I HAD A BEAUTIFUL MOOD SWITCH about 2 and a half hours ago (17:30 hrs). Suddenly from crying over the word schizoaffective and feeling shitty, without any warning, I felt like I'd had a fat line of best charlie* and was ping bling BLIING yeah! Up. Not really really up but a bit hypomanic.
Which I now know I really was when I thought I might be but wasn't sure and got totally lost in a pile of diagnostic tosh. I think this dr is right. He's a consultant psychiatrist who has seen me 4 or 5 times with no pretence or bullshit at all on my part especially the past 3 or 4 times (feels like 4; only recall 3) when I had have/was having a mental breakdown. And as he himself said differential diagnosis (ie what it is if it's not schizoaffective disorder rapid cycling bipolar type is type 1 bipolar, rapid cycle. No question at all about that.
Mania means far FAR more than just being in a good mood. It means being really quick and more to the point having loads of energy, especially mental energy. The symptoms of bipolar are like biorhythms; they go up and down but not all in sync which is how weird crossover states happen (like having loads of mental but no physical energy or being manic and in a shitty mood) manic also means irritable and volatile. Mania is NOT delirious happiness and bipolar doesn't mean switching between happy and sad. [Whoever it was said that wants shooting between the eyes!] It means switching between high and low energy. Fast and slow more than high and low. Extreme mania is frankly terrifying and nonsensical. That is what I was putting up with a few weeks ago when all the rave music appeared.
My main problem apart from living in utter chaos is that my memory has gone very poor, on antipsychotics as well as off, so I can't blame the pills (unfortunately). I don't know their side effects and don't want to. I'm not quite as obsessional and neurotic as I might appear to be. I don't cry out for help often until past the point of saving. Y'all need to bear in mind that in reading my blog you're reading my own journal, my sounding board to myself, so I say things here I wouldn't bang on about in real life, probably to anyone.
I told Valium Marilyn I was "bipolar" because I know she knows what that means. "Yeah but what do doctors know?" was her response and I agreed with her. I'm bipolar as in 2 poles, I accept that. All else I refuse to dwell on any more than you would. I have to go now, EastEnders is two thirds gone already ...
22:54 please someone comment something. tell me what the weather is like on the other side of the world, or indeed in London if you're here. is it freezing cold? i think no, Valium Marilyn thinks yes, I tell her "you're ill darling, it's fine" in fact I was wearing fewer clothes as spring is springing up up UP high HIGHER and HIGHER, lovely yummy high!
0222 i have just reluctantlz popped my antipsychotics; i took 1.5 instead of 2 because 2 gives me side effects, I'm going to crawl the dose up to 2. I know I shouldn't do this but the person prescribing them isn't having to take them so I'm doing all I can. I don't want to take any frankly as I know I'd be going pretty full-on without them as it is I'm only mildish manic but I feel fantastic when I go with it, like I'm conducting music, bashing a tennis ball back and forth in technicolor hyperspace... mmmmm:
*(Charlie is cocaine.)
02:27 THIS SOUNDS pretty slow music compared to the HARDCORE RAVE i've had bangin away in my head but still it brings back the day mid-late 80s:~~~~~~~
I'VE BEEN ROOTING AROUND FOR THE OLD HOSPITAL SCRIPT for 7 zopiclone 7.5s which I may or may not have told you was duff, as in it's only valid at a hospital pharmacy and i was way too out of it even if they told me to take in that little baby, make it to the pharmacy and get the pills, like i said i was seeing visions that day and the walls were talking and i was fast fast fast it was all i could do to get me, keys and a bus pass in the same place; in fact i had to buy a new oyster card as i couldn't find the old one.
That was the week I got left with no money because I just couldn't find the cashcard. And this is the type of shit I'm meant to remember for that Form of Shame the Government Don't want me to fill in because they take the piss. Instead of awarding it automatically to everyone it applies to they prey on the vulnerable and fucked up knowing they won't get this very complicated form signed by however many people need to sign it (not just me) and properly filled in etc etc. Yet when I owe them a million pounds in tax what will they do to me if I don't cough up? Well that's what should happen to them, that Cameron should be in Broadmoor anyway.
Cameron is the prime minister. Broadmoor is a prison for the criminally insane. All politicians should be ECTd compulsorily and given a thousand milligrams methadone a day IV for a year. Then it should be withdrawn without notice. Then the drug policy in this country will mysteriously alter. Prescription heroin will appear from nowhere. Addicts will get proper treatment. And all because those bastards want to end their OWN suffering. They don't give two hoots about you or me. To be frank, I'd rather have the Queen running the country than those tossers. It is after all Her Majesty's Government. So why doesn't she govern? The PM kowtows to her. When I'm PM I'm chucking her out of Buckingham Palace, crowning myself emperor and having seven stories and four new wings added I'll also get Windsor Castle doubled in size and charge the Queen inheritance tax going back to 1900 on Sandringham and Balmoral. If aristocrats should lose their estates to death duties, so should the Queen.
Anyway I'm looking for this script for sleeping pills. Because they made a mess of it I just scored zopiclone on the street. 6 for £10, a ripoff price but I was in no fit state to get to that nuthouse and back, it's miles away.
I'm phoning them up if I ever find it and checking it's valid and cashing it today. I could do with a long walk. I can't score zoppies because I literally do not have a penny. I tell a lie I have 2p on me; I spent my very last on a pint of milk. I'm broke because I thought I had loads of money in the bank when I had 60p.
I feel nauseated and ill from lack of sleep but my GP told me lack of sleep isn't anything to worry about and that you get as much as you need, so I'm fine not going to bed for a few days if I don't want to. See I got all this advice from qualified drs who do 7 years' training so I don't need sleep. The prissy bitch who was my worst ever GP advised me that.
I'm phoning Valium Marilyn in a sec. She's in tears because she lost her own PO card. I said "darling I will get you the money you can have mine" she's still crying. Her daughter had about five abortions in a year (well that's the way she told it) and she was crying over them like nobody's business.
10:00 OK I'm going to Valium Marilyn's now she's giving me 90p oh man I really feel like i'm going to puke my guts up what's wrong with me? I've only drank tea with milk and hot chocolate no alcohol and cauliflower cheese with the fries i had left and a can of beans so iv'e not had anything weird loosing sleep doesn't cause nausea does it? i feel absolutely done in but my dr said it's absolutely fine to get sleep deprivation and she must be righ the bitch is a dr that 's m y old dr and that's sarcasm btw ok i gotta run her son's coming back soon he's been out eeeeing or whatever kids do these days. meowing probably
Illustrated: the post office account card that mine has no money on and Marilyn's is lost so I'm phoning up in a sec to get her a new one she's having a real good cry about her anaemia and her grandson she was in hospital not long ago for physical exhaustion she really hasn't been well
I was depressed and stressed and my life is a mess. My house is a mess, but I'm cleaning that up. I'm a mess but that job is near undoable. Notice I say near. Because I will do it, no matter how hard or long the job.
I didn't sleep on Sunday night so I felt crap yesterday. Due to tireness I started hallucinating again, but not very much, and only mildly. That's the only good thing about sleep deprivation, mentally spinning sideways. I never thought there was unything unusual about this wandering my tired brain does, until it wandered right out of my skull, down the road, hopped on the tube, flew from Heathrow to America and Cape Kenaveral ~ then blasted up to the moon a couple of weeks ago! The fellow astronauts, by the way, apparently just thought it was a weird kind of experimental walnut blobbering about in zero gravity with them ...
My friend Valium Marilyn is depressed too. She hasn't been at all well. She's hibernating on pills in front of an enormous widescreen television.
I asked her whether she wanted to score Valium, but it was down to me to get it and there's been a lot of fake about, I didn't want that responsibility. I'm pretty sure the last lot I got was fake. Unless you can get tolerance on 10mg a day, 5 days a week, all throughout the second week, the pills were duff. So I got 6xtemazepam 20mg for far more than I considered reasonable, but I thought what the heck, it's better than heroin.
Then I didn't take ANY pills and slept from 4pm until 2am. Went to bed. Slept through till 9:30am. Didn't want to get up. Slept another 2 hours. Woke up at 11:30am. That's a good 19 hours' under. Fast asleep. Without any drugs or pills or excessive methadone. I didn't need methadone when I woke, but I took it, to avoid Heroin-craving.
When Heroin crosses my mind now I just think of the Misery I'm moving away from. No visualization is required. I associate Heroin with Homelessness, Poverty and Misery.
Heroin did hold me together better than anything else has done. So the Depression-type misery I feel now is just me without Heroin. In the end I felt it with or without Heroin anyway. Heroin took the edge off, there's no doubt about that. But it didn't even do that well in the end. That's how I knew it was time to stop.
I used an outside event, a drought. Originally I assumed that this would be a False Paradise. That if good gear ever does come back, I'd go right back to it. But that's not necessarily true at all.
For months going on years I had genuinely wanted OUT. I just couldn't get out. Now I am out, albeit thoroughly dependent on methadone, I'm staying out. I also obtained enough clarity to realize people DO stop heroin due to outside forces. Marianne Faithfull ODd herself, fell down a flight of stairs, broke her jaw and went from hospital to rehab. No painkillers. She was in such pain, but assumed this was just the pain of living without drugs. Then they realized a splint of bone was unset and had to put something resembling a guitar sproket to tighten the broken jawbone. That the pain of a broken bone can ever be taken as "normal" should tell you something, if you don't know, about how hard life actually is for an addict without opiates.
Example 2 is from another memoir: Kate Holden's In My Skin*. This is very slickly written and ultra-succinct (due perhaps to a good editor, I don't know how much she edited herself). Though it's a very good read, in a way the story is annoying in that she skates over certain issues, never lost anyone she loved thanks to drugs, never ODd, never had an abscess and so on. She never ponders her personal failings. She explains pretty well the descent into addiction but is unable to explain how she came out. Perhaps that is inexplicable. I can't explain why I don't want heroin, either. But her turning point was that she and her boyfriend were on methadone anyhow but using heavily on top. Around Xmas, she told her boyfriend, who depended on her utterly to pay for his drugs, that she was going to her family for a week. She continued working at a fairly upmarket brothel daily. One morning she awoke with him in the room. She told him to get lost and he did. But not before fishing all her money and a week's supply of Heroin out of her bag. And away! Personally I think this served her right, and she never offers a protestation to the contrary. But she did use it as her Turning Point. To take the methadone, carry on working. Stick to the juice, with one aberration, and keep working as the methadone went to zero then nothing. The money she saved paid for a long trip to Europe.
So there we have it. It is possible to take an Opportunity and harness a willingness you never truly believed you had. No matter how much damage or devastation it has caused elsewhere, you can use a disaster to your own advantage.
If I'm not living proof enough, imagine BMelons clucking through that hurricane!
The only other thing that happened yesterday was the Broadband Goblin stole my internet stick, and scurried off down the high street singing "Skippadeedoodar-skippadee-day!" hopped on the Chinese Takeaway roof, said something extremely obscene in Cantonese and then vanished. Not that Gledwood would be stupid enough to put a computer dongle in a pocket with a hole in, or anything... So I had to get a new one for nearly £40 from Argos. Considering £40 used to buy a gram and a bit of heroin, and that this was usually gone well within a day unless I carefully hid some from myself, I'm not too upset about shelling out £40 ($60US).
And I still have 6 sleeping pills, untouched.
Anna Grace is having a **** time over "near" Chicago (Wisconsin). Depressed too. Very depressed. I hope it's soon GONE Anna.
*You should be able to read a bit of In My Skin by clicking here. Without launching into a big critique of the book, it provoked a mixed reaction in me, but it is still one of the best drug-memoirs I've read. The UK edition looks like this.
You can read BMelons' memoir extract 1 here (heroin sickness). And extract 2 here.
Am I the only one watching that dreadful Holy Land Xmas story tripe on BBC and loathing it? Are they actually trying to make it a parody of the Life of Brian? Everyone has issues. Everybody’s miserable. I have a suspicion every character came with a social-worker file type “backstory” detailing how their mother didn’t love them. Lots of unholy conflict. Even the three wise men are borderline arguing… Akh Xmas! Doncha love it. I’m off for more Morrisons Best Mince Pies. Yumyumyumyumyummmmm!
Did/does nobody like Rebecca Ferguson, by far the most superior contestant ever to appear on the X-Factor? If Beautiful wasn't good enough, here's Candle in the Wind, Show 7
I'M not feeling well. Not at all. Every day I'm in bed early, drained, exhausted and sick. Last night Valium Marilyn and I went down the pub and got bladdered enough that she proposed marriage. But I felt so bad I had to leave before ten o'clock to go to my bed.
Today I was supposed to go to counselling. I hobbled to and from my methadone chemists already and the phone rang. My counsellor asked what time I wished to come in. I said midday, then regretted agreeing to anything. I wove my way home feeling as if I might keel over any second. Then I went to bed, phoned the Centre and said I was not up to coming in.
This has nothing to do with drugs. If you remember my story you'll remember I had chronic fatigue syndrome YEARS before heroin addiction. Heroin seemed a wonderful cure for this and the depression that has dogged me for years. Heroin came second. Something Maple Syrup, for example, the druggieworker I sacked, refused to understand.
I have the feeling that this counsellor will likewise assume I'm not coming in because I was too drugged/couldn't be bothered/that type of reason.
These professionals annoy me. It's all nodding yes yes yes to all my problems. Yet when when my problems interfere with THEIR convenience, sympathy's quickly out the window.
I'm off sick and yet I'm not even allowed to BE sick. Well the world can go to hell...
None of this will stop me doing what I have to. I can write in bed. If my head's swimming that badly I have to shut my eyes, I'm still capable of typing. I can type eyes closed, by touch.
I don't want to say much about my project. It's for doing, not talking about.
And I cannot see that it will make me megabucks.
Somehow my comments (Wednesday) got on to the theme of publishing advances. As I said I really cannot think about how little I might get. Or how much writers are paid at the top end of the profession. It's devastatingly offputting.
Literature in an art; publishing is a business. I'm in the business of writing. The ins and outs of royalties, advances (if they even exist, I wouldn't know) and the blah blah blahs... these do my brainbox in whenever I turn my attention in that direction.
So I'm resolutely NOT thinking about how little I'm likely to be paid.
I am ever more fed up with heroin and methadone and addiction to them. But I cannot quit into a vacuum. Which is why I stated that I'm NOT into giving up the drugs and all right now.
As I see it, just about anything I can do will be better than nothing. Accomplishing a dearly held childhood dream might be just about the best thing I could ever do.
What's the saying...? The longest journey begins with a single step.
Whenever I think of my story, I feel inspired. I still feel horrible and depressed. Physically I feel ill and exhausted. I am going to bed early because my head's swimming. Not with drugs, with exhaustion. But I have this tale inside me of such amazingness, it DEMANDS to be told!
I have been stuck in this morass for years and it's killing me. It's time to move on.
My only hope is that this first step might be followed by another... and another...
... then one day I might look back and find myself a thousand miles away from the mire I'm stuck in now!
Which I now know I really was when I thought I might be but wasn't sure and got totally lost in a pile of diagnostic tosh. I think this dr is right. He's a consultant psychiatrist who has seen me 4 or 5 times with no pretence or bullshit at all on my part especially the past 3 or 4 times (feels like 4; only recall 3) when I had have/was having a mental breakdown. And as he himself said differential diagnosis (ie what it is if it's not schizoaffective disorder rapid cycling bipolar type is type 1 bipolar, rapid cycle. No question at all about that. 
