this on the record sooner rather than later, as some complete bastard could argue that my wishes mean I'm out of my senses and keep me alive against my will. I would be BEYOND FURIOUS if that happened. All I have ever wanted is to die by fate or accident (so morally, it's not suicide) if some doctor cheated me out of that I might kill HIM instead!

Uk why do I end up on these morbid subjects. I went up the Support Workers place and sorted out my poll tax today. I'm repaying the last place I lived at at the rate of £40 a month. That's quite a lot, but at least I'll be cleared.

I still want my ebook but my attention span is waxing and waning like the moon.

I was watching that Nothing to Delcare on Pick TV last night and did you know a modern-day heroin smuggler looks like a respectable foreign granny. 'Cept with 700g of mystery white powder stuffed into her shoes. Yes A-grade China white! Why can't they give it to me. I'd destroy it for them. Eventually. What I'd do is mix it with tapwater and shoot it up a bit at a time. And eventually it'd all be destroyed and I'd be ready for the next batch! What am I saying: I'm off the drugs aren't I? Ho-humm.... I'm in such a good mood though, considering I'm clean. Was in such a BAD one this morning. O and by the way my red bucket is exactly the same size as the silver one it's trying to replace... I'm sure you're fascinated to know that.... Well I must dash.

Oh back to Nothing to Declare on Pick TV, have you noticed ~ in Australia it's heroin and food they smuggle in. Here in the UK ~ cocaine and cigarettes. Does that say anything about the collective vices of our two nations? Or only that heroin smugglers in Austalia are small potatoes and ditto cocaine and ciggies in the UK. Here, our heroin is brought through in multi-hundred kilo loads by truck and THAT is why you never see UK airport seizures of heroin. Yes, the trade is too professional! Cocaine, on the other hand, is a different matter. I heard on the news a few years ago that when they did a clampdown on flights from Kingston, Jamaica, they found one particular flight where 50% of the passengers ~ and I'm not kidding ~ were muling coke!

OK the 50% figure might be my own confabulation but OFFICIAL figures estimated that, in the early 2000s, one passenger in ten on Kingston-London flights was carrying cocaine internally. That's a LOT of coke, when you think about it. And an awful lot of sad people wasting their money on it. Why PAY for paranoia, anxiety, depression and a pathetically weak manic feeling? No idea.

OK gotta run. Don't go getting diarrhoea now will you!!!

Don't know why, but this tune (or rather the idea of it) is whirling round my head...

Is it because only last week I was watching Casino starring Sharon Stone and Robert DeNiro with Italian voice-over (when I very rapidly got bored and switched back to English)...

BANANARAMA: ROBERT DENIRO'S WAITING (TALKING ITALIAN)

CHINESE TRANCE MIX

Couldn't find any decent Russian stuff. (Not saying this is decent either.)

Delirious Happiness

O HELLO THERE. I'm running out of computer time so I have to say this quickly. I am feeling so deliriously happy I can't stop smiling radiantly at the most random times eg at the methadone chemists. I was a bit paranoid that they'd think I was high on some drugs. But no drug I know of makes you that happy, except maybe ecstasy, and I don't take that any more. I don't take any drugs at all now, by the way, except methadone.

Anyway having woken up at 1am, as you do (I hadn't bothered going to bed the night before, so I slept a healthy 8 hours ~ 5pm-1am) and having watched lots of Michael Jackson videos and musicals very loudly I finally phoned Binky at 4am. She doesn't mind. She's an insomniac anyway. I can't remember precisely why I phoned her but I desperately felt I needed to know whether the mental unit she was on had any baths. When I'm in that state I tend to be very talkative indeed, with my mind constantly changing the subject. And I did moot the idea of breaking over the fence and coming to see her in the dead of night. But I was terrified of getting arrested and ending up in the nuthouse myself. So I didn't.

Erm, and that's about it. Have a very cheery day everyone.

O wow ~ look at this:

First Light of Dawn

MY LANDLORD came and tamed our Rampant Bush, then his handyman came in and polished all my cookertops and kitchen surfaces. With an explosion of magazines, papers and carrier bags on every available surface, the hanchman asked how I ever sat down. I told him the mess was my attempt at tidying (well that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).

With all the mess cleaned up and the lake mopped up (caused by a dodgy fuse that made the fridge go off nearly all weekend causing a mini Lake Baikal to accumulate under the washing machine) and a new light in the bathroom, which I nearly brought the ceiling down trying to change, the place is looking wonderful.

My sleep has been seriously all over the place. My appetite is down. My moods are swirling. I've been feeling very anxious and a bit hyped up. I've been trying to keep a journal of my feelings but they're so all over the place, just writing about them makes me very supset again. I'm not "depressed", but three things happened in the past week that upset me greatly and this is what triggered all that heart-stopping anxiety that has been killing me so un-softly.

I realized that one person, who I thought I could trust, doesn't understand my viewpoint at all and doesn't really respect my feelings, probably never has, and wants me to take a course of action that is dangerously irresponsible. I got a message saying DO NOT TRUST HIM. And though I doubt the Messanger's motives, I sadly realized this message was accurate. I've received frightening messages before, and they also turned out to be true.

My feelings around Binky are confused, too. I say I'm confused; she's seriously confused. Binky has a lot of health problems, her body is collapsing. O, and to add insult to injury, we both have common colds. But because she's more fragile than me, she has a chest infection on top.

I just deleted a load of stuff on my mixed feelings on her torrential emotional torments. But it's not fair to write like that behind my friend's back. And as I say, my feelings are so swirled up, it's hard to say what I really think. Anything I put now I may disagree with in half an hour's time.

My family think I should make new friends who are sane and clean; but frankly, who would have me? I feel so comfortable around psychiatric patients because they seem to accept me for who I am. The junkies certainly don't (and the ones who did are all dead). The old "Nutter Club" that I used to find so supportive (before it was axed) was actually a Dual Diagnosis group for addicts with severe mental health problems. It was the one support group where I felt I could speak freely.

This is my biggest problem: I don't feel I have the support of anyone who really understands me. I do have the support of my family and they try to understand me. I don't know how successful they are. A need that was uppermost when I was younger has started to resurface; a need to be Understood. Perhaps behind this is my own need to understand myself. With so many conflicting emotions and moods in strange admixtures, it's hard to say what I feel about anything.

I feel in need of some kind of support, but I'm not getting it. I do have an official Support Worker but I get the impression that, like so many others down the years, he thinks my problem is that I just don't give a shit and just need to pull myself together. Well I used to think that, too. Whatever I said, that is what I actually thought in my heart. Then I tried to pull myself together and found I couldn't do it. And I don't know why.

My family, the only people in this crazy world who I do trust implicitly, seem to expect that once I'm finally ffree of all drugs, and this of course includes methadone, then my turbulence should resolve.

Well if it does, I don't expect anything to happen straight away. Various NA members have told me that the first year Clean is a real challenge. Moods and emotions no longer blanketed by opiates burning brighter than ever before. The rehab I emailed some months ago with brief details of my situation and meds emailed back saying the methadone might actually be acting as a mood stabilizer (though it doesn't feel like it is). So that, without it, unless they up my psyche meds I'm likely to be more unstable than ever before.

So I don't know what to make of any of this. Anyway I'm not scared of getting clean. I've spent about 30% of my life addicted to heroin. Which means that 70% of that journey was travelled without chemical dependency. Contrary to stereotype, I never got hooked on my drug of choice until 28 years of age. So I have vast experience of living and surviving without needless crutch of opiates and there is no doubt in my mind that I can survive again. I don't expect it to be easy; but I don't expect it to be too difficult, either.

Before Heroin I was a much more complicated person than I am now, with a poor sense of self-identity. But I have matured despite my drug habit (which some addiction experts say never happens). People who knew me back then say I'm so much more comfortable in my own skin. Even my old drug worker from about three years ago seemed astonished at the change in my demeanour. Perhaps she's seeing the swtich from constant low-grade depression to constant low-grade hypomania... But perhaps not. I think it's something more. Despite everything I feel more at home with my Self ~~ turmoil and confusion aside I'm far happier now than I was even two years ago.

They say the longest journey begins with that first step... I just hope that finally I'm stepping in the right direction...

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MOBY: HONEY (LULU ROUGE)

I love this video...

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Nobody's Victim

I AM WRITING this down the local internet shop. I just had to get out of the house. Something happened today that probably counts as "bizarre". I don't know what to do about it. Every time it crosses my mind I feel excitable. Well that's better than

feeling paraniod, or worse still panic-stricken with worry. I refuse to indulge in pathological worry as I did when I was younger. I am 40 years old: way too ancient to be victimized by thoughts induced by ridiculously stupid people who don't even know me, much less warrant my attention.

My sleep had cycled so far back, that I ws lying awake past 9am and getting up after 3. Last night I managed to drop of at 3:30, after seeing Dynasy The Reunion (which I don't recommend you watch). I thought 3:30 was too good to be true, because I woke up three times in the next three hours and then decided to get up. That terrible Genie Bra infomercial was showing, yet again. But no Sheer Cover or Insanity Workout. (O why do I watch that crap?) And then my head went into a ranting torrent of ideas. I can't relax. I don't want to relax. I'm starting to feel high. Again.

Anyway, then at 1pm my Odd Encounter occurred. I slept again: 2:30 till 5:30. I wish I could stay asleep for longer than three hours.

Then I found out how bizarre this Thing That Happened actually was and nearly flipped my lid, but I managed not to. I am trying to sit still and not exhaust myself. Staying still keeps me a lot calmer. You know they say exercise alleviates depression? What they don't tell you is that if you're feeling over-excited already, just trotting down the corner shop can send mania spiking through the roof. I'm not that extreme today, but I did end up wandering up and down my local cigarettes and jaffa cakes dispensary this afternoon feeling a bit inanely Elevated.

Well I can't go on. That's all. See you tomorrow.

Oh PS tomorrow is the last day, according to my Agreement With Myself, when I could indulge in that LIFE-RUINING CRAP they call heroin. And I still don't want to...

SHEER COVER

Binky finds my own Emma Forbes impression hilarious...

TAME LOVEBIRDS

Not that I'm obsessed with these birdies or anything...

BABY LOVEBIRDS HAVING A CHAT

"ARE YOU CHIRPING AWAY?... YES YOU ARE! CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP!!..."

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Midwinter Pigeons Having a Bath (etc)...

I SAW a flock of pigeons having a bath in a puddle this morning. They're very brave birds as it was about one degree celcius out there. I wish I'd had a camera phone to record it. But here instead are some birds in Pnom Pen...


What else can I say. I've given up the drugs again and this time it might work, because I woke up at four a.m. and tried drinking hot tea to keep warm and either the tea or the lack of sleep has made me high and I'm feeling so good I don't NEED drugs. Or drug singular. The one substance in the equation being the Killer B. The Big H. Brown Heroin.

Righto I've got to go I've got Mr Kipling's 6 Xmas Cake Slices on me and they're begging to be eaten. After which I really need a crash diet. I could do with losing 5½ stone/77lbs/35kg. I don't care if that makes me too skinny, I'm fed up of looking like Benny from Crossroads.

Righty-ho I must fly. Have a chirpy weekend...


And just for the entertainment, here's a chirpy lovebird:~~~~~



♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫   O and 1 last thing. I love this tune...   FRIDGE ~ PARADISE ~ KOMAKINO MIX     ♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫

The Help That I Need... And Do I Really Need It ... (And What Is It Anyhow?)...?

AT THE WEEKEND, after I'd got a bit over-exuberant and what she likes to call "really manic" but I would categorize as "a bit hypomanic" (no way was I "really manic" in doctorly terms; I was just a bit elevated in mood; a little hyper) my friend Binky told me I really need more help from the mental health services than I'm currently getting. It's true the first thing she did on my arrival was to insist on laundering my clothes, which I thought were clean but she definitely didn't. Then I had a shower in her heated bathroom, which meant that I spent longer than a couple of seconds in there. And on coming out and changing into grey jogging bottoms and a fuschia pink teeshirt that she insisted was red but it wasn't ~ it was most definitely pink ~ I have to admit, I felt a whole lot cleaner. That is, cleaner as in less dirty. Not altogether clean. I never am and never feel "clean". But maybe that's my inner drug-addict being honest, hey.

One of the Support Workers who works at the Supported Housing where Binks lives listened as I told the story of how I ever came to the attention of the mental health system at all. That was to do with a drought in the UK's heroin supply and a sudden attack of mixed mania and psychosis coinciding with the "first day of the rest of my life"... that is, my first day clean of the terrible weak and adulterated heroin that was going around in those days. And how I never really recovered over the following weeks. Because I was keeping a diary with a four-point mood-scale going upwards and down and was scoring +1.5 and -1.5 on the same day. +1.5 means a very noticably elevated mood and hyperkinesis similar to the effects of speed. -1.5 is a very sour, depressive mood. +2 on this scale means full-blown mania, +3 is psychotic mania, +4 is a quasi-delirious state with disorientation and confusion ~ as bad as mania gets. The very maximum on each end would be a plus or minus five.

In the first flush of psychotic mood disorder I went up to about +3.5 and down below -4. I remember the aerial falling off the top of my TV and it staying that way, with barely any picture, for two days because the television was merely an object upon which to fix as I stared into space. After about six weeks of rolling moods I suddenly went sky high and this is where I hit a +4.99, about as high as you can go.

But these days I'm still scoring plus and minus 1.5s. I was +1.5 on Saturday afternoon. My self and my house are getting ever further into disarray. [I never stay high; it's the change of direction that throws me every time. I never know where I am, where I'm going.] Binky somehow knows that my living space is in dire need of clearing and cleaning, even though she's never set eye on it. She needs a knee replacement and so rarely walks further than the nearest busstop, and when we meet at home it's always her place.

In a moment of empassioned despair I went and telephoned Naomi, the lady who used to run the Dual Diagnosis "Nutter Club" (as I called it). I'm not her patient and she knows I'm only phoning for advice. I would never expect practical help from her: she's far too snowed under by all her other cases... She returned my call this morning saying the best thing I can do, to get more help, is say to my GP that I need a psychiatric referral ~ or more to the point, to enquire as to where the current one has got to. When I turned up feeling depressed about two months ago, she said she was referring me to a psychiatrist. The other option is to ask for help via the methadone clinic; but Naomi underlined for me how prejudiced psychiatrists can be against drug users (that must mean they're prejudiced against most of their patients as most people with ongoing mental health issues these days are drug-takers, if not full-blown drug-addicts like me...)

She reminded me of stuff I suppose I already knew in my heart: that if you want help for depression, for example, you shouldn't downplay the "suicidal ideation" nearly all depressives get. I just don't like talking about stuff like that; unless I really feel bad in the moment I mention it, I nearly always feel separated from my own feelings and myself when I do so, so there's a good chance I'd have to hold myself back from laughing. I can't take myself seriously the way I'm "supposed to". I just can't. Well I'll try... but I wonder what I think this doctor can do..? I don't want any more meds or drugs. The one thing I think might help is counselling... I mean, I hate to admit this, as counselling has always been the knee-jerk response of health professionals of all persuasions... but who knows; maybe it would help...? It's true I still feel traumatized by the mere fact that I went totally fruitloops barking bonkers in early 2011. I certainly do not feel I've had any closure on this issue.

Binky says that what I need is the same manner of Supported Housing she lives in. And that I need a social worker and a thing called a CPA which means a Care Plan Approach ~ a written contract-type billing of what treatment I can expect and call upon when and from whom, especially in emergency. Because as far as I'm aware I have nothing like this. No community nurse I can get in touch with. All I know about handling emergency situations is that I'm meant to present myself to the nearest mental hospital's emergency department. Where they seem deliberately to keep everyone waiting for hours, as if the long waiting time is going to put anybody off when actually all it does is severely annoy some already annoyed people and help further to unravel others who have already passed their wits' ends.

So really, No. No true help is available anywhere. Maybe I would do better in a Dual Diagnosis Service (geared towards mentally deranged drug addicts) rather than the one I go to, which seems to be geared to the needs of people whose main issue is the drugs. Giving up the drugs never seemed to help my mental states in the past, which is why I'm somewhat doubtful that just giving up heroin is really going to do much good to my mind. It'll probably do my body far more favours. The two street drugs most associated with mental ill health and addiction are cocaine and speed in all their forms, neither of which I've touched in I don't remember how long. In many cases, cannabis is probably worse for a person's mental health than anything else, including crack. Which is a big reason why I loathe the stuff with such passion.

All that spliff-toking has ever done to me over the past few times, scattered as they were over many years, was to bring on paranoid psychotic symptoms without any redeeming features (such as elevated mood). The last time I smoked cannabis was a complete accident that happened because I'd been collecting cigarette butts from a nearby bus-stop and found what I'd taken for a nice fat rollie and not really noticed the herbal flavour until my mind was already enrobed by amnesiac paranoia. Then there's alcohol and "alcohol is a depressant so that's what's probably making you depressed" as many people told me... So how come I've felt equally bad, and sometimes more so without the drink..?  I don't think heroin helps me... Naomi did say this morning that she thought I'd probably been self-medicating bipolar disorder for years with heroin; and yes it did used to seem to stabilize my moods. Which it doesn't do any more. So apart from its inefficacy, I want rid of that stuff because as a member of my family once pointed out, it has killed my creativity. And it certainly has. In the early days of addiction, heroin might make a person feel more creative. But I don't think they usually are any more creative, in terms of the number of things created and their quality...

Naomi asked what my exact label was and when I told her "schizoaffective" she said she feels I'm far more towards the bipolar side of that diagnosis than the schizo one. Which puts her in accord with everyone else I know. Neither I nor any of my friends think of me as "schizophrenic". In fact the only person ever to use that expression has been my GP, who doesn't seem to perceive any meaningful difference between schizophrenic and schizoaffective. Well from what I've seen in others there's a wide gulf separating the two. Schizophrenia is an ongoing psychosis characterized by disorders of thought. Schizoaffective bipolar disorder, which I'm supposed to have, is an extreme disorder of moods with some schizophrenic features. There's a second type of schizoaffective disorder, which Binky's supposed to suffer from, which involves severe depression on top of schizophrenia. The doctors seem to have successfully medicated most of her depression away but schizophrenic features persist. If you get her talking on the right subjects, she can sound completely delusional...

Binky also says some weird things that are basically her shit. Eg that if I read too much about my own alleged condition the doctors will alledge that what I'm telling them is the result of my researches, not my experience. Well this cannot be true as I wasn't well enough to pick up any knowledge about what schizoaffective disorder actually was until I'd recovered enough from last year's episode to be clear-headed enough to actually take any information in. And between that time and this I haven't seen any psychiatrists at all. Also some of my most extreme experiences are barely touched upon by any modern texts ~ I only saw them described in Victorian textbooks I was able to access online. Plus the way I'd describe my experience and the way it tends to be expressed by others are very different. Example: I have experienced my thoughts exploding into starbursts. I've never heard anyone describe it that way. Other people talk of "racing thoughts", but that symptom never happens to me until the mania is so severe I'd be having difficulty communicating. Binky talks of racing thoughts she says she experiences in the night but I cannot relate to whatever it is she means. A person who comes home in the early hours of the morning only to find they've lost their keys might characterize their thoughts as "racing" ~ but that's nothing at all like the racing thoughts of mania, which are literally in such extreme fast-forward you can barely catch hold of a single one without it exploding into scores of others skedaddling in all directions with the utmost rapidity. So it's almost impossible to say what you're thinking about at all ~ the subject has changed so many times, the original point totally lost. You can't even remember where you've been, let alone how you got there...

Ho-hummm you see I have got on this subject YET AGAIN. And WHY? Because there is no closure. All I want is some validation and maybe some explanation... of what on earth it is that has been happening to me.

As for this "help" that I supposedly need... what help? When? How? And WHY??    


Illustrated: (1) digging one's own grave (which is what you do when you tell anything to a psychiatrist...) (2) fuschia pink (3) hyperactivity (4) Vanilla Ice with Madonna

HERE'S SOME MADONNA
Watch the very beginning... why do you think she wants to start her concerts with readings from Revelation..?



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