The best advice I got came today from Jess the Mistress of Mischief and chimes in exactly with my doctor: CUT OUT ALL DRINK AND DRUGS FOR THREE MONTHS. Only after three months clean can they possibly tell what is you and what was and was not drink or drug-induced. Focus on the practicalities of life and the fact you're a problem drinker with a drug problem. In other words go to NA, go to AA. Frequently.Hey it's past 3pm and I'm wide awake. No sleep last night. My sleep pattern is in tatters and I used the wonders of caffeine to get me through the morning. It did make me very fidgety in the chemists and I'm convinced they thought I was on drugs. Well I was. Black coffee!!! I don't normally drink coffee and barely drink tea. I buy milk that goes off before it ever gets finished, unless I glug it down. I need to switch to tea anyway ~ as a substitute for alcohol. Soft drinks remind me of strong drink too much as I used the fruit flavoured ones as mixers (yes on white cyder ~ makes a budget alcopop, highly addictive!)
I spoke to my Mum today and she said something I thought very perceptive as it highlights the biggest problem I have. Forget any drug or medical terminology it's THIS more than anything that has turned my life into the ruin it is today. And the drugs made it far, far worse. It impossible to explain why I do this and I know junkies get this a lot. My Mum remembers it going back to when I was about four and calls it "autistic". I'm not sure that's the word but what do I care. To be frank I'm amazed she was perceptive enough to notice it's going on, considering she doesn't live with me and it's this:~
I live my life on a constant loop. I have things I do every day and these things I do without too much trouble. The loop is like a railway line with only a few stations. The train goes round and round and only stops at those stations, so I only do the stuff that's in this loop. Anything out of the ordinary involving planning or going anywhere unfamiliar or meeting someone new brings on the worst stress, in fact for a long time I basically avoided ANYTHING out of my limited routine. This includes good stuff as well as bad. When I got sent a parcel I only just made it to the post office in time to pick it up before it got returned to sender. I wouldn't blame my family for being offended at this seeming Don't Care attitude. But it wasn't not caring, it was... something I cannot explain. You can call it laziness if you like. Bear in mind though that nobody who knows me in real life has ever called me lazy. I've been called a lot of things, lazy ain't among them.So this nameless thing, my dear readers, "autism" or whatever it is, is what I have to work on. The whys and wherefores are immaterial: I need to make it to go away. I didn't used to be that bad. But my Mum thinks it's a lifelong characteristic. This does not however mean that there's no hope.
I spent my entire adult life consciously working on changing myself ~ until drug addiction changed me beyond the point of self-help. I don't despair that this is insurmountable.
With the right degree of motivation and patience, anything is possible. Remember, I specialize in things that require unusual amounts of these qualities. You need them to write a book. And I have written books, even though they were crap. You need them to learn a foreign language. And I've learned a few (badly). All you need do is keep on and on and on in the correct direction no matter how discouraged you may feel, no matter how irrelevant to that particular day the activity may be, you still do it and you go on doing it every single day without fail. And then, in maybe not too long, you'll look back and realized you've done something you never dreamed possible.Now those links. I don't really want to post these I'm so sick of words like "cocaine". But maybe someone somewhere will get some enlightenment from 'em:~
This explains what a mixed state is and isn't. If it can be established that a drug (or drug withdrawal) caused my cuckoo episode then it's called a "substance-induced mood disorder with mixed features"
Substance disorders.Substance-induced mood disorders.
How much cocaine required to cause psychosis?
Cocaine hallucinosis/psychosis.
Mixed bipolar state: http://www.gulfbend.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=11195&cn=4
Hypomania: a natural state to be in. Euphoric hypomania, which just means mild mania, is NOT an illness, it's merely a medical condition, like having three nipples. On its own it means nothing except that you're blessed with energy, charisma and creativity. But it does unfortunately tend to develop into full mania which is very different. Or to snap into depression, as this link explains: http://www.gulfbend.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=11194&cn=4
Mixed episode, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_episodes
Illustrated: beer; trainset, just like my life, running in circles; Chinese character for money; cocaine as I barely ever took it ~ in "rails" (I love that Americanism)
