What a Grey Day...

IT IS nearly 4pm. I have been up since 10 or 11am. I go to bed relatively early and get up late because I'm sleeping 12 hours solid. Between 7 and 9am I nearly always wake up. Then I drink my methadone and fall back to sleep. Drinking my dose a good 2 hours before I get up means that once I am up, the methadone is working full-on and I'm far less tempted to use the alternative.

I had a horrible dream that my Dad, who doesn't even like taking headache pills, had a couple of ounces of very low grade, dark brown heroin.

Usually when I wake up after a dream like that, I just want to use. But today it never even crossed my mind.

I got up, got tomorrow's methadone (because I pick it up a day in advance) and for some reason, youtubed up the Prisoner Cell Block H theme, which made me so sad I nearly cried.

I have felt lousy all day. I never even bothered showering until ten minutes ago. I have been stuck in a chair, staring at television, not wanting to move.

Yesterday, I suppose I managed about 900 words of this children's story, which is supposed to be ridiculous comedy. I was going to force out another 600 words (2 manuscript pages) last night, but had taken my medication too early and just wanted to sleep.

I'm only on 300mg (quetiapine). My friend is on 750 mg quetiapine (Seroquel) plus TWO antidepressants ~ mirtazapine and venlafaxine (Remeron and Effexor). What the doctors are trying to do in her case is medicate the very changeable moods of borderline personality disorder (her quetiapine is for schizophrenic psychosis) but I'm not sure this can ever work.

The BPD is sometimes considered to be on the "bipolar spectrum" but the mood swings in BPD ~ swinging from OK (not euphoric or high) to very angry, frustrated or sad ~ are totally different from bipolar moods which in my case have, at the extreme, alternated between highest exaltation and deepest despair, although I can get extremely irritable at both poles, especially mania.

Anyway I am not and have not been even hypomanic for several weeks. I am now getting more and more depressed.

Under normal cirumstances my moods aren't very much more extreme than those of Stephen Fry as filmed for the Secret Life of the Manic Depressive documentary, although when I'm hypomanic I'm probably more hyper, more cheerful and prone to laugh uproariously  over practically nothing. My attitude towards the "illness" is similar to his. He was taking no medication and I don't want any more than I'm on. The last thing I want is a mood that's pancake-flat.

I also agree with the man who says he's seen angels in psychotic mania ~ that it's worth any amount of misery to go that high. [I didn't see angels: I felt trillions of volts powering through my brain and went into outer space.]

But I agree with Carrie Fisher too ~ eventually I'm going far too fast. Thoughts are racing totally out of control. Then they all crash into each other and become completely garbled. The whole world is in ridiculous slow motion. So that when the computer asked me for a password and then spent what felt like months considering my answer before allowing me in, I very nearly sent it crashing across the room, on many occasions.

Someone once asked me how, if I was in such a mess, I managed to put up posts with pictures. The answer is, I very nearly didn't. The pictures only appeared hours later and the effort of finding them put me into near-meltdown with yelling and swearing and the computer was lucky to survive at all.

In mania the symptoms vary widely over the course of a day. So when I was in complete confusion ~ which lasted for hours ~ I never posted at all. I couldn't even speak coherently, let alone write, And there were many occasions when I literally could not read at all.

As for "liking" being bipolar, if my mood continues to fall, ask me the same question in a couple of weeks and you might get a very different answer.

(I'm not trying to say, by the way, that I enjoy losing my mind, just that I love the extremely high moods... And why does the world have to be so crap that the only "illness" that makes you feel better than anything else is the same one that shows you utter hopeless bleakness and despair?)

Over the last couple of days, I took to wondering, if I ever did achieve success, how I would possibly cope. The answer is, if I ever made any serious money (how would I do that anyway?) I would be extremely stressed by it. But would still far rather be rich than poor. The only thing it could pay for is a change of scenery and I would use it to insulate me from the world as much as possible. And I don't think I will ever find true happiness. Never, ever.

I have just been watching, with one eye, a documentary about the Baader-Meinhof gang and Stammheim prison. I love TV programmes about the Cold War era, the Iron Curtain and the Eastern Bloc. That's one reason I so like watching telly in German.

My house is getting more and more untidy. I don't mind cleaning sinks, surfaces and showers ~ what I hate is clearing, sweeping, scrubbing and mopping the floor ~ and it requires all four. So most of the rubbish is on the floor now, uncleared up.

The Great Bathroom Stench, by the way, has temporarily gone. I know if I call the landlord, the bad smell will hide, only to return with avengeance once he's left.

I should end on an inspiring note ~ weeks before that man made the 128,000 ft leap from space to earth, another guy in America, constructed a gas baloon with a camera that filmed the whole ride up right into the stratosphere. When it fell to earth with a GPS, they found it and you can watch the film here.

Fastforward 2 mins 15 in to see the launch...



And here's that Prisoner Cell Block H tune...



*

Fictitious First Attempt

I'M TRYING MY HAND at writing fiction (again). I'm writing for children, which is, in a way, even harder than writing for adults. Nothing I put seems well enough put and everything I say I want to hack around and say again differently. I used to think I had some mastery over words but now I'm not so sure. I don't think I will ever be "the greatest". (Nearly everything I do I want to be the best at ~ at least, this used to be the case...)

My one goal now is to be the best I can at writing like "me". One thing I do have going for me is that I am a true original. I have deliberately avoided looking at the competition because I already have ideas for more than five books and I don't want to be influenced by current fashions. So far I have only written about four pages.

I cannot waste my life any more. I have to get this down and perfected and IN PRINT.

Despite this my mood feels a bit low and dismal. It feels like midwinter is right around the corner ~ which, of course, it is.

Well I've got to go; I have nothing else to say online. I'm saying it all on paper. I hope one day finally to get published ~ and I mean properly published by real publishers who know how to promote books right around the world in all the major langauges.

But before that I have to write the bloody thing.

OK I'm off. Bye!


Illustrated: part of Roald Dahl's original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory manuscript...




music...


PENDRAGON FLOAT, NOTTING HILL CARNIVAL
I hate the carnival. I have been about four times and never had as much fun as I thought I would.
But I did used to love Pendragon...



MARK SINCLAIR ~ PENDRAGON ~ THE FRIDGE, BRIXTON



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

Mark Sinclair at Pendragon

THIS is a set by the DJ who ran the party I used to go to every month at Tyssen Street in Dalston.

(I don't know whether I'm just getting older or if the music is newer but it doesn't sound quite like it used to...)

Forward the gizmo thing to 27 minutes in ~ it's so much more bangin' once it's going full-on...



*******

Terrible Sewage Stench

SOMETHING TERRIBLE has gone wrong in my bathroom. There's been this "intermittent fault" with the plumbing since I moved in. I think the piping from the toilet has cracked, leaving a stench that ranges from farm-fresh manure to fermented raw sewerage.

The landlord's man advised me to treat the errant lavatory with bleach. This I have done nearly every day, and several times on some days, since moving in. At first bleach seemed to work. But now I'm splurging all around the rim and the bowl with the extra-thick extra-strong variety and the result smells like a slurry cart has crashed into an over-chlorinated swimming pool. It's appalling.

The pong is overwhelming. Can ANYONE advise me what on earth I should do..?

*******

WILLIAM ORBIT: BARBER'S ADAGIO FOR STRINGS (FERRY CORSTEN MIX)
This is the best techno version I know...


    BINARY FINARY: 1999 "best version released"...       I found out that most of yesterday my Trinity College Choir Barber's Adagio NASA film wasn't there. This is because of a stupid fault on Blogger where Youtube screens will keep dropping out of the bottom of posts. Does anyone know how to fix this one either?  
*****

Secret Life of the Manic-Depressive

HAVE A LOOK AT THIS.

THE BRITISH actor Stephen Fry, himself a sufferer, made this groundbreaking 2-part documentary on bipolar disorder in 2006.

 It features two other bipolar celebrities, Carrie Fisher author of Postcards from the Edge and more famously Princess Leia in Starwars and Andy Behrman author of the bipolar memoir Electroboy.

Carrie Fisher really reminds me of my dead friend Lucky.

Part One



Part Two



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

Our Awesome Cosmos

I HAVE NEVER FELT further away from God than I do now.

Watching this, the vastness and the glory of things I could never understand, I try ~ and yet I can barely conceive of the Mind who stretches from these vast distances into infinity.

And I wonder, who am I in the scheme of things.

And will I ever be remembered?





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


BARBER'S ADAGIO FOR STRINGS 
sung by the choir of Trinity College, Cambridge


The visuals are by Nasa







If you want to see what originally put me in the "cosmic" mood, it was the Carl Sagan short film You are Here (Pale Blue Dot) from the bottom of yesterday's post...

Desperately Seeking An Alternative to Methadone...

I JUST FOUND OUT I live three minutes from a "major shopping area". What? Loads of shops selling untaxed under-the-counter tobacco? And anything you like, as long as the packaging is in Polish? Well if that's major, then maybe I do...

I have been desperately keying things into google to try and find an alternative to methadone treatment. Before you say: Subutex/Suboxone is NOT an alternative for me. When I tried it my sleep shrivelled down to 4 hours per night, every night. Two weeks later it was still at 6 hours max. All this is a really good way of triggering a manic episode, because it always starts with reduced sleep, (eventually shrivelling to about 6 hours, once every three days. Or about 2 to 2.5 hours a night, on sleeping pills.)

I do not want to play with my mental equilibrium as well as experimenting with ways better than methadone of getting clean.

The problem isn't that there are no or few alternatives: every opiate and opioid out there ~ including heroin itself (that is, prescription diamorphine) ~ could be used to treat heroin addiction. The issue is that the government of the UK does not want to tackle this problem, has no coherent strategy, and just wants to sweep the whole issue under the carpet.

If methadone were really so brilliant, you wouldn't see the same pattern in almost all users: when they're short on money, they'll stick to their scripts willingly. When money comes, the first thing they do is score more heroin. I'm sorry, but this is just the way it is.

A true treatment would obviate the DESIRE to use on top. Methadone has never helped with this. Ever.

The research shows (of course) that prescribing heroin to heroin addicts reduces all use "on top" significantly. And that the savings in crime and criminal justice are enormous. (By the way you can test whether somebody is using street heroin on top of a pharmaceutical heroin script, because street heroin contains impurities the pharmaceutical grade stuff does not...)

Last year, I went weeks on end without dabbling in heroin. Problem was, I was having a psychotic episode at the same time, the most marked symptom of which was a severely elevated mood. I actually went higher than I've ever gone on crack. And that is saying something. Which probably partly explains my extreme vehemence against drugs at that time (why spend on drugs when you're higher than drugs already?)

So I have bipolar mental issues complicating this matter badly.

I don't know what to do. Really, I'd like to go on "MSTs" (that is, extended-release morphine pills). Or DFs (dihydrocodeine). Both are used in this country, and on the NHS, yes both to treat heroin addiction. Only finding the former is about as likely as finding a hen's tooth on your doorstep in the morning. And the latter seems to be used mainly in police stations and (sometimes) prisons. The main problem with DFs is, you have to take them every four hours and if you forget you'll rapidly start feeling dire. Morphine just sounds bad, especially to people who don't realize that methadone is actually FAR MORE DANGEROUS.

Ukh I don't know what to do.

One tiny, twinkling ray of hope comes from Australia, where researchers have discovered a way of blocking the immune system's response to morphine, that may actually prevent morphine addiction (and therefore heroin addiction) ever occurring...

Technorati: new treatment for morphine addiction...

Peter Biskind ~ methadone kills twice as many per year as heroin

If you don't believe methadone is extremely hard to come off, have a look at some of these... the first few out of 39,348 posts on the subject...




QUENCH: DREAMS
This doesn't properly get going until 2min44 into it but it's still v good...




THIS IS SOMETHING REALLY SPECIAL
I found it via DJ Juno's blog.
She used to DJ at the parties I used to go to...
This isn't a techno track though. You have to watch and listen. The words are spoken by Carl Sagan...