AKH! ALCOHOL. Alcohol alcohol. I've drunk past a week's worth of alcoholic units in the past 24 hours. Her Majesty's Chief Medical Officer suggests I may safely drink 28 units, that's 280mls neat alcohol, in the course of a week. (Never a day.) Today I've had past 30, that's 300mls neat alcohol. 4 litres of white cyder. Akh. I am not proud.In my youth drink was the most boring drug known to man. (That is: known to me.) Never in a million years was I tempted to knock back spirits (or even beer) in the day. Even down the bar I was as happy with lemonade as beer. Alcohol-free beer was good for me. Strangely, the student bar didn't stock that one...
My point being: I was never much of a drinker. Yeah: I got drunk a couple of times. Cross-eyed and unable to walk drunk. Stomach scrubbed out with a Brillo pad because you haven't eaten all day and don't know how to take care of yourself drunk.
The worst hangover I ever had didn't correct itself for three days. I drank a lot of cyder that night.
(Cyder becomes a recurring theme.)
I only got into drink because I thought I needed Dutch courage to beg passers-by for money. My sign said "HUNGRY PLEASE HELP." I made sure I never ate before I went begging, so my sign was in every way true. I never ate in those days until last thing at night. One meal a day. I thought skeletal looked good. Looking back at nasty snapshots I looked like crap.
Of course I was begging because I was broke. I was broke because I was on heroin. Drink and heroin made ready partners. Right from the beginning my Big Complaint about gear was that it was no longer doing it for me.
That was a big reason I put myself into rehab. I didn't appreciate just how much gear actually did until I took it away. Then I started to fall apart in an ugly way. Then I ran screaming back to the gear and all its fluffy cosiness.
And that was why I could never tolerate methadone. A friend once told me 60mg was equivalent to a £10 bag IV. At the time I thought: Nah, 60mg's worth way more than that. The druggieclinic give out 10mg to equate £10 gear (0.2g) as standard. But that's ridiculous. All these years later I can accept: my friend was right. When the gear was good, I could barely hold myself on 100mg. That was without a script ie I had no double habit. I would sweat heavily, even go into cramps on methadone at "high doses".
The methadone I bought came in the form of Physeptone pills. There was no question of anybody interfering with it. (Street-bought "juice" is very often watered, if only slightly.)
It wasn't until this Great Heroin Drought that methadone ever held me properly. Certainly better than the crap-arse gear going around a few weeks ago. Way better.
So as heroin's hold has faded, alcohol's has tightened. And I want out. I need out. I've had enough of intoxicating substances. It's time to go it alone.
I don't know how I'll do it, but it's time.
