Drink Update Sunday

15:04 I'm kind of drinking but not liking it. I had no drink in the morning, longwalked to Iceland to get my £2 chunky Family Steak Pie and kept thinking "I don't need alcohol, I don't need heroin, I don't need anything, I'm OK" then I kept thinking about the drink and thought "OK well just get one then" which I did and it spent an uncannily long time unopened ~ over half an hour, which is not like me. Usually I crack it open on the street, then have to be real nice when police stop me. (They don't like people glugging alcohol in public, even from a Soft Drinks Bottle...) So if I can, I'm making this my one for the day. Knowing what I'm like I cannot be confident in this, as I'll tend to go to 2, as I said. But more than 2 I'm sure I will not do, not today. ("Just for today"). I got a phone call from my old heroin dealer yesterday. I didn't answer. Got a text from another saying will I taste some food for him (no). So I'm still off heroin. Still off drugs of an illegal nature. Still ON drugs of a legal nature: methadone; risperidone (both daily) and zopiclone 7.5mg as required. I had one last night after staying up well past 11pm. Dropped it. Sleeping like a baby by midnight. Yummmy stuff. I only ever daydreamed or loved or obsessed over sleeping pills TO SLEEP. Not to "light the tedium of the protracted evening" as Sylvia Plath said. She also said "their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good". Mine are white, so I'm OK on that score..!

Man I just checked that drink, nearly ALL there! Such a guzzler me, aren't I!!

THIS is why I wasn't too hot on going to AA instead of as well as NA. People hear that I drink, but my problem is OPIATE ADDICTION. That's the core problem. Drink only ever was a gear-intensifier and a bit of Dutch courage for begging.

As I told the dr., it makes me feel a bit better in depression. When ultra-hyper it barely does anything. Probably it takes the edge off. If say I slammed a glass into a wall in that state it would be my hyperosity NOT the drink doing that. I've drank enough over enough time to know how I behave on drink, and it's not like that! Also I was down to my bare minimum 2 on most days. Not drunk, by any means.

I know I'm walking a fine line that sounds like excuses here. I have to note down the facts for my own recollection. I WANT OFF DRINK ALL TOGETHER. I was told to cut down in stages, not just come off, which is why I can't just dump it. Though I'd sorely love to just do that, I also know I'm an addict. Which means I'm into associations. And the best association I can use to get OFF is to use a mixer and switch gradually to neat mixers with no booze. Does that make sense...? Somebody who knows please advise.

"An addict on their own is in bad company". (NA saying.)

"The heart is deceptive above all things". (Biblical quotation.)

I'll leave it there (another NA saying).



LEONA LEWIS: FIRST TIME EVER I SAW YOUR FACE
Nick inspired this choice with his Peter Paul and Mary video



LEONA LEWIS: see how pretty she sings? She's in the Streisand-Houston league though to listen to her singles you wouldn't believe it... Illustrated: not even I have this many empties (was this person a Diet Coke fan..?!?, Seconal 100mg (1960s sleeping pill); empty coctail glass (depressing)


Sylvia Plath: INSOMNIAC is here.
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/sylviaplath/1402
Brings me up in goosebumps it's so fine.

About pills: ...
... A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.

And re nighttime brooding...
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.


19:34: Note to self: GABA supplements and XXXXXXX Disorder
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/nutritional-supplements-for-bipolar-disorder/
Not that I have XXXXXXX Disorder. I don't, I have no diagnosed mental disorders (apart from depression) and certainly not that one.

Happy

WHEN I WAS VERY LITTLE, some of my favourite children's characters were The Mr Men by Roger Hargreaves. He drew in a style I could emulate... The Mr Men (and later Little Miss) characters were each named after some human attribute or habit or characteristic that endeared (or annoyed). Or both.

There was the tiny Mr Small. The accident-prone bandage-sporting Mr Bump. Wavy-armed Mr Tickle. Crazy Mr Topsy Turvy. Capacious-mouthed Little Miss Chatterbox ...

But my favourite, right from the very start, was sunny yellow Mr Happy. I wonder why!

I had a wind-up Mr Happy for my 7th or 8th birthday. I was so excited.

He smiled! And walked inanely on no matter what!

And eventually fell over! Or fell downstairs!!

Whether this is some kind of metaphor I frankly cannot be bothered to analyse...

Many years later (around 1988) the yellow smiley face would take on an altogether different connotation as the logo of "Acid House" ~ where drug-fuelled electro music was played in giant deserted warehouses ... and on the Spanish "party isle" of Ibiza. But in 1988 I was 16 and taking my GCSEs (lower school certificate, taken by 16 year olds). The idea of crowding to a deserted railway tunnel or barn full of "trendy" people on Ecstasy was a total anathema to me. (Until I was persuaded to pop the pill and see for myself what it was all about.) But that only happened a couple of years later.

And far from holding keys to any sort of lasting happiness that first "E" and that "Wow! So THIS is why people take drugs!!" moment actually sowed the first seed in my chemically-induced downfall.

Ho-hummmmm....

In 2009, rights to the Mr Men and Little Miss series of books and character merchandising rights were bought out by the British "entertainment group" Chorion for £28 million (about $42 million) ~ and that must surely have made Mr Hargreaves' lucky offspring very happy indeed!


MR HAPPY (spoof)



LEONA LEWIS ~ Happy



MR HAPPY ~ official Mr Men cartoon!



D MOB ~ ACIEED

And a Trotterdonkey New Year...!

HAPPY 2010! ...!



Everything continues from before. Nothing in 2010 is new, because the seeds for everything were sown last year or before ("as ye sow, so shall ye reap"). 2010 marks an entire decade lost to heroin. It is always very difficult to date when the problem started because I was messing about with the drug intermittently for quite some years before I ever got truly addicted. (Indeed it was these early experiences and how easily I quit, like quitting smoking that gave me a very false impression of how serious and all-encompassing heroin addiction actually WAS.) Having said that these "dabblings" were only a mere three or four years at longest. (I could go months at a time without using... although the intervening intervals got shorter and shorter and shorter of course...) And before THAT (which I failed to realize for many years even constituted the same story) there was drug experimentation ~ in quite severe depressive states where NO sane person would experiment with drugs like LSD... all in all I have a drug history approaching 20 years. And right from the start I was being called a smackhead. Those people were joking because none of us used heroin. But they saw something in me...

So it's all about turning corners. I'm bored of this life. Utterly bored. So it's time to move on...

I hope everybody had a nice time last night. What did yous all do? Did anyone drink too much? Did anyone go out and yet not drink at all?...?

Boy George the reformed heroin addict (who has long been on the European DJ circuit) ~ just released from prison following a drug-frazzled attack on a gay escort ~ so he has more reason than most to steer clear of intoxicating substances ~ has opened a London club where NOBODY DRINKS OR TAKES DRUGS AT ALL!

And apparently a good time is had by all..!

I think I might go...

Oh well, I just trawled for George's alcohol-free clubnight... it seems he's still on a curfew (and says he lost £400,000 by not being allowed to appear on Celebrity Big Brother because of this ~ where is the sense in criminal justice STOPPING CRIMINALS EARNING AN HONEST LIVING? Ridiculous!



And NOW HERE WE GO: MY (selective) 2010 PREDICTIONS FOR THE NEXT DECADE!

~ crime and disorder and social breakdown spreads

~ climate problems increase. Food shortages (in selected items) become the norm

~ another terrorist atrocity of 9/11 magnitude in London, New York or somewhere of that ilk

~ civil liberties completely eroded in pursuit of these terrorists ~ utterly chucking baby out with bathwater..!

~ younger generation become increasingly rude, ignorant and intimidating. Especially in UK. Good manners become "old skool" thing of the past...

~ United States and Britain to become financially as well as morally bankrupt, due to bad business models and unresolved ridiculous borrowing crisis

~ Moral standards fall through the floor: e.g. Hollywood to incorporate hardcore porn into (some) mainstream movies

and so on and so on. Happy new year folks!!





SNOW PATROL: CHASING CARS
You might think you don't know this song, but trust me you surely do!
It got named Song Of The Decade on last night's cultural roundups. Well worth a click:



LEONA LEWIS: RUN
Snow Patrol had never had a UK #1 until Leona did this cover ~



Illustrated: Trotterdonkey and furry foals; No U-Turns!; this is what LSD looks like ~ 4 trips are about the size of a small postage stamp (and that's what I took, all at once, the first time I ever "dropped" the stuff. Lovely..!); Boy George...