I want a dog/I want to die (I don't want to die really)

I WANT A DOGgie. Where I live you're only allowed one dog or one cat (not one of each). Really I wanted two dogs. One little and cute, the other large, scary and vicious-acting (ie a bodyguard-cum-guard-dog). The only type of dog that combines both characteristics is the Japanese akita breed. Fair enough, they're not little, (they're the size of a German shepherd) but they are thee cutest type of dog I have ever seen.

About nine months ago, late at night, somebody knocked on my front door and a rough-sounding street-gang-type character said to me, through the reinforced glass (I now know it is reinforced, because of what happened next) they said is somebody called J there because they're looking for a bag of weed.

The drug-reference from a person I had never met before at my own front door really put my back up so I said no there is no J here and went away.

Next thing I hear a loud banging and I can clearly see through the security glass that a whole mob of scum are trying to break into my flat. I was completely terrified and was in no doubt that if they had got in they would have smashed my head in. They would also have quickly discovered no such "J" lived in my flat, but would have tried to rob me nonetheless.

This is what happens, you see, at crackhouses. And I'm pretty sure that before I took it my flat was a drug-house of some type. I know this by the string of dodgy and rough people and bailiffs who turned up in succession in the first few weeks I was living there.

So anyway now, late in the night, I can't sleep because I'm terrified that somebody will try and axe their way in again. So I think I've got posttraumatic stress disorder (I'm joking, I don't really think that). But I am traumatized and I need a very cute and savage guard dog so only an akita will do

Apart from that I am OK. I'm not horribly depressed any more. (Famous last words, coming from me.)

Last summer two people started beating me up here saying I was a grandiose drug addict (for saying that I wanted to speak 20 langauges fluently), that drug addicts are grandiose. Oh and that I felt I was "terminally unique" and that my depression was somehow different from everybody else's.

First thing: drug addicts are NOT grandiose. At least I've never met a grandiose one. They usually have very poor self-esteem and are the very opposite of grandiose. I have only ever felt gradiose during periods of "elevated mood~" (as the drs called them). I have had dealings with many a professional during these periods and nobody has ever thought I was on drugs, not even when I was in psychotic mania and dragged into the mental hospital, clear drug-screen card in hand.

The reason drs can distinguish drug highs from manic ones is that basically, when addicts are so out of it on drugs that they lose the plot they do NOT behave the way I do when I've been "elevated" in mood. Ie they're not outgoing, not chatty, don't laugh a lot. They tend to be paranoid, irritable etc. I know it because I've seen it enough times. (I used to live in a crackhouse.) It came back to me the other day though, after some of the remarks posted here over the years ~ I was completely out of it in a psychotic state and yet the hospital staff seemed to know at a glance that I was not on any drugs at all. (And methadone doesn't really "count" in their eyes; all it does to heroin addicts is stop them launching into withdrawal. Methadone isn't a "high" of any kind ~ which is why the addicts hate it so much!) The only drugs they asked about me being on in hospital were lithium and antipsychotics. That's because I had very florid symptoms of the psychotic condition known as mania,  (the manic phase of bipolar illness).

I had suspected I'd been having bipolar symptoms for years, but discounted them on account of my simultaneous drug-taking. But the weird psychological symptoms that later got diagnosed as "schizoaffective disorder" do predate my heroin period by quite a few years. In fact I went about four years in my early 20s not taking any drugs at all. When I moved to London I didn't know any drug dealers here and wasn't interested in drugs. So how I became a heroin addict is... ukh. A ridiculous story that I don't want to go into now. Suffice it to say that in certain ways I am the very antithesis of the gutter junkie I subsequently became!

I don't know why I'm talking about this issue again... Oh yes I do. Because my friend Binky keeps laughing and telling me I'm mad. She says she thinks I've got schizophrenia. I say why do you say that? And she says because I say and do weird things. She has spent many years in mental asylums, so she knows the signs. Sometimes I think she's only saying these things to weird me out... Does she really think I'm schizo? But she says she does. She says I know I am... blah blah. But I don't know. Do I know that I know? I wish I could say I don't care either but I obviously do care, otherwise I wouldn't be posting on the issue yet again!

I get weird symptoms, they wax and wane, but they always come back again and I'm claiming benefits on the back of being "mentally ill" (you can't claim for being a drug addict!) My family don't want to think it's real, but everyone who knows me and sees me day-to-day does seem to think it's real (I don't know why though). When I really went mad a few years ago it was immediately apparent that people thought I was completely crazy. It was written all over their faces and I don't even know what I was doing. Far as I knew, I was acting completely normally! And yet they all thought I was raving mad! I only thought I was "mentally ill" because I found it so difficult doing practical things: eg getting self, money, keys, phone, etc all assembled together in order to go out. One day I had to wash my clothes in the laundrette on the corner and it took literally five hours to get myself ready to go out. Literally all day. That is why I thought I was "ill". Plus I knew that drs seemed to believe hearing voices was a sign of madness. I didn't think I was mad because I hear voices. But I certainly knew drs saw it that way! The only reason I admitted what was going on was that I was tired of seeing different professionals and different people, all of whom seemed to have entirely different viewpoints on what was going on with me, because they all saw me in different contexts. And the problems I was having with day-to-day life, dealing with practical things like paying bills, organizing paperwork etc, were getting ever-worse. Then I found out, after being given a horrible label I didn't want, that such difficulties are actually hallmark signs of that type of illness.

Ukh, it's so miserable thinking about this, but I have nobody to talk about it with ~ hence this post here. Binky knows all about mental illness, but her viewpoint is "you know you are mentally ill why don't you just accept it". But I don't walk around thinking "oh I feel really schizo-affective today". I only ever "feel" schizo-affective in the context of form-filling, when they ask about my difficulties and I know that, in doctorly eyes at least, schizoaffective disorder does explain them. (Drug addicion doesn't.) Bear in mind, I know loads of drug addicts. At some point a few years ago I looked around myself and thought "how come my life is in such a mess and nobody else's is?" The drug addicts I've known have always functioned pretty well. I mean, a lot of them functioned well enough to fund £80 a day ($133.60) heroin and crack habits. I gave up begging on the streets years ago, so my habit was much smaller than theirs.

The methadone clinic used to imply that if I would only stop using heroin and stick to the methadone my problems would magically disappear. Now they take an exact opposite tack, saying methadone isn't meant to cure mental problems, it's just a small step etc etc etc. In other words they lied through their teeth for years on end and now they wriggle out of it on the back of a psychiatric diagnosis If they'd ever listened to me ( or even asked me) they'd have known the reason I gravitated to heroin in the first place was that I wasn't feeling OK, wasn't doing OK was NOT OK. It never has just been a question of me just dropping the drug and things would magically be all right. They never were all right. I never had anything to go back to. Because I wasn't OK and wasn't well. I don't think I'll ever be truly well or OK, not in this lifetime. My resolution is that however messed up my life is going to be in the future, it can bloody well be like that without my being addicted to drugs into the bargain!

I was reading my Michael Jackson book, about him and Elizabeth Taylor being on drugs off drugs on again off again. Opiate painkillers we're talking here. Exactly the same drug-family of choice as my own. I thought ukh is that really what it's like? Will I never be free? I'd rather be dead than on drugs for ever. I'm the only person I know who really seems to want to come off heroin and methadone and be dependent on nothing for the rest of my life. I'm determined to do it. I just want to get OFF this methadone. Then if I do go back on heroin at least I can deliberately overdose and die. The way my tolerance lies at the moment I've not a snowball's chance in hell of accidentally overdosing and dying. I really wish I would die in my sleep because at least that means I wouldn't have to put the work in of learning to live life on life's terms, as they like to say at AA and NA).

My ambition always used to be to detox off the methadone and then kill myself so that I could be drug-free into eternity. The best means of suicide would be a deliberate heroin overdose, because a Muslim outside the library told me that if you commit suicide you will spend eternity in hell committing the same act over and over for ever and ever...  (Meaning I could then spend eternity shooting up heroin.) I really really do want to be drug-free, but I don't know how I can live like that. I have never lived like that before. What I had before wasn't a life, it was just an existence. I never was OK until heroin. The only thing that has ever made me feel OK, apart from heroin, was madness! Doesn't say much about life, does it.

Ukh how did I get on this self-indulgent negative current again. Well that's what I was thinking so that's what I'm posting. Sorry.

JOAN COLLINS IN BENIDORM
Benidorm is a vulgar area of Spain where only Northerners go



PET SHOP BOYS "I WANT A DOG"


OLD TRANCE ANTHEMS

It's OFFICIAL: I'm a "LUNATIC"...

I HAVE LONG BEEN TOLD, by various readers of my blog, that MY MOOD APPEARED TO CYCLE IN TIME WITH THE MOON... Yet for some reason I seemed never to take this seriously. Perhaps it was because, usually, me and the moon did not make an EXACT MATCH... just a close one. And because I like to think of myself as highly rational and sensible and not liable to believe in old wives' tales, I didn't believe in this one either.

Except that for the past THREE MONTHS or so, I have glanced out of the window, whilst feeling uncannily restless in the middle of the night, and seen FULL MOON floating up there. And when the moon isn't precisely FULL, it's always WANING. Which matches the "lunacy" theory even more.

Because it's as if something inside me has been waxing along with the waxing moon. And though the moon turns a corner and starts to wane, I carry on waxing, so the restlessness or "mania" breaks through while the moon is waning... Hmmm.

Then I looked back to the most severe mania of my life. This broke out on Wednesday 17th January 2011. WHICH WAS THE EXACT FULL MOON!

That was the day I ended up in a mental hospital, having turned up at a dual diagnosis meeting in a floridly manic, psychotic state. Hearing things, seeing things. My head in utter cognitive dissaray. And from that day forth, it only got worse...

ISN'T THAT WEIRD..?

Yesterday I felt so terrible, that having done everything I had to (and long string of chores for Binky. Well, actually, one single thing. Which involved going up and down. And up and down. And up and down. The same fucking head-destroying high road. All morning. So I got home in a huge strop and took some drugs and passed out, waking up after 9pm. Then I slept again. All through the night. Getting up at 11 this morning.

And I'm writing a letter to my GP, saying "our relationship is not working. You do not seem to understand me at all. THIS is how it is. I could NEVER TELL YOU THIS with my mouth. So believe me. Because I cannot handle it when you try and challenge me. I'm dealing with things I don't want to be real. Then you tell me you don't think it's real. Which leaves me in utter confusion. I cannot work with a doctor who is not on the same page. Absolutely impossible for me.... I don't know.

Well anyway I just wanted to say all this. Now I have to go. It's nearly 4pm and I have to get home. Take care everybody... ;-)

PS: WHAT IS IT about the FULL MOON that does affect mood? Presently, researchers appear to be obsessed by some connexion with the light of the moon and elevated moods. But surely in this day and age of artificial lighting, the moon will make very little difference...? Personally I think it's MAGNETIC...

The Premiere is Over (Life Is Just Beginning)

HELLO PEOPLE. I'm still around. Still trying NOT to take Nasty 'Eroin. It's all nasty nowadays. So piss weak you're paying for nothing and I've regretted it every time. I feel no different off it than on it. So I might as well stay off it, I keep telling myself. I'm off it now. And I thoroughly intend to stay that way!

My head is full of such marvellous creative ideas that I'm more dissatisfied by my Actual Life ~ As It Actually Is ~ than ever before.

I've decided the best thing I can do is to put into operation a certain long-cherished idea for a kiddies' book. Then if some publisher takes it, and I write a few more, I might HOPEFULLY get enough dosh behind me to actually be able to launch my Main Idea (which is a concept for a glossy magazine) ~ like an atom bomb on to an unsuspecting World. Trust me, when they see issue #1, Condé Nast are gonna piss their pants and wish my magazine were theirs.

Years ago, I used to work for a large local newspaper chain, and one thing that taught me about the industry was that, in business terms, a magazine is essentially a load of adverts. Editorial is, in a sense, just  filler, because it's the ads that keep any publication afloat. These days they even have a proper name for it. They call it "content" ~ as if it's a vacuum sitting there, longing to be filled in. This isn't exactly true. In the type of book I want to do, there's a great deal of synergy between editorial layouts and advertising. In other words, the heavier somebody advertisers, the heavier they feature in our wondrous photoshoots.

So anyway I've been dwelling on that, in between feeling miserable, misplaced, mishapen. And sitting around wondering what I've done with my life. One thing that is becoming increasingly apparent is that Heroin has no place at all in my future. (As if I hadn't grasped that thorny fact many years ago...)

Every week I've been going to a closed group therapy session at the methadone clinic. Although a cynical side of me sees Group Work as a money-saving exercise, there is a massive upside to doing Group. That is, that I get to be privy to other people's secret insecurities. They're essentially the same as mine. Last week, between four of us, three, including me, appeared to be so miserable we wished we had never been born and were just waiting to die. I get a certain consolation knowing I'm not the only person to feel this way. In a sense, though, I don't care how I feel. As my old friend Clare Bony Arse used to say: "WE'RE ALL ALONE IN THE DARK". Which was particularly poignant coming from Clare, because she had such severe eyesight difficulties (Retinitis Pigmentosa) that she only had 0.5% vision. And there was a real chance that in the next few years she would end up 100% blind. A thought so horrendous that I refused to give it space in my head.

Some of y'all seem to think that I feel especially sorry for myself, as if my own problems and predicament are somehow worse than anybody else's, but this has never been true. I have always, always known at least one person ~ often several people ~ who were considerably worse off than me. I remember years ago trying to explain depression to a person who had almost no grasp on the subject. Everybody seems to think they know depression. But in actuality only one person in TWENTY ever becomes seriously clinically depressed throughout the entire course of their lifetime. So this person says to me something along the lines of "you think you're the only person in the world ever to get depressed" ~ which has never been what I thought. A friend of mine at university had a breakdown so bad she ended up wandering the streets homeless, face covered in snot, convinced her life was the centre of a Satanic plot. It wasn't "schizophrenia", as you might expect. It was just particularly severe depression "with psychotic features" ~ and the doctors treated her with Prozac. So THAT was my idea of bad depression. I never thought my own depression "bad", in fact I thought it didn't count. I never saw myself as "mentally ill" and I never used my depression as an excuse to get out of anything, until things got so bad that I had to drag myself into my doctor's office ~ by which time I was so badly off I could barely string a sentence together. My GP gave me a medical certificate writing me off for the entire academic term. That autumn, at the start of my second year at uni, I spralled down so badly I barely attended any classes at all, and certainly never did any work.

One afternoon they sprang a test on us (probably after weeks of notice, though I had no idea it was going to happen ~ + the marks went towards our final degree classification). I sat there for a few minutes, then wrote some obscenity across my paper in bold capitals and skulked out. It wasn't till years later that I looked back to this era and realized I was a lot worse off than I thought. I ended up dropping out of university, which completely knocked my confidence. Then I got a job and spent every waking our either working or on the way to or from work. Every hour I wasn't working or going to work I was fast asleep. In other words, really, I had no life at all. That's why I want to work again doing something I really believe in. If only I had something to do that I really wanted to do, I would never stop working. I mean, it's not as if I haven't spent more than a decade of my life essentially on a drugged-out vacation. I've had it with drugs and I've had it with living life on perpetual holiday. When I was younger I never, ever envisaged life as a layabout. Even at university, where I knew people who seemed to take pride and revel in their pothead, slacker existences, I never counted myself as one of them. I couldn't relate to their lifestyle at all.

I did end up dossing around quite a lot, but as I put it, I was at the time completely unemployable. I once (around the year 1992 or 1993) went for a job as a cloakroom attendant and I couldn't even get that. It wasn't that I didn't want to work in a nightclub full of pissed-up beer monsters (not my kind of place at all). The point, was that back then, wish zero self-confidence and almost zero social skills, I couldn't even pretend to muster the enthusiasm to get through an interview even for a menial post such as that... NOT good. If I've learned one thing Over The Years, I've learned how to put on a pretty good act. Nobody ever thinks I'm "mentally ill" now until I'm manic enough to appear High On Crack. Until that point I seem to come across either as happy, cheerful, full of enthusiasm or just a bit moody or morose. It does annoy me sometimes that nobody sees how desperate I feel inside ~ but in reality that is a brilliant skill to have in Life ~ and particularly in Business.

Of course most of my more recent problems are self-inflicted (though no junkie ever sees their life entirely that way ~ particularly not when they're lost in the thick of it!) Not until I've dropped the "H" for good and weaned myself off methadone, will I ever truly be able to go Forward. (Much as anything else, you cannot travel the world on Heroin (at least, I would never dare try and do such a thing) ~ and my single most basic ambition is to get the hell OUT of Britain ~  at the earliest opportunity ~ and to STAY OUT ~ FOR EVER!

Ukh I have gabbled on and on. The weekend has started. The dusk is illuminated by a hundred Turkish kebab shops. I have to go.

(Do you see now why I never wanted to write my memoir. I get so bogged down in it all, whenever I turn my attention in that direction. I'm only looking in one direction Today, and that is TO THE FUTURE!

WISHING Y'ALL A CHARMING WEEKEND.
AND IF IT CAN'T BE CHARMING
THEN MAY IT BE TOLERABLE!!

¡Quiero aprender español!/+ my "love affair" with HEROIN: how it REALLY BEGAN!

YESTERDAY I DUG OUT my old £30 ($44.70) Spanish Linguaphone course and had a bash at hablando en español. I did moderately well. Spanish is "cognate" with French (both languages being forms of "baby Latin") and I have a French A level (higher school certificate). But a lot of the little words you'd use day-to-day are different. Eg bed = le lit = la cama; apple = la pomme = la manzana; town = la ville = la ciudad; suitcase = la valise = la maleta and so on. Other day-to-day words are cognate with the French but not English eg customs (at the airport) = la douane = la aduana. But the higher vocabulary is similar to both English and French eg electricity = l'électricité = la electricidad; Liberty - Equality - Fraternity = liberté égalité fraternité = libertad igualdad fraternidad.

As far as I know, Spanish is the easiest major language for native speakers of English, after Italian (Italy is one European country I'd really like to go to. The Hungarian support worker at Binky's halfway house says the Italians "have everything: beautiful countryside, beautiful art and the cities: Venezia, Bologna, Milano, Napoli, Roma...

All I have seen of Spain is a tiny part of the Costa del Sol around Málaga: Mijas Costa, the (inland) clifftop town of Rhonda... I have spent just under an hour in Madrid, where I left the railway station to wonder at the vastness of the city stretched out on the plain below me as far as the eye could see... oh yes and Algeciras and the boat to Tangier from where I took the trains to Marakech, Fez, Rabat and Oujda but my 1991 Moroccan adventure is another story...

¡Well my depression seems to have cleared! ¡And I actually felt a rush of Spanish-induced excitement! ¡¡Wow!! ¿Do you like my Hispanic upside-down punctuation marks? Bloody hell I'm glad that shitty mood has cleared. Some days last week I was starting to feel truly horrendous. I phoned my folks who seemed to think the dismal voice was drug-induced. But I was wide awake and a hell of a lot more cheerful than before I banged up smack just to make it through the day.

I'm engaging with groups a lot better at the druggieclinic I attend. I'm not sure methadone is "working" for me as well as it's meant to. I told my worker that if I can't make an improvement I'm thinking of going to a private clinic who will prescribe XR Morphine Sulphate Tablets (MSTs as they're known on the street). My worker said that any improvement is down to me. Fair dos, but methadone is supposed to be a "heroin substitute" and if staying off the gear is really such hard work, requiring iron willpower and I feel so drastically better on street gear then the methadone really is NOT substituting for heroin at all. It's just masquerading as a substitute. It's hard to get MSTs on the NHS in the UK, but in other countries like Austia and Australia they're used routinely as the second-line treatment for patients like me (there are a lot of them) who don't take well to methadone treatment. MSTs are time-release pills, taken twice a day. I have experience of oral morphine in syrup form. I drank about 240mg, fell asleep in the late evening, and woke up feeling about a hundred times better than I'd ever felt waking up on methadone (which usually entailed a gasp of panic as my body, supposedly held on the "substitute" drug, cried out for lack of heroin. I didn't "gauwch" (no heroin-induced stupor) and I wasn't "high"; I just felt perfectly OK. They like to tout methadone's "lack of heroin-like 'high'". But nobody I know talks of a heroin "high". When you're as opiate-dependent as I am, heroin is a drug for survival. Junkies who want to get "high" will pipe crack ~ and I haven't done that in a long long long long time.

My biggest thing against MSTs is that other people, on coming off methadone or suboxone ~ neither of which make you feel very good ~ say they feel "really depressed". So depressed, in fact, that two people I know ended up back on methadone/suboxone within weeks of detox and a third went screaming back to heroin. (That was Lucky, my good friend who died.) I do feel really depressed (episodically) on methadone. My hope is that, in sticking with a drug that makes me feel shitty as methadone does, I'm facing the inevitable misery upfront ~ before detox, rather than after... (There is some logic in this?... Surely...) That the transition from very little methadone to none at all will be easier for me and less of a psychological (not to mention psychiatric) step down...

The final matter is that ALL my severe mental problems flared drastically and really came to the fore the time I gave up heroin for many weeks, living on methadone alone. For all I know methadone could be causing all this manic-depressive psychosis. And at its peak it really was full-blown delirious manic psychosis ~ with me so incoherent I couldn't even speak English. At all I didn't even know it was possible to go crazy like that.... If I DO find out methadone has caused all this I SHALL BE VERY UPSET INDEED. And will seriously consider suing the clinic for malpractice. Because I SAID how dodgy I felt on methadone and NOBODY EVER LISTENED. 

My prospective new worker says MSTs are completely out of the question and says if I need to up my dose of antipsychotics that's for my GP to do. Well I don't see that I need to see a GP to take even MORE drugs to counteract SEVERE side-effects of another drug (methadone) I never really wanted to be on (would never in a million years have chosen that if the clinic had offered a true range of alternatives)... oh I don't know I'm just really unhappy on my progress on 20mg methadone. I should be far happier. Should be 100% clean and off all drugs by now (somehow I knew that was never going to happen).

I suppose my point is this: having seen over years many people of different ages, intelligences, backgrounds etc doing pretty much the same on methadone ~ ie, they take it when nothing better's on offer but as soon as they can get their hands on heroin, they do it. I've seen old people blowing their pensions on gear. Then they go back to the clinic thinking they've failed. Well MAYBE METHADONE HAS FAILED THEM! All I know about methadone is I WANT TO GET AS WELL CLEAR OF THAT SHIT AS FAST AS I POSSIBLY CAN. I hate it, resent it, LOATHE MYSELF FOR COMPROMISING ON A DRUG THAT IS WELL KNOWN TO BE EVEN MORE ADDICTIVE THAN HEROIN AND HARDER TO WITHDRAW FROM! (The clinic never told me that little fact before putting me on it ~ another thing I might sue them for.)

And you know, with a convoluted life story like mine, it's very difficult to remember the precise whys and wherefores... well:~~~ THE TRUTH ABOUT ME AND HEROIN came to me yesterday morning, first thing on awakening. The ONLY REASON I ever asked someone to get me heroin in the beginning was that I was so unhappy I wanted to kill myself.I truly was dead-set on dying. ~ And I knew heroin overdose was supposed to be the nicest way to die. You fall asleep and never wake up. So I gave an Indonesian man (one of the few non-students I knew) £50 to get me half a gram (back in 1992 heroin cost £10 a point and if he could have got it for any cheaper than £50 I didn't begrudge him pocketing the difference. I fully intended to snort the whole lot in the bath. If I didn't OD, I hoped I'd drown...

A few days later he came back to me saying he couldn't get it (couldn't be bothered, more like). I still had a ridiculous, botched attempt at overdosing and drowning myself. It obviously didn't work (well I'm still here, aren't I?) But about FIVE YEARS LATER this same person sold me a £20 deal of powder cocaine at a rave in Norwich (only time I've ever scored snorty coke) saying he "had a bit of brown in a drawer" if I'd like to come back to his. Of course I was round like a shot ~ I'd always wanted to sample heroin purely out of curiosity. He was dealing the stuff by then and said I could have as much as I could smoke. So I smoked a full £20 deal, which astonished him. Then I went home with another £20 deal. And that was my introduction to heroin. My point being: if I hadn't sincerely wanted to kill myself I'D NEVER HAVE GOT INTO HEROIN TO START WITH. You see ~ IT WAS ALL ABOUT DEATH TO BEGIN WITH!

I'm sorry to end on a negative note. I'm thinking maybe I ought to write out my life story. I find telling the truth distances me from the facts. I want to be as remote from them as possible... I'll retell my life to avoid EVER RELIVING IT AGAIN. I mean, it doesn't matter if no "real" publishers are interested: I'll dump it on ebook, told by "Anonymous"... (or "by Gledwood": whichever).

I'll leave my closing paragraph to Google Translate:~~

Entonces, espero que tengas todo bien. Lo siento, no he visitado ninguno de vosotros. No he estado alrededor. Me siento mejor ahora. ¡Guau, me siento bien de estar vivo!

So, I hope you're all well. Sorry, I have not visited any of you. I have not been around. I feel better now.Wow, it feels good to be alive!

Illustrated: Rhonda; Mijas; 30mg morphine XR; methadone bottle; methadone 20mg;  brown heroin; death; e-reader ...

LINK: WHY METHADONE DOESN'T WORK (Guardian newspaper)
 

Methadone is a highly addictive synthetic opiate, more addictive than heroin and harder to withdraw from, but it survives the digestive system and so does not need to be injected. Most addicts loathe it. They call it green gunk and grimace as they swallow. All of today's addicts have been coming to the pharmacy for months, some for years. And that's the problem.

And what of those heroin addicts not in treatment? They visit me regularly for clean needles to inject filthy brown street heroin. There is growing evidence to support treating these long-term relapsing addicts with pure heroin. A blueprint for the requisite regulatory changes has been created, but until the laws are changed they must remain thieves and prostitutes, rather than patients, victims of legalised social neglect.

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..?



 ♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫♫

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...


********************************************************************************


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...



****************************************************************************

Attacked by a Psychic Circular Saw in the Night

I HAD another otherworldly experience in the night. This time a circular saw of syllables came and sliced right through my mind; it was saying "numnumnumnumnummm". You see this is what happens when I stop my medication. I took an entire pill last night. But I'd taken it before the num-nums came on and it didn't stop them. I just wanted to sleep... and I got my wish. I slept twelve hours last night, then managed another four this afternoon. It's so cold there's little point getting out of bed anyhow. And I've been feeling so depressed. Every time my phone rings the nasty noise "goes right through me" and I hide it under the bedclothes. I tried Glossy Magazine Therapy, when you leaf through fashmags like i-D, but with every flick of the page, the glossy paper whispered words to me. It was kind of poetic. Ukh: am I going mental yet again? I thought I was mental last week. Well I did afterwards. Now I just think I'm depressed. Just because i-D magazine is talking to you doesn't make you barmy, surely..? I mean, maybe i-D is just a bit talkative as magazines go..?

I note by scrolling down my blog that I left my body and went spiralling into hyperspace exactly a week before the "Circular Saw of the Num-Nums Episode". So maybe there's something going on here: a weekly celebration of surrealist psychiography perhaps..? I know a doctor would call these "dissociative" or "psychotic" experiences. But to me they are real experiences. They feel more dissociative than psychotic.

I hope Anna's porkshire is OK. There's been NO NEWS of her doggie Elle since the cancer op last week... They say No News Is Good News... but why does this feel SO BAD~~?

******************************************************************************************
DO YOU THINK there is any connexion between Num-Nums and Mu-Mus?
IF SO ~ perhaps Tammy Wynette would have known...?



********************************************************

Binky Telling Me I'm a Cuckoo Clock ~ Plus: "A Bitch Called Sandy"...

BINKY keeps telling me I'm "really mad" and I keep telling her I'm not. I mean, I'm not paranoid, not depressed, not anxious even and so what if I feel high nearly all the time? I'd taken heroin in the night and hadn't slept so when I went round Binky's at 7:45 this morning, I was a bit hyper. I was trying to think up names for my fabulous clubnight and she kept getting offended by my wonderful ideas like "Slut Vagina". [I would never give my club such a vulgar name; it just seemed like a good idea at the time...] And when I took to recording random snatches of conversation. So for a while I was thinking of naming my star-spangled party "Are you on that toilet for long? Because I really need to go." ~~ I think that would be a brilliant name! The other top two favourites were "Gnome Brigade", "Dillory Pillory" and "Itchy Swines".

So what does Binky mean when she says I'm mad? She seems to think I ought to know, but I don't. Everyone in her house is insane anyhow, because it's a psychiatric half-way house. And yet when I loudly said I'd been hearing voices in the night again ~~ and I mean all of two voices saying no more than two words each ~ nobody was willing to take on board the fact that yes, I might hear the odd voice now and then ~ but no, I most certainly am not clinically crazy. Especially compared to the rest of the nutters I know.

Grizzeller, the one guy in Binky's house full of nutty girls is in such consistently slow motion that if, for example, you wanted to visit the house at 9am and knew he'd be the only one in, you'd have to phone in advance at eight to give him enough time to shamble along the hallway and get the front door open. Now that is bonkers. I am not!

When I was talking to my very young and beautiful GP, Dr Lovelace about the inconveniences of psychotic breaks and happened to opine that "hearing voices is supposed to be a sign of madness," she quite inaccurately corrected me saying, "well, hearing voices is a sign of schizophrenia". Well yes, of course it can be that, but it can also be a sign of bipolarity, a sign of psychism (clairaudience) and a sign of nothing at all! I'm really surprised Dr Lovelace doesn't realize that 15% of bipolar 1 patients hallucinate. Hallucinations are not, per se, signs of schizophrenia. In this country we have a national Hearing Voices Network brimful with people experiencing daily extra-sensory perceptions and the majority of them claim not to be mad, and do not experience the symptoms of psychosis (paranoia, incoherent thought, great difficulty engaging with life).

The British Mental Health Foundation obviously know their stuff. Binky insists all her voices are absolutely accoustically real. Well many of mine aren't. When I really was mad they did sound exactly like invisible people speaking next to me, but nowadays they're more like random words precipitating from an idea-saturated atmosphere into my consciousness:

It is also common for people to hear voices as if they are thoughts entering their mind from somewhere outside themselves. This is not the same as a suddenly inspired idea, which people usually recognise as coming from themselves. These thoughts are not their own and would seem to come from outside their own consciousness, like telepathy.

This isn't precisely my experience, but it's similar.

When I tell Binky I may be "just a bit hypomanic" she says, "you've been hypomanic for two weeks now". And when I point out that hypomania is just very mild mania, she says, "then hypomania is mild madness". You see?! Every move I make I'm already snookered. That girl has been in the mental health system for far too long and she knows too much.

Then she takes issue with me for wondering aloud what is wrong with other nutters and why they act the way they do. Well that's just me being me, I'm afraid ~ always fascinated by what makes others tick...

Hey! I'm not doing Christmas alone with an Iceland sweet chili chicken pizza this year because I've been invited to Binky's for Xmas Lunch with all her cuckoo-clock friends. How brilliant is that?! We're even allowed vodka, which has been banned for the rest of the year after Binky got me to buy two half bottles, drank the lot and then ended up lying in bed throwing a near-delirious pity-party of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. It was really not pretty.

Speaking of alcohol, I idiotically went and wasted 95p on a can last night which I mixed with my Polish fruits of the forest drink. I had one single sip and now it's sitting in a giant mug untouched and untouchable and I don't know what to do with it now. I'm very much into the waste not, want not philosophy and cannot in all good conscience pour it down the drain. Like I've said many times ~ although yes, I did used to drink enough alcohol not to be consuming any nonalcoholic drink at all and to be getting daily blackouts. But on the other hand I never had that "once I start drinking I won't stop until I'm passed out cold" thang going on, like most alkies seemingly do. I was your archetypal "top-up drinker" ~ drinking to keep a moderate level of intoxication going through every waking hour. Not to plunge myself into oblivion. Even with the drugs, most of the time, I wasn't using gear in pursuit of unconsciousness, but as an escape from pain. Now that I'm no longer in constant psychological pain I feel far less need of the gear. See it's all deep, psychological and mysterious.

At yesterday's anti-drugs group we had a cheeky chappie with what are nowadays termed "mental health" troubles but what always used to be called "emotional problems" ~ from what he said, his primary problems appeared to be anxiety and depression. This might very well be the "vanilla" version of mental illness, but let me tell you, anxiety/depression is just about the most unpleasant psychiatric affliction going. It's much more unpleasant than manic-depressive psychosis and of course the doctors take anxiety far less seriously than psychotic illness, which makes no sense, as severe anxiety is far and away more intolerable than any psychosis I've ever experienced. The doctors never, ever take it seriously, and they will not prescribe anything for it, except drugs along the lines of Prozac ~ which always made me many times more agitated than I'd been before. Anxiety doesn't generally agitate me. When it was severe, I was frozen in terror. As the psychologists say, it's "fight, flight or play dead" ~ which is very true as I always played dead. Though I've never seen a person with an anxiety disorder fighting. If anxiety really did make you fight, the mental hospitals would be full of people with panic disorders under Section for fighting instead of "flighting", or playing dead like me!

Anyway this guy with the terrible affliction happened to mention to me something about confronting the issues that have caused or fuelled my past depressions. What issues is he talking about? Do I even have any? Binky says yes I do; I said, "do you mean my massively unstable self-esteem?" and she said yes. But post-psychotic trauma aside, I'm not sure I have the type of issues that a skilfull counsellor could tease out of me so that in the future I'm going to magically not be depressed. I'm not sure my depression is like that. If it were mostly issue-based then how come the first sign, and usually the most prominent symptom is massively increased time spent asleep? Can a thorny tangle of emotional hang-ups really make you sleep more? And how come half the time I actually feel better than usual? So my mood is now elevated ~ and what has become of my issues now? Are they actually making me feel happy? Or is another set of personal hang-ups doing that? Or is it just that when I'm on the hypomanic side simply more in touch with my own fabulosity and that's what makes me feel fabulous all the time? Because that's what I think is going on...

Righty-ho it's ten past six and I have to go to Iceland to get a sweet chili chicken pizza. Writing about it has made me wanna munch it! With cheese-flavour coleslaw as a side-order. I luuuurve cheese coleslaw! I barely slept last night and must catch up before I fall asleep at the screen...

What's happening with Sandy, this humungous great tropical storm they said might flood or flatten New York? Is it really that bad? And why, if it only made landfall around midnight London time. With the time difference currently a mere four hours, that means New York was OK until eight at night their time, so why close down the subway and the stock exchange all day yesterday? Also, with New York being so low-lying, I don't understand why they hadn't long ago built seal-up-able subway and road tunnels to prevent any storm-surge getting into them... I woke up yesterday morning feeling so incredibly repentant for having been too excited about the idea of a giant hurricane hitting a major metropolis and not having my thoughts with the householders and the businesses who will suffer because of it. I can sometimes be incredibly shallow and I really felt guilty for having not taken Hurricane Sandy seriously. Also I wrote a comment to my fellow-blogger, Syd saying "so you live in South Carolina? Isn't that the land of hurricanes?" ~ no sooner had I said that than that Sandy appeared and I was terrified that Syd would get blown away because of what I'd said.

So all isn't right in the world. I keep thinking of all those people in New York, New Jersey and so on who will be dealing with massive flooding and power cuts. I mean, it's disconcerting enough when the power goes down for just a couple of hours and it's candles time and no television but what happens when a whole metropolis goes down for days at a time?

I used to be in touch with a recovering addict named B Melons Lemonade, who was right in New Orleans and actively addicted to heroin when Hurricane Katrina hit, destroying not just the infrastructure of the city we all think about, but its drug supply network. B Melons was so traumatized by events that she went down with a pretty nasty case of PTSD which is by all accounts one of the nastiest mental illnesses going...

I pray that New York and everywhere else in the path of this so-called "Frankenstorm" will be OK... 

Night-night everyone, wherever you are ~ and BE SAFE!...

♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫☺ ♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫☺ ♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫☺ ♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫☺ ♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫☺ ♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫☺ ♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫

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...




♤ ◘ ♫☺♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫♤ ◘ ♫☺♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫♤ ◘ ♫☺♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫♤ ◘ ♫☺♥ ♢  ♧  ♤ ◘ ♫♤ ◘ ♫☺♥ ♢  ♧   

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:



♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬