For years I never took responsibility for anything. All I took was heroin first, drink second, crack third, Valium when it came my way. My four drugs of choice.
All in all I got in a mighty mess. I haven't opened any mail in months, except when someone phones me to say mail is coming. Why bother? it only ever contains threats and I was not together enough to deal with the council tax or anything else. The solicitor wants to put me down as Severely Mentally Impaired. This just means mentally ill. I don't want to be mentally ill so that one never got anywhere.You know I even got criticized just now for having looked up the symptoms of my own illness! How can I take responsibility for anything if I don't know what I'm dealing with?
As I said, I do regret having seen that NutNut dr a few weeks ago. What happened was, on Tuesday the week before I started hearing voices. I thought this was dodgy heroin and laughed it off. On Thursday I stopped taking heroin and switched to methadone. I was in no way withdrawing as I had enough methadone at home to take in divided doses, so I never felt the slightest cluck at all. Add to the fact that the heroin had gone pitifully weak due to a drought (though it was full of ultra-powerful downers) and methadone held me well. On Friday I woke up feeling absolutely vile. I couldn't summon energy to get out of bed for four hours. Then when I did I forced myself in the shower and to the methadone pharmacy. Someone sent me an email that afternoon and I was laughing my head off, I thought "that's good I'm not depressed any more". By midnight I really felt tired as if I hadn't slept in years but my head was beginning to race quickly and more to the point I was now hearing voices loudly. I didn't sleep at all. In fact I went two and a half days without any sleep it was absolutely impossible. My hearing went incredibly loud. I could hear every thing in every room of my house and on the street.
People were babbling at me everywhere. Music. words. When I opened a door, the door said "hello!" and told me to buy some peaches. By this time I was getting very paranoid. I had to go out the next day to get methadone and everyone was spitting and swearing at me on the street. When I got home I tried to sleep but could see the most vivid pictures behind my eyes. I felt euphoric one minute, suicidal the next. At one point I couldn't tell whether I was thinking or hearing because all I heard was voices voices everywhere saying different things. I was negative of all drugs by this point, I wasn't even drinking. Eventually I did have 2 cyders, just to prove this wasn't DTs. On Sunday I did eventually sleep for what felt like years, but it was only four hours or so. I woke up with a fascinating radio programme on. Got up and the radio was still playing in the bathroom. Then I realized it was just another of those voices. I got an hour's sleep on Monday then angrily phoned my Mum, who had seen the state I was in 2 weeks before and been horrified (high on heroin and benzos). So she was in touch with my worker. I didn't even know my worker's name so my Mum did the phoning. A while later I was rushing off my face on crack which I was convinced the drug service had spiked me with. I hadn't taken any coke at all. By that afternoon I was catatonically depressed, curled up in a ball and more disoriented than I've ever been. A few hours later my mood went rushing back up and I was on top of the world. The problem with all this apart from the confusion and paranoia was that I just could not function. It took over an hour to decide to go out, get keys together and actually leave as I was distracted by everything. In shops I couldn't handle change. The action of moving my hand, counting money and handing it over within a few seconds was too much. I eventually used the laundrette but again had to be helped with change, filling the machine etc I was cabbaged. I wasn't on drugs, I wasn't in drug withdrawal. I was on methadone which kept me fine. This stuff was mental. On Thursday I saw the psychiatrist as I knew something had gone very wrong. Even though I felt good most of the time at the peak of the madness I've never been so terrified. It's one thing to be tripping because you've dropped acid, quite something else to be hallucinating on nothing. Acid lasts 12 hours or so. This went on for days on end. When I saw the doctor I thought I was OK. This is not what the dr thought. His questions revolved around antipsychotics, schizophrenia and whether I wanted to be in hospital. I almost regret saying no. So this weird state happened and took a good ten days to wear off. Afterwards I was just confused. I banned myself from looking up anything to do with mental health and stuck by this until the weirdness had receded. Then I did go Googling and matched time and again "bipolar disorder: mixed psychotic mania". Lovely. I'm not saying this is what was wrong with me, I'm saying I matched the descriptions. Every time.The same symptoms started coming back a week or two ago but they were nowhere near as intense and I plummeted into depression which is where I am now. I spend a lot of time online as it's the only thing that distracts me from how I feel. No I am not looking up mental health shit. Psychiatry is the most boring of all subjects to read on unless you're looking for a specific answer.
So now I don't know what to do. I'm drinking only 2 cans 1 litre. No heroin today. I only crave it because I feel miserable and that's how I fixed misery for years on end. I don't feel motivated to do anything exciting. I've decided to do a bit of cleaning as it's 4am and I'm wide awake.
I can't do this voluntary work yet. As it was tactfully pointed out to me, it's a very nice idea but I do need to be a bit more together before I try something like that.
I haven't just been lazy, I've gone to such an extreme I was almost paralysed. I never engaged with anything or anyone. The ONE thing I kept going was my blog. But being able to tell you something doesn't mean I'm doing very much. I started shoving myself in the shower again, but before that I'd gone weeks without bothering to wash properly or wash my hair. I didn't care what anyone thought and was glad to have people stay away from me.So there we have it. Yes I am self obsessed (and who isn't). At least when I do that I don't know who I'm obsessing about. I feel like a glassfish. Almost invisible.
So apart from this giving up drink and not taking heroin, what do I do? My head is distracted by random words coming in. They come in from outside, I can point to the direction they come from. The last phrases I heard were "give it a mole" and "Orla Geerin" (BBC Middle East correspondent). I also hear my name coming from the London buses.
No I'm not saying I'm mad, but I AM sane enough to realize this isn't strictly "normal" to most people. It never happened to me till I was in my 20s. Maybe I'm psychic.
The guy downstairs, the one I DO get on with is on exactly the same wavelength as me and he says I should stop dressing like a tramp (that is a hobo, not a prostitute). But I like my cigarette burned clothes. At least I don't have to worry about messing them up.I suppose I ought to go to bed as I need a sleep pattern back. But what do I do when I'm awake?
Here are my own suggestions:
1. Keep drink to a max 2 cans (1 litre) a day. That's 7.5 alcoholic units.
2. Don't use heroin
3. Keep self and clothes clean
4. Clean house, it's still not finished
5. Eat properly
and one last one, I didn't think of till I got a comment just now at 1:30pm from the Mistress of Mischief GO TO NA/AA!
That's about all I can manage. When I was doing that cleaning blitz I got so exhausted I slept 17 hours at a stretch. If there is something physically wrong I'm not getting
treatment anyway. I'm fed up of doctors. I still have very mixed feelings about having seen that psychiatrist. I thought I'd had a 2 day breakdown and was basically OK by the time I saw him. Looking back, I was not OK at all. I spent the waiting period pacing the entire length of the building; once inside the consulting room I was so hyper I was bouncing off the walls. I barely stopped talking the entire time I was in there. I dread to think what they're going to do to me next time. Have you seen Michael Caine's evil doctor character in Quills? I think the nice doctor will go and I'll be confined to a lunatic asylum under the auspices of somebody like that. I don't trust doctors.Now I've got to go it's 4:30am I'm supposed to be cleaning up or sleeping or something. I can't remember what.
Illustrated: unanswered mail; an Afrian pygmy hedgehog which I'd quite like as a pet (they're more popular in America where you don't get wild hedgehogs); a glassfish; smoking; the Marquis de Sade, played by Jeffrey Rush in Quills
This was one of my favourite tunes of the early 90s.
The sample is actually a man speeded up. It comes from an old garage track:
War and drugs are everywhere and it's getting so hard to breathe the air....
Now-eeeeeee, we live as one family
