TIRED, and when I rest, depressed.This is what happens. I mean I'm OK. I'm moving forward. but when I stop, I realize things don't feel as well as I'd hoped they would.
I wanted to post this today to mark where I am on My Great Journey.
But it's hard to know what to put.
My goals are clear. They haven't altered since the bleary dawn of my time, which happened around 2006. I'd say that New Era began in earnest when I took up blogging. Blogging gave confidence. Knowing that I'm communicating electronically with ordinary folk around the world gave me far more confidence in my powers to communicate on paper. I was flattered to be told I can write well, because my first perogative has always been to write clearly. If I can express myself clearly and with eloquence, then surely I'm doing good (or well).(!)
My goal now, of course, is to get a book out of my addiction, a book that I hope will be successful enough to let me physically move on from this terrible half-life I'm stuck in now. It would also give me a platform to speak about one of the great social evils of our age ~ an issue that Something needs to be done about, but no-one has the vision or the courage to put a workable solution forward. Somebody needs to stand up and show the way. And if no-one else is going to do it, and I get the chance, I shall make sure that person is me!My other big goal has always been to depart Britain in favour of more stimulating shores. I don't care where I go just as long as it's different. I'm fed up of this country and the idea of paying taxes to Gordon Brown makes me physically nauseous!
Originally I was thinking Vienna or Berlin or Amsterdam: and I still want to see those places. I also long to see new York. Every time the place comes on telly I feel a yearning... I won't set my heart on any one place though. Just as long as I get out I'll be happy!You cannot travel with a drug habit. And drug tourism is not my style ~ hiding holed up in foreign hotel rooms trying to convince yourself nobody knows what's going on, too paranoid to venture outside and in terror of the barbaric third world police. No thanks! Travel ought to be about freedom and there's precious little freedom where hard drugs are involved.
I absolutely must clean up before I can do anything.
I successfully dumped crack cocaine at New Year's 2009. I'm not generally into New Year's Resolutions but I made one then and stuck to it ~ with three exceptions in eleven months.
But what I still haven't mastered is the art of living heroin-free. I'm already at the stage where if I take heroin, it doesn't do an awful lot. If I sit still and take it I fall asleep. but if I keep moving most people don't seem to notice anything amiss.Over and over I've gone round in my head, trying to convince myself that if I can just leave the stuff behind, I'll be free and can move on to some sort of bright future...
In my book, almost inevitably where there is heroin there is scunge and desperation. Real life, straight life, straightforward life is as mysterious to my characters as speaking fluent Japanese. Millions of people in Japan seem to manage it and get along fine. But to them it's so hugely difficult they give it up as impossible...
I refuse to be like these people ~ stuck in their ways. Mired in the constant gloomy rounds of active addiction. Not nice!
When people try to be grown up and mature, they risk falling into the trap of talking about drug addiction as a life choice. Of course the first experimentation is a choice, and a desperate or foolhardy one at that. But to the hardened addict, using drugs is no longer any kind of meaningful "choice" ~ the drugs are used automatically, whatever the circumstances. This is what NA mean by the phrase "powerless over our addiction". The one choice an addict has is NOT to take the drugs.And that's the choice I want to go for. I keep telling myself that if I will only take this first step, I will walk somewhere wonderful that I can't even conceive of now. I'm telling myself I have to take the step otherwise I might never get anywhere... but I don't. And I don't. And I so much want to break free it hurts...
CARLY SIMON ~ COMING AROUND AGAIN
I love this song. This could be the motto for my life...
Sorry the picture's not too good. The synth sound comes out lovely. Top tune!
I specially like the line:
...Scream the lullaby...
Did you know Carly Simon is daughter of Richard L Simon, co-founder of Simon & Schuster publishing in New York..?
Illustrations: top ~ I wonder what this symbolizes, ahem?!?; New York City ~ wondrous by night; drug tourism ~ not good; crack cocaine ~ successfully knocked on head; drugs are endemic in our society ~ yet that vicious circle must still be smashed!
