A Writer's Thoughts in the Summertime...

IT'S A CHARMING SUMMER'S DAY here in London. I've heard  London is the place to be now, for the international super-rich. The reason? (Apart from the British government's lame tax regime for non-domiciled residents?...) The mild climate. Yes! The precise thing we Brits profess to hate so much ~ and emigrate to Spain to avoid is now our USP for billionaire aliens!So people from India, China, Arabia etc come here for the far far more tolerable summers (much milder than New York, or Paris even). Having said that, on the hottest days, London can get unbearably muggy and really tense and close and horrible.

I had a silkwood shower this afternoon, so I'm supposedly clean. But I'm sweating like a swine again. I'm dying to reduce my methadone down from the current 30mg dose. I'm also giving up the other stuff (again). Yes that horrible crap called heroin is still in my life, to my eternal shame. I really do feel shamed to be a heroin user, heroin addict, whatever you want to call it. And I do realize just how lame it sounds to say "I don't take drugs any more. Oh ~ except heroin. Oh no! I don't take drugs, only heroin." How thoroughly pathetic.

I've been very busy, not sleeping and writing intellectual novels. Well, I've written 1¾ stories. I like to call them novels. I've got to get my computer fixed to type them up properly, so I can send them off. I was going to self-publish, but now I'm thinking of at least trying a "normal" publisher first, y'know. See if they offer any money for it. Because I'm really really broke. Hey wouldn't it be exciting if a real publisher did take me on as their next big thing.

Oh and for the person, I can't recall exactly who you were, who told me I was delusional and that I couldn't even write anyway ~ you haven't even READ my writing. Judging somebody's prose fiction by what they put in a blog is like trying to assess somebody's singing voice by listening to them speaking. I would say my strong points as a novelist are my characters and their dialogue, also I write a "classic", slightly posh style of prose which I hope would set me apart from the modern "trendy" type of writer. None of this will ever come across here in my blog, because my blog is only ever a first draft dashed off quickly. Often I don't even read through what I've put before clicking "publish". So no, you really CAN'T judge a person's novels by their blogging. Example: Jeffrey Archer is a multi-million selling novelist, but his blogging prose is unremarkable. In fact, the best writers usually do write rather pedestrian prose. I far prefer this to the "aren't I witty/aren't I clever" "literary" type writing, which might be good in short extracts, but is wearying in the extreme when you have to tackle an entire book of it. I only ever read "commercial" fiction, I can't handle modern "literary" novels ~ I find them too pretentious by far! 

Years and years ago I did a course at uni for one semester entitled "writing a novel" ~ for which we all had to submit a long short story. My teacher, who was a Booker-nominated novelist, said to me she particularly liked my work for my memorable characters and striking use of language ~ so there you go. I hope that augurs well for my career as a "famous writer"..!

Anyway I must go. Hope you're all enjoying the good weather... if the weather IS good where you are. Beverly Babe you've gone and put your blog on invited readers only and I haven't got an invite. But I'm sending you Sorbitol-flavour kisses here. Be careful; if you eat too much of it, Sorbitol can give really severe diarrhoea-y runs! (I take sorbitol-based methadone, so I should know!)

LINKS:
PEDESTRIAN PROSE by Bestselling Writers...
Their blogs
Danielle Steel
John Grisham
Jackie Collins
Barbara Taylor Bradford
Stephen King
J K Rowling

Illustrated: various of my favourite Famous Five books in Continental languages...

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

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

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.)

Battle of the Clinics

MY (GP) DOCTOR  really did my head in this morning. Questioning me on and on about schizophrenia and did I really think I had it. Well being as I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS I can't know, can I? As for his other question "what could a psychiatrist do for me?" I answered "don't know" to that one too. As in my experience they do F-All.

Bloody hell I get so pissed off when people assume the depressed below-par me is the "real" one. This is what Dr Bastard seemed to do. Oh but if I'm even slightly Elevated then it absolutely has to be drugs or the spark-off point into real "Mania". The real me is the "hypomanic" me. That is the word Binky uses. That's what, as far as I know, the drs also say. I've already been asked by medical personnel when I was completely stone-cold normal whether I was "hypo" and I said NO. Because I WAS NOT. So what I believe and what drs believe appear to be at complete divergence. As for what is the real me, it's absolutely the "hypomanic" one. I know that means I'm disinhibited, indiscreet and prone to making jokes in poor taste. But that is far more me than the white mouse depressed boring suicidal version.

He also tricked me into admitting I wanted to kill myself and that I definitely thought I was more likely to die from suicide than any other way. Which I am afraid I do.

So then I go down the OTHER clinic (this time the druggie one), bump into my worker who says I don't look OK at all. So I go from seeming completely OK to not at all OK in the space of an hour.

Then, somehow, I got into talking about how terrible I feel. Completely druggie fuckup of a person I am. Using gear again and again and again. My heroin addict standards it's not very much. But it's still too much. Any gear is too much gear. I so much wish I was able to live without it.

As for all this mental shit and what is normal. Well that is the crux of exactly what does my head in. I believe in psychiatry about as much as I believe in Roman Catholicism. I happened to be watching a fascinating discussion on the Roman Catholic universe last night on a channel named Erde und Mensch. About "no human being being holy" (so why is the Pope titled "His Holiness" and "The Holy Father"..?) So while I understand Christmas and why people do it, I don't "believe". Likewise I don't believe in schizoaffective disorder. Or bipolar disorder. And really not inasmuch as they pertain to me.

I did reread the famous memoir An Unquiet Mind at one point and it's weird how the author Kay Redfield Jamison, during her time as a raving manic-depressive, came up with numerous reasons/excuses not to take lithium. But never one towards what I think: ... well maybe you feel that way because you're MEANT to feel that way. Maybe it's just natural and life really is that shit. She said that never even in her darkest hours, though she longed for death, did she regret ever having been born. Well I frequently do wish I had never been born. When I see such evil in the world, I wish I had never been born to know about such horror. I cannot take it in or comprehend it.

And as for suicide. I'm in absolutely no doubt that the present government would prefer me dead because I would save them money money, NHS money, other money. Money money. Better off dead. Absolutely.

ABSOLUTELY TRUE.

I can't believe I am posting this CRAP. Oh who cares. What else is there to post..??

Anyway: to my last post:~~

Are there really 300 language groups in London against "only 200" in New York..? I don't know. How could anyone know. Far as I know London is actually MORE of an international air-hub than New York, being more strategically located. I really don't know if there are more foreign people in one city or another.

Ebooks. Got no idea which one to buy. I'm going to look into that one right now...

What was I babbling on about here..? Can't remember. O well gotta go.

I think my methadone's going up AGAIN by the way.....kkhhhkhhhhhhhh ☹

Oh by the way I've started writing poetry. I've decided to become a great poet. Only written four lines, over 2 pages of scribblings, that seemed any good but ho-hum it's a start...

Ukh I sound like I'm all over the place. Pffffffff.... whatever.

O, and I AM taking the motherfcking medication. Whatever good that's supposed to do me... 

5:53pm THIS IS A REAL MESS OF A POST. IT doesn't explain my flow of thought which was to do with SOMEBODY ELSE ~ 2 somebody elses who already have killed themselves. And the horrendous aftermath of THAT. which is what i was talking to my druggieworker about as people drifted in and out...I am NOT DRUNK I have not taken any illicit drugs for 24 hours. And that's another thing: people always seem to see the On Heroin Me as MORE TOGETHER!!!!! would you BELIEVE THAT!!

Mired in Melancholia

I HAVEN'T posted because I have been a bit depressed. Veering into quite a lot depressed. My new flat is half redecorated. Paint spots everywhere. Including on my clothes. The new"bright yellow" hallway (brightest yellow out of the eight popular colours offered by the council's Free Paint Service) looks very homely with the hall light on. (I hardly ever turn it on: too stingy about power.)

A bloke came round today and gave a new lock to my balcony door. Which is just as well, as it was unlocked with no key. And he locked my bathroom window, which had also been unlocked with no key, making me feel very insecure. Aparently it's just a standard key number I need. Though I've no idea what number that was... I was so ashamed about the state of my place. It was in terrible condition already. I really have to fix things up. I have been feeling too lousy to bother doing anything. A kind of "depressed" state I don't want to think of as "clinical depression". When I have somebody to talk to I don't feel anythign like as gloomy. But I'm still very irritable and moody. That makes me think the so-called "depression" wasn't real to start with. I don't know. I just feel very, very moody, negative, and easily annoyed.

I've been reading a postgraduate medicine book bought for £1 from a charity shop. All the body's vital functions are included: heart, gastrointestinal system, skin, kidneys, liver and pancreas, brain and nervous system... and I think that's it. (No paediatrics, no ears-nose-throat, no bones, no section on general practice...) But in brain diseases it does mention no fewer than four psychiatric conditions believed, in 1971, to manifest as low mood: "reactive depression, endogenous depression, manic-depressive psychosis and involutional melancholia". Reactive depression was also known as "neurotic depression"; endogenous depression was "psychotic depression"; my old self-help book on the subject listed the two conditions in entirely separate chapters (psychotic depression lumped together with manic-depressive psychosis). I never could work out which type of depression I supposedly suffered from but always assumed I was far more neurotic than psychotic. Which would mean I have neurotic depression alternating with psychotic mania ~ a real psychiatric conundrum! Involutional melancholia, by the way, just means extreme agitated pschotic depression in the middle-aged and elderly. An absolutely horrible condition.

Back to this postgraduate medical manual and my favourite diseases are ulcerative colitis and Crohn's. I was window-shopping for conditions, wondering which speciality, as a doctor, I'd go for. I'd always assumed neurology was most interesting, but in actuality there's probably nothing more satisfying than excising a full yard or so of pussing, ulcerated bloody-diarrhoea-producing bowel. My Australian cousin, who has Crohn's, had more than a metre of her large intestine removed. I had a good flick through dermatology for abscesses and burns but neither is featured! Most junkies I know love a good pus-ridden abscess to squeeze out ~ specially when it's on someone else!

Talking about addiction, I've just come out of a really good anti-drug seminar at the clinic. I needed to go: I have not been coping well. Without gear I am feeling extremely low and suicidal. I can't believe I'm taking heroin just to give me some will to go on. But I am. The heroin is no symptomatic cure. (On certain occasions in the past, I have taken heroin while feeling depressed and my low mood has vanished entirely all day and all night, only reappearing upon awakening the next morning.)  If I hadn't done any gear today then I wouldn't have bothered with that drugs meeting (yes very paradoxical I know but that's what full-blown addiction IS: a state where one is unable to function without one's drugs). Also, without heroin I wouldn't be writing this now. The heroin is no cure... I just feel noticably better on it than off it, but the misery lives on in every pore. A visceral sense of hopelessness and irritation. Last week I was feeling good enough to paint my house; this week I just cannot be bothered. I try playing games on my new phone. But they're not much of a distraction and most of the time they just irritate the hell out of me. I have always wanted to postpone my death until after I get over my opiate addiction. Lately, however, I've been telling myself not to bother waiting, to just do it now.

But that was yesterday, in the shadowy depths of the Valley of No Drugs. Now I'm back on my drug of choice yesterday's thinking seems mood-twisted.

I keep wondering, should I even take methadone, if it's making me feel this bad..? For all I know, all my mental problems could be down to methadone. Strange coincidence that the VERY DAY (in late 2010) that  I took to relying on methadone alone was the SAME DAY I plunged headlong into schizoaffective manic-depressive psychosis!

O I don't know. I don't know what to make of anything now...

I know I shouldn't be talking like this, but this is the truth and isn't my blog meant to tell the truth? If I don't say this then I don't know what to say at all...

Illustrated: depressed and hypomanic brains, ulcerated colon (so glad I haven't got that disease mental illness is so much easier to cope with); syringe on drity hands from The Last Days of Chinese Drug Addict Wo Guilin ~ very depressive text-and-photo-montage, if you care to click HERE.

Silly American Drugs Films

CAT TRIPPING ON LSD

I don't exactly approve of animal drug experiments but...

This is an American propoganda film about their brilliant military, showing a cat tripping on some psychedelic agent (probably acid).

Oh, and while we're at it, for anyone who's interested, here's the full cut of that famously ridiculous (1938) American anti-marijuana propoganda film...

REEFER MADNESS

 

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:

Off My Tits on Tea!

I'M SUPPOSED to be keeping a diary of my mood. My mood is intermittently "up". Yesterday I had a single cup of Typhoo tea (I state the brand, in case it comes to light that a case of mass tea-spiking, with cocaine and amphetamines has occurred, because I certainly felt like I was speeding) I was high. Two cups and I was "speeding off my tits". I only kept drinking the tea because (1) I really like tea (2) I really like being high (I only avoid caffeine like the plague when I'm depressed because then, if it does anything at all, it's likely to make me feel horribly anxious and because I consider morbid anxiety to be the worst of all mental conditions, no way in hell will I go near caffeine then!... Anyway by two a.m. I'd had about five cups of tea (spread over the course of the day) and I really couldn't sleep. I went to bed for two minutes, realized sleep was impossible and so get up and spent the rest of the night watching a DVD that I couldn't even remember buying called Against the Wall, about a prison riot and reading the NA Big Book. I started at the decaffeinated coffee but frankly it tastes horrible so I gave that up and went back to bed around six a.m. and slept. But I was up by 11:30 freezing my arse off (literally).

Oh by the way does anyone else wake up repeatedly in the night to see swarms of flies at the curtains? On closer inspection these "flies" turn out to be a swarm of miniature books (hardbacks) flapping their covers merrily to stay aloft! I'm not kidding? Why does this happen to me? Is it because I'm not taking my medication? (I was depressed last week and wanted to induce a mood switch, so intuition told me that drastically reducing the dosage might achieve this and WOW I was right!) Does anyone out there actually think I should be taking psyche meds? Because a lot of people seem to think that I shouldn't. I don't mind hearing voices. I like it. It's like free entertainment beamed direct to the mind. As for visual hallucinations ~ they're always a plus. I mean, think of all those kids spending their hard-earned money on strange pills and trips ~~ and yet I get the effects for free! (Similar efffects, not exactly the same as any drug.)

Well I'm NOT hypomanic. Because ever since getting up I've felt stone-cold "normal". The high mood is intermittent. So har har har to my doctors if you're reading this I'm not mentally ill! (Again.)

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Here's a really good tune:

WATERGATE: HEART OF ASIA

Illustrated: my books fly facing the other way up...

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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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