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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!!

OptiConfusion and Great Literature

I GOT SOMETHING IN MY EYE today. Literally there was a black dot on my iris and my eye felt weird and dry (not hurting or streaming with tears) but there was definitely this black speck literally stuck on my eyeball and no amount of finger-on-eyelid manoevring would persuade it  to go. So I spent £4.26 ($6.60) on a bottle of Optrex (I only needed the plastic eyebath as I've got two bottles of Optrex at home from when I last had to go to Moorfields eye hospital in central London for another "mote" that was stuck (inside the lid) for about 18 hours and I couldn't stop crying. That time, the lady turned my eyelid inside-out, poked it with something like a posh cotton bud  and said "this is the offending object" and it was TINY. This one was even smaller ~ but how weird that it should be stuck ON the eyeball. And literally refused to move. I kept thinking I had been speared by some non-painful miniature thorn. I don't know. It was really doing my head in. Of course the Optrex made me cry like a baby and everyone was staring at me when I came out of the public bathroom at the doctors' surgery where Binky had to get her dicky legs looked at. She needs TWO knee replacements and they say she's now old enough to go through with the operation. Because fake kneecaps only last twenty years they'll make sure you're nice and old before they put them in. Then when you reach the stage where those fail too and you completely lose the use of your legs you're hopefully decrepit in so many other ways it hopefully doesn't matter as much.

Anyway I decided to follow Handy Cotton Bud Lady (to those of you on American shores, a that's a "cotton swab") ; went into the toilet cubicle, rolled toilet paper into a twist and stuck this on my eye and hey presto the unmovable "nonexistent" black dot came straight out.

Well I've been in a VERY FUNNY MOOD  recently.  I wake up mulling thoughts of suicide in a fairly distant type of way .... then  I'm hyperactive and can't stop talking IN A VERY LOUD VOICE~!!!

O and by the way, Doctor Lovelace, my GP who I kind of fell in love with ... well she kind of looks like a more beautiful version of Myleene Klass. Just thought you should know that.

Errrr, I don't know WHAT I came here to say but that's about it. Don't worry  or get too excited; I'm not about to commit suicide . I just meant I have been feeling pretty crappy. Some of the time.

And I'm still in a piss about this Turkish television connexion. I'm thinking of turning up the heating to maximum, buying a load of kebabs in and inviting everyone I know round for a Turkish Evening ~ complete with bloody TURKSAT TELEVISION that I get but don't want .The council man wrote back pretty much telling me that if I wanted TV in German and French (for educational purposes) I should just stick a dish up. Oooo that's very naughty . The council won't like that. But I AM thinking up ways of fixing illicit television reception equipment to the back of garden chairs or on poles fixed into giant plant pots ~ then the dish hasn't been "installed" . It just happens to be sitting there. As for the bloody great hole I have to get drilled in the wall to line in four "LNBs"  ukh I don't know. But in readiness for this Bullensheiße I've taken to learning how to line up a satellite dish all on my very own . Which is extremely complicated seeing as said apparatus must be pointing at precisely 19.2 degrees east of south (which somehow works out as an "azimuth" of 155.8 and precisely 28 degrees off the horizon. Well I don't bloody know and what the MotherF is "azimuth" when it's at home..??? Well I'm determined to learn this shyte. Hey did you know you can hide a satellite dish in a binbag and it will still work ? Wow the possibilities are endless. This is for "Astra 1". Hotbird is a totally different satellite (at 13 degrees east) and Hotbird is what we're supposed to get but no it's bloody Turksat. I can't believe I am ranting on this subject yet again. It just winds the living crap out of me whenever I turn my television on. What am I saying? I barely ever "turn the TV on" . I'm one of those people who has it blaring out 24-7 (yes even while I sleep)  .Hence my severe irritation at the Turksat Scandal. Yes I do do other things apart from listen to television (  I don't actually deign to watch it THAT  much...)... in combustation of this I bought a whole load of books this afternoon. Classic texts . They are:

 Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway ~ no idea what this one's about but it's supposed to be good. Virginia Woolf, by the way, is the ONE SINGLE FAMOUS PERSON I can think of  who had full-blown psychotic bipolar 1 disorder with florid auditory and visual hallucinations, like me (rather than the Trendy Celebrity Version  of Bipolar , which is type 2 ~ that means a person might become very severely depressed, but their manic episodes are never severe enough to make them totally lose the plot. Anyway...

DH Lawrence: Sons and Lovers  ~ we did this at school. His best prose is lusciously poetic  but his worst is absolutely terrible...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment ~ this seems to be the only really good novel Dostoyevsky wrote. O and by the way he was heavily in debt throughout most of his life ~ and got paid by the page . Which should be ravingly bloody obvious to anyone who 's had the unpleasant experience of reading this guy 's worst crap .

Ivan Turgenev: Fathers and Sons  ~ absolutely no idea what this one's about , but it's meant to be an alltime classic of Russian literature. (I love Russian books.)

Tilly Bagshawe: Friends and Rivals ~ can I say in mitigation that this was only 50p. I hate chick lit but for some reason the cover grabbed me.  I'm going to give it to Binky. Also her novelist sister Louise WAS probably the best-looking Tory MP in history. Before she went and retired prematurely... akh. The Dr Lovelace of politicians and she too had to go!

John Keats: Complete Poems ~  it's such a shame this guy died young. He could have been one of the greatest poets of all time. Ode on a Grecian Urn is one of the greatest lyrics in English. And yes, Ode to a Nightingale was supposed to have been composed in an opiated daze....

Yeah that's my books. The whole lot cost about £14.50 ($22.46) . Brand new.

Well that's about it. Gotta go and FIND SOME CARPETS for my echoing concrete shell of a home....

Ukh and can I also say YES I DO SEEM TO HAVE MOVED INTO AN EX-CRACKHOUSE.  Everestine piles of red bills ... Bailiffs' cards pushed through the door. Two drunken junkies turned up at 7am yelling for the previous occupant  and when I said he no longer lived here she just yelled "LIAR!"  and a loud crashing noise echoed up the stairway...                                    

By the way if there are unwanted spaces here  , it's just the computer throwing a fit  . I don't know why......

ACEN OPTIKONFUSION: CLOSE YOUR EYES

I used to love this "song" ....

 Close your eyes... forget your name... forget the world ... forget the people... close your eyes and go insane...

Illustrated: Kurdish national costume; Myleene Klass ; Turkish national dress (Turks and Kurds are DIFFERENT don't ever mix them up!! ~ Kurds come from KURDISTAN, part of which lies within current Turkish frontiers...!), Louise Bagshawe aka Louise Mensch...

There!

OK: I'VE NOW OFFICIALLY MOVED HOUSE! 79 Pancake Towers, Walford, London E20 9LP. OK if I were an EastEnders character that would be my address, but they say you shouldn't give out too much personal info on your blog. Which means I'm pretty f*cked, what with my heroin confessions of yore and all... Well I'm TRYING not to use it. And not entirely succeeding. Hey and guess what? My mood, for the last several days has been almost entirely NORMAL. Not high as a kite, and not too depressed either.

I started keeping a mood diary, where I rate the highest and lowest I felt that day as well as various other factors such as manic feelings: racing thoughts, hyperkinesis, etc. It's something I'm supposed to fill in every day, though many days I don't. Takes about half a minute to scrawl out the answers, then every week or so, I plot my highs and lows on a graph. Very interesting. At the beginning of the year I was hypomanic and suicidally depressed on the same day for more than a week. A complete basket case. Then we see clear-cut euphoric hypomania with no depression. Then the hypomania declines and depression appears in a characteristic wedge shape. With me, the mania usually looks like a shark's fin (peaking very soon, then gradually declining, though you may see two or three sharks' fins in a row). The depression gets steadily worse day by day, hits an all-time low; then suddenly, the day after, I'm almost better. Interestingly the letter S for "suicidal" DISAPPEARS when the mood plummets past a certain point. Anyway the rest of these notebooks are full of the most drivellous rantings possible, usually composed while manic and to be honest I'd like to burn them. What I like the most about being hyper and high is that when I'm right up there, my old neurotic self almost entirely disappears. Also in depression beyond a certain extreme, I'm not neurotic either. But my normal boring personality is so insecure and neurotic I irritate the pants off myself, so what effect I have on other people I hesitate to guess at...

By the way, the whole point of the mood chart is to correspond one's state of mind with whatever shit life has thrown at you that week. Weirdly the news that I'd been offered permanent accommodation actually set off depression with suicidal ideation. I kept thinking of this flat and telling myself: Now I know where I'm going to die... (Which might well be true; because I ***should*** have lifetime tenure. And if I don't die in hospital, the odds are I WILL die at home. That's just statistics for ya. (But of course when I'm really desperate I fantasize about dying in other ways and places. Don't think I'd ever have the guts to put that into operation though...)

Binky is STILL CONFINED TO A MENTAL HOSPITAL for the FIFTH TIME IN LESS THAN A YEAR. I don't even know what is "wrong" with her. She seems completely "normal" to me... But! She was severely punished this morning for calling the doctor the C-word and isn't allowed outside. A 49-year old woman grounded for having borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia and being in a bad mood. Which has me running all over the place purchasing cigarettes, paying off her multiplicitous catalogue bills... etc. Being as my new place is two miles from the nuthouse I can't get there every day any more. Hey last Saturday we had an interesting ride in Manic Girl's car. Bloody hell. I had just remarked how "normal" Manic Girl appeared and why on earth were they keeping her in hospital for so long... Then we got in the car and I realized. I don't think I have ever whizzed through the sinuous streets of London at such extreme velocity. When we got to the post office, Manic Girl said "I used to work there but it was so boring I jacked it in and travelled the world for three months". I wish I could be that spontaneous, but I'm very cautious and boring at heart.

Of course I have heard back NOTHING in my great fight to get keys for all my doors and windows and non-Turkish satellite TV.

I'm living on cheese coleslaw sandwiches. It's that posh multigrain malted bread, so I feel most bourgeois nibbling on these whilst viewing Abu Dhabi TV (formerly sky 796 now you must tune to Astra 2 28.2 east 11662 or 11623MHz horizontal) or Horse and Country (Sky 280 not on Freesat) or The Peace Channel Urdu (Eurobird 1 28.5 east, transponder F1 upper, 12559.67 mHz horizontal (not on Freesat or Sky). Yeah I had a go at tuning my German TV box ~ the one that made me hit the roof when I tried to get Hotbird 13 east and was instead deluged with hundreds of irritating channels in BLOODY TURKISH ~ into the Sky/Freesat satellites at Astra 2 28.2 east. You get about 300 channels free-to-air, most of which aren't on Freesat, some of which aren't on Sky either. I do love my satellite television, hence this massive gripe with the council over negligently miswiring my Hotbird feed and giving me F*CKING TURKISH TELEVISION INSTEAD!! Don't get me wrong. I love most things Turkish: cheap under-the-counter tobacco, large lamb shish kebabs with all salad loads of garlic sauce bit of chili sauce for £5.50 and jewellery that is far nicer than anything else you'll find in the low-to-mid price range (though Indian jewellers are also good). But I DO NOT WANT TURKISH TELEVISION!!!

Ukh, all this ranting... am I going manic again? The mere fact that I think about mania, or remember what it's like at random points of the day, is often (weirdly enough) the first sign of its return. That and fantastic adrenaline rushes lasting hours on end, woven into the psychedelic fabric of life's rich tapestry...

" /> Bloody hell I'm hungry. I'm going to have to run to Iceland for something to shove in my sandwiches. Good job it's winter: because I have no fridge, I'm just stashing stuff out on the balcony. Where, by the way, a pair of pigeons keep mating. First thing in the morning and right in front of my face.

Righty-ho. Better leave it there. Hope y'all have a chirpy weekend...

(And if it can't be chirpy, then may it be chirrupy instead...)

Link: my right to satellite television under EU law http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-01-913_en.htm?locale=en

Illustrated: these apartment blocks are far too pretty to be anywhere in London ~ what you see is Neukölln in Western Berlin...

MUSIC: DOLLY PARTON ~ THERE

I used to listen to this when I was very little: it was on the album New Harvest First Gathering

Random things + reply to Anonymous

DOES THE LAST POST SOUND COMPLETELY miserable? I don't know. Maybe I should take the nut-nut pills again. I just don't like them, mainly because they are ADDICTIVE. They make me "better" in that my moods are within narrower parameters and I am less paranoid. It does not make me any more motivated to do certain things that seem complex. But then again sometimes I do some of those things anyway. Other times they go undone for months... That's why I'm fretting over moving house. I know what I'm like. Stuff will end up lying around and nothing will be fitted, installed, unpacked, nothing.

Yes anonymous like I said in my answer I agree with you, it is terrible to take state handouts. An American I know who lives here told me, long before I had a fancy label I could blare out as an excuse for my unmannered laziness that in America I would be living under a bridge. Only reason I'm not living under one here (or in a squat) is because the local council were kind enough to house me. The only problem was, by that time I had gone pretty ferral and found adapting back to normal living quite difficult. At one point my life involved a lot of sitting about on pavements asking for money, and using drugs in public toilets and abandoned buildings. One time I overdosed in a shopping centre and only woke up with the attendant banging on the door saying they were closing for the night.

Of course it would be "more civilized" (ok, maybe not more civilized: but cheaper) to shoot junkies and mental patients by firing squad. I'm sure if they made it voluntary, loads would volunteer when feeling low. If you arranged it so the guns went off within 5 minutes of signing the papers, you'd have an excellent clear-up rate.

My friend Binky thinks my going to live in a flat is the worst thing that can possibly happen "as you'll only render it unfit for human inhabitation". Well I'd like the chance to try (not to render it that way, I mean to actually succeed in becoming a human being again). Sometimes I am not sure I actually am human. Maybe I'm an alien impostor. From a sub-intelligent species. Who knows.

As for the drug (singular) I did go back to it. I was trying to cure suicidal depression. The kind of thing where you sit around for hours staring into space, but then perk up and manage to act normal, until the act falters about half an hour in and ... back to staring blankly into walls. (Often I angle myself towards a television in this state, but I'm rarely actually watching it.) This is what happened at Binks's on Saturday. But yesterday I started feeling better. You see, it's all cyclical. That's why I say the firing squad should have little time for mind-changing: if you catch benefits scroungers at the lowest point of the cycle, you'll save the country millions.

My old counsellor once said you can measure the civilization of a people by how they treat their sick. Well that makes Britain very civilized... America a bit less so (what with no NHS).

Methadone is still a drug. I really want to get off that. And I want to get back what I lost: my attention span (still nowhere near as good as it once was); my edge. I was already OFF 'eroin (hadn't taken it in weeks (early 2011)) when I LOST these things. I lost them to mania of the psychotic variety, which tears your thoughts to shreds then whirls them up in the air in a cognitive cyclone. I lost all my money. (OK, the government's money.) Could barely keep it together to look after house keys. (OK, the local council's keys.) Of course the nut doctor told me I should have been in hospital... AFTER the event. My support worker who keeps asking whether I'm into a part time degree doesn't reckon I'm up to looking after a pet! The kind of pets I go for are ones that essentially look after themselves, apart from feeding and drinking. The sort you let out, then they return from their rambles to live perfectly happily in their own little world. A degree on the other hand requires all manner of attention that I have given to nothing for years. I tried Teach Yourself Japanese CDs yet again... but just don't seem to learn anything. When I try reading books I sometimes do get to the end, but with only a hazy idea of what went on between the covers. Fact is actually easier than fiction, for me. So this is the problem. When I give answers on the kinds of forms that assess one's day to day living, my answers sound terrible. I know someone who repeatedly told me to lie and exaggerate. The sad truth is, I didn't need to.

I never claimed to be stupid. I just looked around at "ordinary people" (including ordinary crackheads and junkies) and they seemed to have skills I appeared to have lost. Wasn't my idea to call myself schizo. That one came from a doctor and I had no idea. Yes I heard voices saying "schizophrenia" but I just thought they were having a go. Never actually thought it could be true. [Hearing voices doesn't necessarily mean schizophrenia: clairaudient psychics hear voices; normal bipolar mania can make you hear voices. Crack can make you hear voices. Only mine never made themselves fully manifest until more than a year AFTER I had given it up.] I suppose I should say to Anonymous-type people: as for "schizophrenia" with bipolar, if I were making it up... bloody hell I would pick something a little less complicated. FOUR lists of symptoms to "satisfy". I have met people who said they faked psychosis, but it's always psychosis of the paranoid variety, where a person has some fable in their head that they believe. Mine was more like my mind and attention being shattered into a thousand pieces, seeing through each jointly and severally, all at the same time. Plus extreme swings of high manic energy to complete devastation. Sometimes both moods at once. That's how it felt.

And why the hell do the bastards who run this country make it so difficult to get hand-guns, poisons etc? That Dignitas euthanasia clinic in Switzerland uses 10,000mg of neat barbiturate in orange juice. But why can't I just by 10,000mg sodium amytal from Boots and do it myself? You see, Anonymous you should get on to the government. Make suicide easier. Then you'll get your wish. (The quicker a person can top themself before the impulse fades, the higher a success rate you will have.) I don't actually want to kill myself any more. Last week, some of the time, I did. I don't exactly know why.

O yes and I've been window shopping for furniture. Found quite a nice sofa. 3 seats. Brown. For £62 (about $100). Brown goes really nice against blue walls and I'm painting mine blue.

Have I answered every point here? Please somebody, give me an idea for a post, and I'll post it. Much easier that way. Staring into a white infinity, nothing but my own dolorous thoughts on screen ... I just end up ranting in a faintly ratty way... OK that it I'm off bye.


Illustrated: yellow-capped pygmy parrot; council housing for lovebirds...

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:



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

Desperately Seeking "Normality"

THE WEEKEND IS OVER. And I only feel slightly better. I tried to resist the urge to take That Stuff but my resistance only lasted until this morning when I walked for half an hour each way in the rain to get a £10 bag. Heroin is the only thing that makes me feel better. Also I have heard several times that methadone can actually CAUSE depression, or at least make it worse. This definitely seems to be the case with me. So I'm going back to the druggieclinic next week and asking whether I can have something else. Not Subutex/Suboxone. No way am I prepared to go sick for something that I know is going to disrupt my mood, shrink my sleep down to four hours and make me feel unnaturally wide awake all the time and probably hyper. The two other options are dihydrocodeine, better known here as "DFs" [short for DF118, their old brand-name] and extended-release morphine pills, known to the junkies as "MSTs" [Morphine Sulphate Tablets]. My worker recently dropped into the mix the fact that they CAN prescribe MSTs, if they really want to. I was anti-methadone enough, a few months ago, to consider going private just to get morphine pills on prescription as an alternative to methadone. Apart from the fact that you feel way better on them (and I know this because a few years ago somebody gave me a bottle of Oromorph syrup, which I drank in 250mg doses (wasn't tempted to inject, amazingly) and which made me feel way way better than methadone ever has; morphine is easier to reduce and detox off than methadone. They love saying how much more addictive methadone is than heroin ONCE YOU ARE STUCK ON A SCRIPT. Yet nobody EVER warned me of this beforehand. Which sometimes puts me in a mind to sue the clinic for clinical negligence for this, and that they know I have a history of depression and that methadone makes that depression considerably worse.

 I wish I hadn't said all that stuff about antidepressants yesterday because someone like Anna Grace will think I want a psychotic episode. This is not what I was saying. I only ever want to be manic when I'm down because that is the only sort of "happiness" I can conceive of. I do not, by the way, and never will, accept feeling run-down, pissed off and mildly depressed and constant low-grade sickness as any kind of "normality" because it is NOT NORMAL AT ALL.

 The ONLY time I have ever felt truly "normal" in the past two years or so has been in the immediate aftermath of short hypomanic episodes. And they do have to be mild and short. I didn't feel at all normal following true mania. I felt really confused. Couldn't remember things like appointment times. And I remember thinking at the time that this was worse than concussion ~ and I say that advisedly, as I was once hit on the head by a truck and kept losing track of where I was and what I was doing for days afterwards. No fewer than THREE people took advantage of me when I was recovering from that breakdown ~ always other addicts and always in connection with drugs. I just thought You wait. Just wait until the Vehemence hits me again and I'll open my mouth and blow the full force of the whirlwind right at you and you'll never know what hit you.

As for dying: the lower down I go the less I believe I will ever die. Thoughts of suicide become ever more torturous as I am obsessed by the horrific possibility that suicide may fail. All I have ever wanted is 100% certainty of death, and that cuts down the number of possible avenues considerably. I knew two people who managed to top themselves in spring 2010. One jumped in front of a tube train. The other took every bit of psychiatric medication and methadone she had. Neither of these methods bears a chance of death anything like high enough for me. To die on modern antipsychotics and SSRI antidepressants you have to be really, really freakishly lucky. And a person with longstanding, heavy opiate addiction could easily take several hundred milligrams of methadone and feel nothing more than heavily stoned. Tube trains enter the stations very slowly (they only seem to rush in so rapidly because you're close to the train in a confined space) ~ plus there's a whacking great trench under the live rail, meaning a massive chance that you'll fall down there and live, but probably get clothing, hair and limbs tangled in the wheels ~ a recipe for a complete medical mess. A Muslim once told me that if you stab yourself you will spend eternity in hell stabbing yourself over and over. Which narrows methods of suicide down to only one: deliberate opiate overdose. I can think of better ways of spending eternity. But shooting up gear for ever and ever would be a good compromise. The gear now is so weak, it wouldn't surprise me if I coudln't take a half-ounce all at once and live. That's another reason I want to be OFF methadone as quick as possible. It has nothing to do with wanting to live clean and everything to do with wanting to die clean. I have always known I would never be lucky enough to overdose myself accidentally; have always known I was going to have to make it through right to the bitter end. I don't want to live, but I know I have to.

See everything goes negative yet again. I saw my worker today. I had to tell him I was feeling crap because he keeps trying to con me into group therapy, which I'm not doing any more. He asked if I had any mental problems and I said no. Feeling depressed isn't really a mental problem, just an emotional problem. As for any chance of my dying, I wouldn't worry about it. To stand any chance of success at suicide you have to prepare very carefully and the more depressed a person is the less strength and volition they have to put plans of any type into action. Especially really complicated ones like suicide where you have to write notes, lock and barricade all doors, switch off phone etc etc etc it's all too much to get right.

Well there is nothing else to talk about. Crap weekend, crap week: same shit, different day.



Illustrated: Oromorph and suicide ~ I seriously doubt this method would work. You have to shoot straight through at least one brain hemisphere and that shot is way too low to assure death




*******

ANYTHING to get off the subject of death. Here are 2 tunes. I'm afraid the first is technically funeral music Mozart's Requiem: Lacrimosa. But it doesn't sound funereal to me. The non-techno versions are all crap. Nowhere near loud enough.



Celine Dion Celtic Women: Ave Maria
I'm not Roman Catholic but I like the tune...



*****