The Issue of "Issues"... Plus the Issue of Heroin...

SO I took the pharmacological de-icer and felt instantly better for it, but the depression crept back and now I feel almost as bad as yesterday ~ and yet I'm on the gear as well! So now two negatives. Although just about everything looks "negative" when scrutinized closely.

My drugs worker is really pissing me off. Every time I come in there saying I feel down he says everybody gets down. And that he feels crap every single day. Patronizing piece of shit. So I said, Well I don't feel down all the time; sometimes I feel just perfect. A-OK. A1. And he had no answer for that one.

The other thing that annoys me is when drug worker type people try and get all psychological about it, as if I'm going to tell them what "issues" lie behind my negative mood. Whatever "issues" they may be, they must surely be ones that make me feel absolutely fantastic the rest of the time, when I'm not depressed. Or else, they are at least only part-time issues.

When I'm feeling bad, I'm not depressed "about" any one thing; I'm depressed about everything.

I'm using the word "depression" but really that isn't how it feels. If I didn't know what "depression" was, I'm not sure I'd even think of myself as "depressed". I would say that I felt sick and miserable, worn out. Overcome by some mysterious and indistinct illness, an affliction of the soul... That my heart feels packed in ice. Perhaps I would say I feel this way because my chickens have come home to roost. All I am is a miserable junkie. But I do not believe that if and when I ever do get off the heroin and off the methadone completely I will ever feel OK. I strongly suspect that I'll feel exactly the same way I do now but I just won't be an active drug-addict any more. I'll be a miserable ex-junkie instead.

Remember that in late 2010 through the spring of 2011, when the heroin supply in Britain had dried up anyhow (there literally was nothing out there to score, apart from dodgy white and brown powders containing very little to no gear at all)... That was when I really lost it ~ with mania, depression and psychosis. All of which had been building up in me for years. I was never altogether surprised to have a sudden and intense manic episode, because I'd been experiencing flashes of it for years. And for even longer than that I'd had intermittent and transient symptoms of what I now know to be psychosis. But I'd just feel strange and disembodied and sometimes hear voices. But it was nothing strong enough to require treatment ~ or so I thought. The first "voices" I ever heard were so indistinct, I couldn't even tell what they were saying: if I'd told a psychiatrist about this, I thought I'd have been laughed out of his office. It was only upon googling the subject that I discovered it starts for lots of people that way.

In my heart I feel lied to. By every well-meaning and probably genuine person who has ever tried to tell me that if I'd only kick the drugs everything would somehow be OK. It just never spun out that way. Example: I gave up crack ages ago. Crack used to sometimes make me feel intensely paranoid. But I've been far, far more paranoid months after ever touching the stuff than I ever was "on" it. The same can be said about depression and drink. I haven't touched drink in weeks. And yet this week I felt more depressed than in a very long time.

Interestingly, when I told the psychiatrist that drink actually made me feel better in depression and yet did next to nothing at all when my mood was already "elevated" he accepted this and didn't try to contradict me. You have to bear in mind that by this point I'd already reduced from the equivalent of more than a bottle of spirits a day, down to three to four double vodkas, spaced over twenty-four hours. So he said I was just "psychologically addicted to alchol". 

The effects of drink and drugs have become so unreliable ~ I never know how body and brain are going to react that I'm starting to feel there's just no point in taking any of them. Not just because they're "bad" but because they just don't work. Drink did used to make me feel better. But more recently it's only made me feel more run down and equally depressed. Heroin does something weird to my mood and I'm not even sure quite what. But common sense tells me that with my moods as unstable as they are, it's probably best to take nothing at all that's going to interfere with them.

Heroin, lovely heroin all-healing, all-destroying heroin; it's the last thing left and I just cannot drop it. I wish to God that I could, but I can't.

So I do not know what to do...


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Not an original choice but what the hell

THE VERVE: THE DRUGS DON'T WORK...
This "anthem of a generation" wasn't originally about addiction, but about a person who is terminally ill... "hanging on for dear life," literally...



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Not a Good Mood

I HAVE BEEN not in a good mood all weekend. Every time something stresses me (and doing anything at all, or even thinking of, or worse, trying to think out something in stages does my head in) ~~ I flip my lid. And if someone else happens to be there I start yelling at them.

Today I am trying to stay calm. My druggieworker is not in. Duty fobbed me off by saying my script was not printed, said I couldn't make an appointment to see my own worker tomorrow but instead should phone first thing and ask for one then. I am trying not to be blazingly annoyed about this. I'm kind of starting to feel bad about everything but I'm not that depressed. I can still put on a Great Big "I'm OK" Act. So that's good:... ¿isn't it?

This morning I ended up googling "depression". I mean: what am I possibly going to find of any use over the internet except that exceptionally irritating quoted-to-death list of DSM Diagnostic Criteria that are no help whatever to anyone who has been depressed for more than a few weeks. The depressive state very quickly begins to feel normal and the "sufferer" will start to believe that their low mood is a justifiable reaction to a life of failure and in no way an illness of any kind. Even if they have been depressed before. Or had previous bipolar episodes. When I was at the lowest I've ever been I remember claiming not to be suffering; and yet I felt so bad that even the memory of my thoughts and feelings that week (and it was only about a week) left me traumatized for months.

I gave up drinking for about four days(?)~ or so until yesterday, when I decided to test it with one can of strawberry cyder (4% ABV: 2 alcoholic units) and a one-pint can of Skol, which I found unopened on the trek back home (3% ABV: 1.7 alcoholic units). I felt nothing, partly because I was so averse to the taste of beer it took over an hour to sup it. I used to get a yen for cold beer on hot summer afternoons. But this hasn't happened for years. I detest the taste of alchol and don't like the feeling it gives me, which nowadays seems to be a fatigued and heavy-limbed state with mild drowsiness. No "high" of any kind. Getting a "high" from alcohol, which is a cocaine-like feeling I had never experienced until last year and nothing at all like feeling "drunk", when I was already manic, is most likely a warning that (hypo-)mania is crouched in hiding around a very close corner. Or that I'm (hypo-)manic already. A small amount of alcohol was enough to set this off, and it never gave me the craving for more, because twice the drink never makes me feel twice as good. Simple law of the jungle, that one. And another reason why I don't think my drinking, which began as a side-order to accompany heroin, has ever rendered me a true dipsomaniac. I'm not sure alcohol has ever intensified feelings of depression, but when I do feel depressed, drink usually seems to do very little. Or nothing at all. I don't like it. Don't need it. And want to live a life without it... Mint n Lime is much nicer. Except the shop has already run out because I've bought every single carton from their fridge. So I tried Lemon and Lime, which was right next to it. And it's absolutely gross: with the artificial citrus flavour you got in the cheap 1980s-version of granulated "lemon tea".

I wanted to get rid of the following paragraph but may as well keep it in. Hey maybe somebody, somewhere will get a really good laugh out of it.

Yesterday I nearly blew my top because the ridiculous voice over on a tellyprog called "Planet Earth Live: A Lion's Tale". It was patently NOT live and if you tried to film wild lions live you would probably get lots of shots of golden furry ears poking out above distant tufts of grass, so I'm thinking of writing a sarcastic letter to Points of View over that one. And the voice-over overdramatized everything: "hyenas are the NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL; if this hunt is not successful, mother and baby may STARVE TO DEATH" it's a bit like giving a running commentary on a person trying to catch a train saying ONE TRIP, ONE SLIP OFF THIS PLATFORM and a HIGH SPEED TRAIN may SLICE HIM IN HALF!!! Then I took issue over the phrase "mortal enemy". Because it is "too Latin" and I thought "deadly foe" sounded better. I just checked the etymology of my own expression and sure enough it is Anglo-Saxon. Yeah yeah yeah and I should probably get a life yeah yeah there is nothing else to write about except that I'm freezing cold too much of the time and I have no idea why (being on methadone might well have something to do with it.) I wish I could think something else to post but I can't, so I'm going now. Bye.

Well that's about all. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered posting today. Does anything at all that I say here mean anything to anyone? Help anyone? Amuse anyone? Even ring true to anyone? I'm not so sure it does. Well I've got to go. I said I would come down that mental unit again and that place is starting to piss me off. One nurse in particular, and it has to be the one who opens the locked door for me, has a towering attitude problem. The other day she said "If want to leave now please hurry up. I'm supposed to be doing a one to one and..." blah blah blah. I should have told her if she's doing one-to-one care on somebody she shouldn't be going near the door anyway. Perhaps another nurse should get off her great fat arse and leave that goldfish bowl of a nurses' station they like to hide out in. Avoiding doing anything that might fulfil the definition of "work". I think a lot of them choose mental nursing over physical because they think it's easier. But when your patients are mobile plus raving mad, nothing is ever easy. Except, as I say, hiding in the nurses' station, avoiding them...

I have a doctor's appointment first thing on Wednesday. Maybe I'll actually tell her how I really feel, instead of putting on my big "I'm fine" act. Not that there's anything she can do except propose changing the medication to olanzapine (Zyprexa) which I don't want. Particularly as the stuff is notorious for causing the unfortunate patient to balloon out with weight gain. She could try and get me an appointment with a shrink, but I doubt it. Last time I ended up in General Psychiatric Services I saw a new doctor every single time. Not even a proper psychiatrist, but a doctor-in-training only there to work off their compulsory stint in a psychiatric clinic so that when they do get out of that place they can turn their back and never work with mental patients again.



Illustrated: horrible granulated "lemon" tea; the DSM IV etc., books for psychiatrists quoted ad nauseum in websites designed for patients; Fizz strawberry cyder, a nonexistent nurses' station in a nonexistent hospital (this is supposed to be the nuthouse in the Bronx, New York, but somehow I doubt any mental unit anywhere looks quite that shiny and clean... an ad for would-be psychiatrists on the issue of street drugs. We used to have a notorious doctor in this area who loathed druggies and routinely discharged them from hospital and/or chucked them off his list. There is no question that he contributed to my friend's death by treating her so badly last time she was on his ward that she refused ever to return. Then was found dead, having overdosed on every bit of medication she could get her hands on...

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MUSIC
Not at all in the mood for this, but what the hell...






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Proving Where I Am To Get Away From The Middle Of Nowhere ...

IT'S 4:30 in the afternoon and I'm tired to the point of "somnolence" ~ shutting my eyes to microsleep at tireless inconvenient junctures.

I went to bed so extremely late last night, I wouldn't look at the time so's not to find the lateness of the hour horrendous enough to cause sleep to flee even further from me. Being as I'd set my alarms from 8am to 8:30 in order to get to my chemists to drink my dose in good time to get to the methadone clinic ~ soon to be my ex-clinic, though I won't believe that until I've picked up my first dose from the pharmacy at the end of my new road. Instead of the old one two bus rides and 40 minutes from my home.

So I had little more than four hours' brainfrazzled rest last night. Seemingly propped up in bed, head not even in contact with the pillow, eyes wide open!

On Thursday 28th I've a doctor's appointment down the new druggieclinic, which is the place I always went for years and years, the place where I feel most at home. The place that really helped me out when I was having a florid mental breakdown less than 18 months ago. The other clinic don't even offer psychiatric support, so if I'd been there I'd never have got to see a doctor, let alone got medication and a diagnosis all under the same roof my methadone scripts were dished out.

My one Issue of Stress: I am required to have a GP in this London borough in order to sign up officially with their methadone service. Getting a GP in London is not always easy as many are so deluged by immigrants their lists are permanently full.

To get any GP, it's necessary to present two proofs of address. I don't even have one, considering my landlord hasn't even given me a new tenancy agreement, saying the new one is simply an extention of the old. Housing Benefit will not accept that fob-off, so I rang my housing manager, who's arranged for me to sign new paperwork on Thursday morning.

I rang the DSS this morning to change my details on their system. They've agreed to send me a proof of benefit. So hopfully by the end of the week I'll have enough paperwork to attain this elusive GP. The idea that I could be stuck at the old methadone clinic for weeks on end purely because I can't prove where I happen to live is just unthinkable ~ but it could happen. And it's the sort of thing that would happen to me if I didn't get my arse in gear and start letter-collecting!

I've been Mr Practicality today. Running so many washloads through my new Personal Washing Machine that the washing powder's all gone. The pound shop at the end of my road sold me washing liquid, conditioner and about fifty clothes pegs in plastic and wood for under £5. I live in a bargainacious area ...

My schizoaffective friend Pinky was released from hospital this afternoon. She's back at home with the most ginormous flatscreen TV I've ever seen in such a pokey room... Of course she was watching the Pick TV show where angry Chinese people are fined for attemptedly lugging petrol tanker loads of deathwatch beetle-crawling traditional Asian vegetables in their handluggage through Sydney international airport and can't understand why there's a camera crew in their face and they're being punished ... Finally Pinky got her Personal Itching salve last night. She says her private parts are calming down nicely ...

My Mum wants to meet me today but hasn't got back confirming the time. She wanted to give me her "thank you for your enquiry" letterheaded proof of address in person. In fact, just about everyone I know in possession of headed paper, including the old druggieclinic, is writing to my new address thanking me for enquiring about their business or charity or for taking their methadone... or whatever it is they do. So when the time does come to demonstrate I've left the London Borough of Crudsville for once and for all, I'll be in possession of a petroltanker full of correspondence to prove it.

Well I don't know if Mumzy is going to get back to me; I left a message over an hour ago. When I do go home I know I'm going to hit unconsciousness the second my bum contacts my sofa ...


Illustrated: the laundry liquid I purchased for £1.29; a "proof of address" card (we don't get them here); men apparently get personal itching too; a tube of soothing "intimate gel" ...