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.)

A Death in the House (and a New House and a Baby Chirper)

THE LANDLORD'S HENCHMAN phoned me yesterday asking could I knock on the room next to me to see whether the man answers ... and would I phone back with the result so I said I would ~ and no answer. I said "Why, is he OK?" and he said no. They think he's ill or something. So someone from the agency was going to come round and open the door just to see that he really IS all right.

This man is pretty old and very friendly. He gives the impression of not having a nasty bone in his body ~ yet somehow without that "gone-out," dodgy vibe some people have when they're so "nicey-nicey" they seem to have a screw loose. Perhaps one reason he always seems so cheerful is that every time we have met, either outside the house or in the hallway, in the few weeks since he moved in, he had obviously been drinking. I never have seen him sober. But he is so old and unsteady. You can always tell it's him coming in because the shufflings between front door opening and the scrabbling of his key against his door and that door actually opening seems to take a good five minutes every time. He is very unsteady on his feet, and I wouldn't be surprised if he had some type of Alzheimer's or alcoholic dementia.  He seems somehow to be able to attain the same level of drunkenness every hour of the morning or night ~ he's in a perpetual blur. So it wouldn't surprise me if some other factor were involved. I've seen alcohol dementia, and that ~ or just general old age ~ would seem better to account for his general un-together-ness than drink alone. As I say, you'd need to be putting a lot of drink away, on a constant basis, to be that doddery and compromised...

THEN I CAME BACK HOME today to find the front door open and a policeman in our hall. "Is everything all right?" I asked. The policeman gave me a steady look, and said no. It turns out the elderly Carribean man downstairs has DIED. I heard the policeman saying into his radio that this man was SEVENTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD. So why on earth somebody that feeble and confused and obviously in need of help was living on his own in a house like mine, I haven't a clue. I don't want to think about it, because it will only make me angry.

I had only been into his flat the once, and that was when he said his heating was broken down last week. The boiler was working for hot water, and was set to warm up the radiators. Yet his radiators were stone cold. It has been absolutely freezing the last few days with snow settled everywhere. And this old man was living alone and confused in an unheated flat. He said the landlord had refused to look at the boiler. He was so out of it, he couldn't tell when the radiators were switched on or off. And now he's dead. Great, isn't it?

Oh and I'm supposed to be moving out and into a permanent place of which I have absolutely no details ~ this is according to my Support Worker, who won't give me the new address. I want at least to be able to check out the new place from the outside before going on an official visit with a council housing bod. Then I get to say yes or no to this new home ~ depending whether it's wonderful or otherwise. You're allowed to pick and choose between a maximum three places (which are offered one at a time) before it they say "right, if you WANT council housing, you have to take the next offer, or drop off the list". ALL I want is separate living room and bedroom, a bath, and a south-facing aspect to put up a satellite dish ~ otherwise I won't be able to watch German television, which makes all the difference to quality of life. And ideally, if it's a flat (which it probably will be) I'd rather NOT be on the ground floor ~ for security. So I'm in a bit of depression and stress over this, knowing that if I do move I'll find myself in a place that's completely unfurnished ~ not even curtains. And will have to get washing machine, fridge, bed and furniture all myself. I know I should sound a bit more grateful ~ but I just want to know what I'm being grateful FOR. Some of these council places are notoriously bad. I just WANT TO KNOW THE ADDRESS. The promised letter has failed to come. If I don't hear anything by Monday then I'm calling my housing manager. The idea of moving is really stressing me. Yes of course I want to move. But moving itself is horrendous. So most of the time I'm dealing with this in my own characteristic way: by not thinking about it at all.

Does this sound really terrible? I'm not in a bad mood. I've actually been feeling rather good. I'm still, most of the time, higher than normal. It's just that when I'm like this, every feeling and emotion is more vivid, so I'm VERY easily plunged into a whirl of confusion. I just want to know what is happening. And then, perhaps, I can be whirled up in a better-informed kind of way..(!)

Hey you know the best thing about moving into proper accommodation? Pets are allowed! I am in talks about ordering a baby parrotlet online (they are very difficult to get hold of in this country)... but no commitments have been made yet...

So that's it ~ wow! A death in the house and me (hopefully) moving out with a Baby Chirper!

Terrible Confusion of Moods... Terrible Confusion of Life, Funeral, Friends, Depression, Drugs and Sleep...

MY MOODS are in terrible confusion... I really do not know what to say... when, about who?.. about me...?...//... why?...//how. I'm a manic-depressive. My moods are prone to be mixed up and extreme... and TO the extreme. I'm sitting here having just given long, long answers to Beverly under my last post. I'm attempting to conduct some formal research into people's experience of mood disorders and how badly these people were impacted, what symptoms they dealt with and to what severity for what length of time, and how they coped. In depression, some people oversleep; some undersleep. Some experience a cycling sleep disturbance in which insomnia and hypersomnia hit at varying, different times.

This past weekend I've been feeling truly terrible. There's been a death in the family ~~ my step-Granny died last week; the funeral's in London; everyone is coming and I said I'd go. Truly: when I think about what's going on, and how many people I'm going to have to deal with... I just cannot handle it.

I asked Binky whether she'd be willing to go with me and she said yes. I also have a friend called Mitt who offered, for the cost of the petrol, to drive me across town and back.

I spoke to a person in my family whose viewpoint I respect earlier today, who asked basically how emotionally I was going to cope. What with my mood having peaked and troughed and cycled up and down in days gone by. And nobody knowing what it's going to be on the Day that is Not About Me at all (and I don't want people thinking about me then either). In truth, the mood swings I get nowadays are nowhere Near as extreme as bipolar moods can go. But, in truth also, I still feel like a basket case.

We had The Conversation earlier on and it was agreed that my meeting my Dad and my Step Mum and Brothers (I have 2) for the first time in eight, ten and twelve years respectively ~~ would be far better done under less stress-laden circumstances.

But Binky, never one to miss the opportunity for an emotional meltdown in her own life, wants to disagree. She says it's really disrespectful not to go when this funeral of a lady who spent her latter years in West Wales but always wanted to be Laid To Rest with her Late Husband in an Outer Suburb of West London is taking place in a location reachable by me. When I could attend if I Really Wanted To. If I could Only Tough It Out... Timewise, whether we went by car or tube, the cemetary would probably be equidistant.

Binky was really peeved and pissed off with me for having switched off my phone on her and anyone else who might have wanted to ring me back. And for having agreed to come across town with me for this funeral. And now I'm chickening out. But I'm terrified, basically, of meeting all my long-lost family-members all at once and them staring into my eyes... mirrors of my soul... I don't know what they're going to see. I'm terrified of what my soul might tell ... maybe, after all, I ought to wear dark glasses... I don't know. Binky is really pissed off with me for nearly adopting a furry great doggie, offered by Mitt offering free of charge. If I took on a crossbred dog she is EXACTLY the cross I would request ~~ a German Shepherd/Akita. And a SHE! A SHE! I ALWAYS wanted a great furry Akita, didn't I always say that? Well Mitt, who's HIV+ among so many other of his problems says I can have this doggie absolutely free ... who was going to go to Battersea (famous London dogs' home).

The way I see it, regarding the doggie is, the best I can do is take her on. And if we don't get on, or if she's too badly behaved, I myself can dump her in doggie prison. Being bushy-furred and Akita and female I know for a fact that her time in Doggie Prison won't last long. It's Staffordshire bull terriers who end up doing Life because they're what I call Badly Behaved (going nuts whenever a person comes to the door, jumping up at people, pulling on the lead... etc)... plus Staffies are so popular these days I expect it's no Understatement to declare that about one dog in three in Britain these days is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier...(!)

Well I don't know what to say. Although Binky disapproves, and although my feelings are severely mixed... it probably Is the Right Thing that I Don't Come to this funeral on Thursday... and it might Also Be The Wrong Thing to take on this doggie that I've always wanted, but hell, if Mitt brings her round on Weds as promised ~~ providing he furnishes me with lead and bowl and a good week's supply of food, I think I WILL take her on. The poor swine needs somebody to love her and I have so much love to give to somebody who is bushy-furred who will not hate me back...

Sorry: I really need to go now. It's dark and I need a cigarette. The DSS have messed up my money so I'm reduced to penury. The electricity on Emergency. My mood hit a pretty extreme low this past weekend. On Saturday I tried taking my medication in the afternoon (as prescribed) in order to, as my near-neonatal GP recently declared, "regulate" my mood. But all it did was to smack me out from about five PM until I awoke at midnight, just in time for MORE meds... straight back to sleep till about 8:30 and less than an hour later drowsing till after two in the afternoon. This means I slept nearly TWENTY HOURS out of TWENTY-FOUR. Ridiculous, I know. But, the mood I was in, it was SURELY BETTER THAN HAVING to ENDURE all THAT TIME AWAKE..!!

I don't know what else to say, except that my moods this past week have been bad. Most of the time I endure rather than enjoy. I wasted ridiculous money in Iceland yesterday, wishing I had not blown the sliver-slim remnant of my cash on Mr Kipling's Rum n Raisin Slices and a box of Thornton's Milk Chocolates (when really I'd far have preferred plain but hey you gotta go for what's there...)... I used drugs today and hyper-reacted. I have to stop the drugs. Without them I feel too terrible for words. Or too manic-depressive. I never know what is going to happen.  Binky is annoyed with me because I told her this morning that I ought to take up the habit of regularly overdosing on my medication like she does. I think she finds the notion of my copying her behaviour unconscionable. Oh I don't know about any of this. My head is in a whirl and a swirl and I don't know what else.

Please take care of yourselves and each other. I wonder WHY it is so incredibly DAMP and CLAMMY and FREEZING COLD and INCREDIBLY CLOSE weather. HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE DAYS.

TAKE CARE, EVERYONE. i HATE winters. HATE having to SURVIVE. HATE EVERYTHING about these days.

I really hope my Family is OK, those who are grieving the most... but I don't know what else to do apart from follow the advice I have been given and if Binky wants to guilt trip me over situations she does not understand... well she can waste her breath as much as she pleases but I've never been one to dance to anybody else's tune and I'm not gonna start doing so now!

i haven't read this back... i hope i haven't said anything TOO Terrible... {o bloody hell: please no!}

Peace, love and respect to you all XxxXxxX

Hey I've just clocked WHY Binky went so nuts at me earlier for switching off my phone: DSM Diagnostic Criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder:~~~ "frantic attempts to avoid Abandonment, real or imagined"...



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HAVE A LOVELY MUSICAL EVENING
MADONNA: BLOND AMBITION TOUR ~ LIVE IN JAPAN


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What it's Like to Go Crazy: Dr Kraepelin Writes...

IF YOU'RE WONDERING why I say I think I need counselling for the trauma of having lost my senses some 18 months ago, here are some lovely quotes from one of the classic psychiatric texts of all time, Emil Kraepelin's Manic-Depressive Insanity and Paranoia that put it all in a nutshell...

The very last paragraph quoted here describes me with unfortunate accuracy in the throes of hyperacute manic psychosis.

Their linguistic utterances alternate between inarticulate sounds, praying, abusing, entreating, stammering, disconnected talk, in which clang-associations, senseless rhyming, diversion by external impressions, persistence of individual phrases, are recognised.

That's exactly what happened to me!

HERE'S DR KRAEPELIN:~~~~~~~

From the slighter forms of mania here described, imperceptible transitions gradually lead to the morbid state of actual acute mania. The beginning of the illness is always fairly sudden; at most headaches, weariness, lack of pleasure in work or a great busyness, irritabihty, sleeplessness, precede by some days or weeks the outbreak of the more violent manifestations, when a definite state of depression has not, as is very frequent, formed the prelude. The patients rapidly become restless, disconnected in their talk, and perpetrate all sorts of curious actions. They run out of the house in a shirt, go to church in a petticoat, spend the night in a field of corn, give away their property, disturb the service in church by screaming and singing, kneel and pray on the street, fire a pistol in a waiting-room, put soap and soda in the food, try to force their way into the palace, throw objects out at the window. A female patient jumped into the carriage of a prince for a joke.


Mood is unrestrained, merry, exultant, occasionally vision- ary or pompous, but always subject to frequent variation, easily changing to irritability and irascibiltiy or even to lamentation and weeping. Such, fluctuations of mood are very clearly seen in the following letter of a manic patient : —

" When I think of my rude behaviour towards you at the last visit, I do not know how I am to atone for it. I ask you for pardon from my heart ; as far as it hes in my power, such a thing will never occur again. As I now understand, I should have given you an answer and I did not do so. O God, how discourteous !"

Mood is mostly exalted in mania, and in lively excite- ment it lias the peculiar colouring of unrestrained merriment. The patients are pleased, " over merry " or " quietly happy," visionary, " more than satisfied," " cheerful in this beautiful world"; they feel well, ready for all possible sport and banter, "penetrated with great merriment," they laugh, sing and jest. They are "enraptured with everything," " the happiest woman " ; happiness has come upon them ; " now the days of roses are coming." The group of patients in manic excitement (Fig. 3) reproduces the expression of this mood in varied colouring from quiet cheerfulness and proud self-consciousness to unrestrained cheerfulness. Sexual excitability is increased and leads to hasty engage- ments, marriages by the newspaper, improper love-adven- tures, conspicuous behaviour, fondness for dress, on the other hand to jealousy and matrimonial discord. Several of my patients displayed in excitement homosexual tendencies.

Extraordinary Distractibility of Attention certainly plays an essential part in defective perception. The patients gradually lose the capacity for the choice and arrangement of impressions ; each striking sense-stimulus obtrudes itself on them with a certain force, so that they usually attend to it at once. Accordingly, if their attention can for the most part be quickly attracted by the exhibition of objects or by the calling out of words, yet it digresses again with uncommon case to any fresh stimulus. The picture of their surroundings and of events remains, therefore, for them more disconnected and more incomplete than it would be, if it suffered merely from encroachment on the process of perception.

The Flight of Ideas often becomes very distinctly noticeable to the patient's own perceptions. They complain that they cannot concentrate or gather their thoughts to- gether. The thoughts come of themselves, obtrude them- selves, impose upon the patients. "I can't grasp all the thoughts which obtrude themselves," said a patient. "It it is so stormy in my head," declared another, "everything goes pell-mell." " My thoughts are all tattered," "I am not master over my thoughts," " One thought chases the other ; they .just vanish like that," — these are further utter- ances, which give us a glimpse into these processes.

In depressed patients also flight of ideas occurs not alto- gether infrequently, though certainly without being very recognizable in the scanty speech of the taciturn patients ; sometimes it appears distinctly in copious written utterances.


He hears the voice of Jesus, speaks with God and the poor souls, is called by God dear son. There are voices in his ears ; the creaking of the floor, the sound of the bells take on the form of words. The patient has telepathic connection with an aristocratic fiancée, feels the electric current in the walls, feels himself hypnotized ; transference of thought takes place.


They have already died a thousand times, always come again, can practise magic, can help people by prayer, can make themselves invisible. A patient had " the feeling as if he would get money from somewhere " ; another declared that

he was the most distinguished private detective ; a third called himself the " sanitary physician of all the natural sciences and natural medical science " ; a fourth said that he would be the most famous man in Europe ; a fifth stated that he had found a female 193 cm [6 feet 363⁄64 inches] in height and would get for her 40,000 marks. Female patients boast that they are related to the royal house, are fourfold queens, earthly somnambulists, have a beautiful voice, are going to place the imperial crown on their husband. A female patient declared that she was the Sleeping Beauty, had pricked her- self with the spindle, and was now waiting for the Prince. The patients often narrate all sorts of journeys and adven- tures, secret experiences ; they have encountered men who made assaults ; they were received in the capital with honour. Many patients complain of persecutions, they have been ill- used having been struck with the fist 130 to 150 times ; they are fired at, whipped with rods.

Occasionally the delusions of the patients call to mind those of the paralytic. They possess millions, diamond cups, get a golden crown, have created mountains, built whole cities. A patient wrote that he would offer his fiancee a life such as no princess in the world had. " In Munich I shall build for myself Castle Miramare, in Feldafing the Castle of King Max formerly planned, make Munich the most beautiful city in the world ; I have already designed three hundred magnificent buildings, the most beautiful in the world. I shall construct railways and gain millions by that."


Delirious Mania.

A Delirious State fills up the picture in a further group of cases, whicli is not very large. This state is accompanied by a dreamy and profound clouding of consciousness, and extraordinary and confused hallucinations and delusions. The attack usually begins very suddenly ; only sleeplessness, restlessness or anxious moodiness may already be con- spicuous one or two days, more rarely a few weeks, before- hand. Consciousness rapidly becomes clouded ; the patients become stupefied, confused, bewildered, and completely lose orientation for time and place. Everything appears to them changed ; they think that they are in heaven, in Herod's palace, in the " Christchild Hospital." Mistakes are made about the people in their surroundings ; their fellow-patients are near relatives ; the physician is a Royal Highness, an ecclesiastic, a black devil, A female patient, who in numer-. ous similar attacks always fancied that she was surrounded by historical celebrities, Louis XIV, Caesar, Elizabeth, called that her " historical delusion ".

At the same time numerous hallucinations appear. Some- thing is burning ; birds are flying about in the air ; angels appear ; spirits throw snakes in the face of the patient ; shadows come and go on the walls. The patient sees heaven open, full of camels and elephants, the King, his guardian- angel, the Holy Ghost ; the devil has assumed the form of the Virgin Mary. The ringing of bells is heard, shooting, the rushing of water, a confused noise ; Lucifer is speaking ; the voice of God announces to him the day of judgment, re- demption from all sins. The patient carries on dialogues with absent people, receives revelations ; his thoughts are borne from one voice to another. The coffee smells of dead bodies, his hands as if rotten ; in the house there is a smell of burning ; the food tastes of goat-flesh or of human flesh, the water of sulphur. His head is very giddy, full of fever-heat. The patients think that they are lifted and thrown into an abyss ; they swim with the king in the ocean ; everything is falling to pieces round them.


The patients do not trouble themselves at -all about their surroundings ; they do not listen, they give no information, obey no requests, are resistive, strike out. Their linguistic utterances alternate between inarticulate sounds, praying, abusing, entreating, stammering, disconnected talk, in which clang-associations, senseless rhyming, diversion by external impressions, persistence of individual phrases, are recognised. Other patients only display a slight restlessness, whisper flights of ideas to themselves, when addressed look up astonished and without comprehension, obey simple requests, give irrelevant answers, smile, weep, cling to people, suddenly begin to sing a song or scream. A female patient called out abruptly, " I am justice ; do not touch me ; I am omniscient ; away from me ! " Waxy flexibility, echolalia, or echopraxis can be demonstrated frequently.


All in all, a decidedly inconvenient affliction...




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If you want to see what mania really looks like, only real film of an actual episode will do and this is the only genuine-looking clip I have ever found... I think in doctorly terms, if she stayed that excited all day, she would be termed "moderately manic". BTW just because she knows the camera's there doesn't mean she must be putting on an act. Watch closely her eyes, her emotional lability, distractability and disinhibition... it's not easy to fake any of that and I don't think I've EVER seen bipolar mania convincingly portrayed on television or film. Most actors get the elevated mood and grandiosity right but display nowhere near the correct degree of hyperkinesis, pressured speech, cognitive disorganization or generalized excitement... THEY'RE NEVER MANIC ENOUGH!...

MANIC EPISODE #1: TRISCH GOES NUTS
Only one clip was ever posted up; some years ago now the brilliant Trisch Li was found dead in her garage having gassed herself to death... terribly sad... but bipolar disorder has the highest suicide rate of any psychiatric illness with one patient in five eventually succeeding in taking their own life...




ANYWAY, HERE'S SOME MUSIC... Lovely trance!

This is not bad:



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I'm Sorry

I NEVER WENT online intending to talk about death. I had nothing in particular to write; I was posting off the top of my head. And all this negativity. Ukh. It's all too much.



One bit of good news: they seem to be about to let Pinky out of the mental unit because she is completely back to normal.


****               Here's another Ave Maria Yes it is Celine Dion... (sorry!)     ***

Nowhere in Bipolarland

Manic depression  Spike Milligan

The pain is too much

A thousand grim winters

    grow in my head

In my ears

    the sound of the

    coming dead.

All Seasons

All Sane

All Living

All Pain.

No opiate to lock still

     my senses

Only left,

     the body locked tenses

NO I DON'T FEEL that bad. I am sick and tired, that's all. And I have to see the ******g doctor tomorrow. I don't want to go. What will happen? It was originally a "gimme more quetiapine" appointment but Nurse Carol gave me more of that two weeks ago. I might as well hit doctor Strangelove with a request for more. I hope she doesn't put up the dose. And I don't want mood stabilizers. I had SIX MONTHS without even the faintest hint of mania or hypomania and they were the worst six months of my life. Apart from... well apart from most of the rest of my shit-for-brains existence. My worker had the gall to have a go at me for not attending group. Why? Am I really to say my true opinion: either give the junkies heroin or shoot them through the head. All junkies, all mental patients, depressives, bipolars and schizos in particular should be killed. Most of them long for death at some time. Often for many months on end stranded in lifetimes of desolation and waste and utter Vernichtung: utter psychiatric nuclear winter. Death is the only true happiness. I want all people to be happy.

I just could not handle the idea of visiting a mental unit today. My friend is on a 6-month section. Involuntary Commitment. The whole set-up, the nurses, the gone-out psychotic patients, it's all too much. They would be so much happier never to feel or think or remember or ever be remembered.


MUSIC:

ETTA JAMES: AT LAST

 

     *******

Eva Rausing 1964-2012

EVA AND HANS RAUSING, the billion-dollar drug addicts. Their love affair began in rehab and ended last week at their exclusive London address, where Mrs Rausing seemingly died of an overdose. Police found Eva's body on Tuesday while raiding her Belgravia mansion for drugs after her husband, heir to an $8 billion food-packaging fortune, was pulled over for erratic driving in South London and found to be in possession of Class A substances. It seems Hans had continued bingeing on heroin and crack for over a week with Eva's corpse still lying in an upstairs bedroom.

Of course murder is suspected, but it wouldn't surprise me if the poor man, who is now in hospital, was too frightened or confused or just too out of it to seek help.

The pictures tell the tale of their sad decline...

EVA RAUSING

7 March 1964 - ? July 2012

REST IN PEACE

xx

*******

For more details and links, see yesterday's post.

Death of the Billion Dollar Junkie

EVA RAUSING, 48 year-old wife of Hans Rausing, 49, heir to the £5 billion ($8 billion) Tetra Pak drink carton fortune, has been found dead at the couple's £50 million ($80 million) Belgravia mansion here in London.

Eva made the news in 2008 after she was busted attemptedly bringing heroin and crack into a reception at the American embassy in Mayfair. Their home was raided and about £2000 worth of crack cocaine seized. For this she was sternly reprimanded by the Metropolitan Police and then let off scott-free ~ a move that was roundly criticized at the time.

The daughter of a top American Pepsi Cola executive, Eva met Hans at an American rehabilitation centre in the 1990s. Despite giving millions to drug charities, the couple continued to be plagued by their own addictions.

Hans was stopped for bad driving on Tuesday night and found to be in possession of crack cocaine. His home was then raided, leading to the discovery of his wife's dead body in a bedroom. Police suspect that he lived with her corpse for over a week. It is expected that Mr Rausing, who is currently undergoing in-patient psychiatric care, will be charged with concealing the dead body.

What else can I say? What a sad, sad tale. Proof, as if any more were needed, that though it can pay for just about everything else, money cannot buy happiness.


London Evening Standard ~ Heiress Eva's drug agony: I fell into dark hole of addiction

Eva Rausing's Myspace Page


PS The term "junkie" refers to the "junk" heroin addicts take. I call myself a junkie too!



BARBRA STREISAND: YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE
This Rogers and Hammerstein track is most famous in the UK as fans' theme tune for Liverpool Football club!

Most Odd

WHY O WHY did I waste so much of my time on DRUGS~?? They only make life much more mediocre.

I only stayed up till 4am. I was trying to read the Famous Five but just could not focus. My attention span is growing terrible. Pages and pages flying by in a blur. I am ranting, ranting, ranting in my head all the time at someone who is not there!

O I didn't want to say this but 2 friends of mine are dying. When  you've got liver cirrhosis that bad it looks like you're pregnant, that's terminal. And my certain other friend has a breast lump ~ yes, someone ELSE ~ PLUS lumps under the armpit. That means she is fucked. At this rate I'm going to be left completely alone. I'm the only person I know who thinks he is going to live past 90,

I'm not depressed any more! I feel more excitable than average. At least when people die they are at peace.

What am I saying about "fucked"; my Mum's breast cancer had spread to her lymph nodes too and she's alive and well 5 years later!

Great Expectations just came on. The black and white version. One minute Pip was a kid with that Elizabeth Taylor-like brat saying, "You may kiss me if you like." Then he was grown up. Then some people were sentenced to be hanged. Then she (brat-girl) inherits the house. Then it was over!

The dance music (presently) on Clubland ~ Freesat 514 ~ is way too slow. I need something exciting and fast like this:

CLUBLAND XTREME HARDCORE MEGAMIX 8 ~ CLUBLAND TV




Barbra Streisand. What a voice. She mightn't have been "pretty" in her prime but wow, was she beautifully sexy. Last night I put on Yentl. Tunes going round and round my head. Cannot get ANYTHING I want from her to put her: "embedding disabled by request".

So here's DJ Sammy "Heaven" Sweetzero remix

 

Hope y'all are having a good weekend!

Life is a Gift

I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH A BREAST CANCER specialist this Thursday at 9:45am. I nearly didn't pick up the phone from the clinic, thinking it was an annoying friend.

I am sorry about what I said yesterday, or the attitude behind it. I have been very ungrateful for my life. Talking about meeting God, when life itself is a miracle from God.

As for the rest of the ranting, I really don't know what the hell I want. I just know I don't want to be FORCED into any treatment against my will. I want my own life to be my own decision.

Apparently my swelling is visible through clothing. The lump itself feels flat, the shape of a very shallow pencil eraser. It's about 2cm or 2/3 of an inch long. I've been told by several people, including my mother, who's actually had breast cancer, that it's probably a cyst. Cysts hurt. Cancer doesn't (until the terminal stage and we all know about that.)

By the way I never mentioned this before because for weeks it just felt like a bruise. But when I knocked it the night before the doctor's appointment for my toe, I had a proper look and realized how swollen it actually is.

Re my other minor medical issues: the pus-ridden toenail has stopped pussing, still smells a bit of dustbins and has gone itchy ~ a sure sign of healing. I'm on flucloxacillin 250mg x4 daily.

My once crooked and inflexible broken finger has straightened up so well it barely looks any different to my other fingers now. It isn't stiff. I can type properly again.

I don't know how long it will be till I find out whether I'm at death's door and how far from that door I actually am.

I know if I do get diagnosed with cancer I will probably cry. I cried when the doctor told me I had schizophrenia and manic depression together and back then I was in what he succinctly called an "elevated mood" (ie ravingly manic).

I'm reading Enid Blyton's Famous Five. Her characters are obsessed with food and seem forever to be knocking back ginger beer.

My mood has improved considerably since last week. I'm not even that bothered about the prospect of surgery ~ just as long as they don't lop my nipple off!

Well I've got to go. I'm about to have four cheese tortelloni and broccoli with a mountain of grated Red Leicester.

Cancer Scare!

I HAVE A SWOLLEN lump just above my left nipple, which is really painful. It has been there for weeks and is getting bigger. And I seem to keep banging it all the time, which really hurts. My chest looks normal in the mirror, but if I look down it's noticably swollen on the left side. The (female) doctor had a good old grope then announced she is sending me off to a specialist. I didn't behave very grown up at all during this consultation. Couldn't stop smiling near-ecstatically the entire time. Then I said "I heard cancer is normally a hard lump" (this is soft-ish and feels like a loop, like some kind of atrophied veins or something though I hasten to add I have NOT been injecting there). But she said, "Not necessarily." Anyway, she's making me an appointment with a specialist. A breast cancer specialist, I assume. Apparently one case in a hundred of breast cancer does happen in MEN.

I was so excited last night I could not sleep. If I am dying I will have to write tons and tons of my little books to keep my family in money after I am gone. NO WAY am I having chemotherapy or radiotherapy. I will probably let them take the lump out, but that's it. If you think I'm the sort of person who posts how he wants to die one week then suddenly changes his mind when death becomes a real possibility, you really don't know me. I watch/listen to the religious channels on TV every day. And every night I get the Bible read out unedited in full on the TWR radio channel. I cannot wait to meet God. I don't want to live in this shitty world a day longer than absolutely necessary.

If anyone DARES try and force me into treatment against my will (which they theoretically could do by claiming I am mentally ill), I shall hire a lawyer and go to court over the issue. One thing God did bless me with was an eloquent mouth. And even if the judge rules against me I shall take up smoking in bed, cut open the drip bags and do everything possible to mess up their treatment.

If I've only got a short time to live, I'd better contrive as many novel-plots as I possibly can, so after I'm gone the publishers can hire someone else to turn them into books (like they did with Virginia Andrews). O yeah and I'd better write my will quick. If I don't write one, everything, including intellectual property rights, goes to my brother (as far as I understand), which I don't mind. But I wanted to make a more complicated will that would cut in more family members. I just hope they are hard-nosed enough to exploit my every literary creation for all it is worth. Storytelling might be an art, but publishing, movies, computer games and other spin-offs are business and I want them treated as such. If they sign any duff contracts after I am gone, for example selling film rights for a lump sum rather than taking a share of gross receipts, DVD sales etc (never net profits) AS WELL as a lump sum advance, then I really will turn in my grave (or my ashes pot).

So that's me. You all thought I'd die of an overdose and I'm probably dying of cancer! Keep smiling, I am. I want a roborovski hamster on my headstone.

XXXXXXX

PS I just read this back. I know it comes across a little weird. But I might be dying. What the hell else am I supposed to say?

The Depressing Post

FINALLY the shit arse methadone clinic I am forced to attend has allowed me to pick up my dose three times a week instead of every miserable day. The sheer drudgery of that empty routine was getting me down beyond words. HOWEVER, they are still insisting that when I come in to pick up, I have to drink that day's dose under supervision, which made me HIT THE ROOF when I was told about it. The entire point of taking methadone home is to be able to drink the dose in bed in the early hours, so that when you get up the dose is going good and strong. Otherwise you get up feeling crap and on top of that have to trudge down to whatever God-forsaken chemist you have been allocated (from a ridiculously tiny list) sweating, hot, cold, miserable. Wait for up to twenty minutes as old ladies are given advice that's plainly written on the side of their prescriptions etc etc. Then I have to sit in the public library for over an hour as the methadone very slowly takes effect and the sweats gradually diminish. If I don't get better soon, I'm taking out a formal complaint against this clinic, by far the worst I've ever been to.

Either that, or I'll go private. A friend of mine gave me the number of a private treatment centre that prescribes Subutex, injectable methadone and morphine sulphate pills as well as the usual ineffectual oral methadone. I'm too scared to change over to Subutex as last time I was sick beyond words during the change-over and barely sleeping at all a full two weeks afterwards.

I'm very much in two minds about whether or not to go into this detox unit. I've been in such places before. The dosing, scheduling and in fact every rule is in place for the convenience of the staff, not the patients. A usual detox involves reducing 5mg every 2 days, which is quite steep and even if I do take the nasty antipsychotic quetiapine (which I have given up on as I feel more ill on it than off it) there's a good chance that I will not sleep at all, for days on end. The only light at the end of that particular tunnel is that a continued lack of sleep might induce bipolar mania, which I'd really like to have in a detox unit. It would totally distract me from the horrific job in hand, that of coming off opiates and produce lots of fun fun fun, with a severely elevated mood and lots of hallucinations. The risk of course, is of being carted off from detox unit to mental hospital.

My book's going OK. I wrote 800 words yesterday and have been editing chapter one. I feel very little joy from this or anything else in life. Every second I am awake I feel gloomy, hopeless, irritable. I'm glad that I'm still sleeping a good 12 hours per day, so at least I have the horror of fewer waking hours to deal with.

I have decided to compose a living will, so that if anything ever goes seriously wrong with me, medically speaking, I have it in writing, signed and witnessed that I want NO LIFESAVING TREATMENT, only paliative care. Hopefully in the form of high-dose opiates. The way I see it, if I'm struck by a fatal illness, it's my sign that my time is up. I'm more fed up with life than you an possibly imagine. No amount of children's book writing will ever cure that. Neither will walks in the park, listening to nice music or any other of the well meaning but ineffectual suggestions I have collected over the years. Life after heroin is no life at all. It's not that I cannot replace heroin, because I find my writing just as absorbing. And there is no good heroin available to buy anywhere in or near London that I know of.

My time on heroin was the only time I ever felt at peace with myself. Now I am off it once more, I'm back at war. Hence the pressing need for a living will (because anyone deemed bipolar or otherwise mentally ill can be forced into lifesaving medical treatment against their will). What the doctors would fail to understand is that I still want to die whether I feel depressed or not. I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF LIFE AND WANT IT  OVER.

Still, I will not give up on my schemes to make money for my family after I am gone. And that's about all I have to say today. Take care everyone.