12 HOURS' SLEEP! (No sleep yesterday night at all.)
I'm cutting out drink.
Yeah I know I said that before. I never had an immediate reason to do that.
Now I decided I'm going to work the steps at NA. I always thought you weren't meant to unless you were clean. Meaning not on methadone clean.
But I got a Narcotics Anonymous leaflet last night about the issues surrounding medication and see no reason why you cannot do the steps while on methadone. It's not like I'm rushing about scoring heroin any more. My life has changed.
Anybody who does NA for any length of time works through the 12 steps several times, so I can see no reason why not to do it the first time while still on methadone.
Miracles Do Happen!
Who knows what will become of me because of this...?
I KEEP GETTING MOOD SWINGS. I thought I was depressed earlier. I scored Valium, popped one blue one (10mg) and went to bed. Slept most of the afternoon. My risperidone is giving horrible side-effects you could describe as drowsiness except I can't sleep and Valium makes me feel way better. Alcohol does not. I'm telling the doc-doc.
From now on, until he tells me otherwise on my appointment on the 24th I'm taking both 2mg pills at midnight. Hopefully he'll change me to something else. Isn't quetiapine any good? Reading between the lines, and bearing in mind that the negative reports about quetiapine come from prison. American prison, which sounds crap as far as drugs go.
Not like British jail where gear is pretty widely used. In American jails of my grandparents' generation NUTMEGS were used as drugs. Nutmegs contain an MDA-like trippy E type substance. Apart from the nausea, vomting and diarrhoea it sounds like a really good trip, man. I mean if nutmegs are attractive in prison, quetiapine must be super-attractive. Reading between the lines I assume this means it doesn't give the bashed on the head with a frying pan feeling. People in jail were accused of drug-seeking behaviour when an antipsychotic was withdrawn. Quetiapine gives really good sleep. One thing you want in prison is sleep. And these people are accused of drug-seeking for wanting what we all want: a good night's sleep. America is one messed up country. (Of course Britain is not messed up at all (joke)). I know my dr. won't prescribe it. I knew when I came in I was destined whatever move I made to land rapidly in a checkmate situation. This is so obvious I probably didn't even post it. The Worst Is Bound To Happen.
The very nice lady psychiatrist in the Emergency Clinic mentioned LITHIUM which I REALLY DO NOT WANT. I'd do Valproate before lithium. Lithium requires blood-level testing. It makes you feel cold. It is toxic. It causes problems in focus, visual and mental. NOT what I want. Only good thing about lithium from what I hear is it's good with vinegar on fish and chips (tastes of salt).
My friend Mother Hubbs says she was on lithium before she switched to heroin. I noticed heroin was a fantastic mood-stabilizer. First thing I noticed (and this was before I knew Mother Hubbs) was that my previously tide-like moodswings had gone flat. I'd turned from the North Sea into an inland lake.
Now I'm like the Atlantic Ocean. if they do put me on stabilization crap I'd rather be like the Pacific. Still with tides and storms just not as bad. I'd hate to live on a flat line. That's what I hated most about heroin in the early to mid years. I never EVER woke up feeling happy, as I used to in my late 20s. My late 20s were the only time in my life when I got buzzing highs without drugs. Never happened in childhood, never happened as a young young adult. Only as I say in my late 20s.
Then later in my gear-using "career" I realized I felt hyped up without crack and crack was the only stimulant I used. I still felt hyped up after giving it up! Not all the time, episodically. I also got mildly depressed and horribly depressed on different occasions. I'm fed up of fighting my own moods they have become a real huge issue and have got bad enough that I hear voices, get paranoia, look like I've been dragged through a hedge backwards and live in a dump during the worst parts. Now I have to clean up the dump (again). I'm FAR cleaner and more put together washing-wise. I wash my hair 3 times a week now. Before that it was about once every 2 months. Yeah I know it's all sad sad sad I'm not exactly keeping a blog to show y'all how cool I am. This is the truth about drug addiction and "mental health". Mental ill-health more like.
So I'm depressed earlier, feel like I've had a line of speed on one cup of tea later. Had another cup to make the speed a bit more full-on. Caffeine has the effect on me it only has on TV characters. Caffeine doesn't really make people rush about babbling does it. Never did that to me before. Only time I ever got high on tea was when I was on Prozac in my early 20s. Even then I was being told to calm down, and told I was acting "manic". The person who said this had two relatives with bipolar disorder, which kind of did my head in. I scrupulously hid anything "manic" from my doctors for years. Then I fessed up. Was a junkie by this time. Wasn't believed. Not really. Then it got so bad I was literally falling to pieces, going incoherent, acting like I was pretending to be a racing car (I wasn't "pretending to be" anything, I was saying what I was thinking, to myself. Luckily when I did this in the nuthouse I wasn't under assessment. The assessment happened in an interview where I was told I kept changing topics. I don't know about that. What I do remember is trying to answer everything ultra-precisely. So "how long?" to me meant on what precise day and what time did you first feel the way you feel now. I got totally lost in the multiplicity of eventualities inherent in any situation. My thoughts went up like a starburst. Mentally I felt like a fly. Viewing the world through endless angles through compound eyes.
So I'm not up or down or left or right. I'm still all over the place!
Does anyone know anything about old films? Are these any good. I got 'em on impulse for a tenner. Old war films remind me of sleepy Sundays smoking cigarettes and drinking tea. (Or white cyder.)
• The Desert Rats • A Farewell to Arms • The Longest Day • Sink the Bismarck • Twelve O'Clock High
Twelve O'Clock High is playing.
Illustrated: when I'm "ill" I think in starbursts and think in psychological compound eyes, seeing everything from every conceivable angle all at once. This gives overload, exhilarating overload or irritating overload, depending on the mood of the moment. I'd quite like to be a fly. Or better still a hornet. I'd have quite some fun being a wasp...
EVA CASSIDY: FIELDS OF GOLD
ANDREA BOCELLI, SARAH BRIGHTMAN: TIME TO SAY GOODBYE At the Dubai Fountain I've never been to Dubai, but I've been through Bahrain airport and Bahrain through the plane window looked amazing. All water-gardens and glittering glass towers. And their duty-free shop was perfume, alcohol and cigarettes paradise. I went into the squiggly-writing men's toilets which had hosepipes in the cubicles (to blast your arse). All these Yasser-Arafat men breezing in and out in robes. If I were an Arab I'd wear robes too. I hate a lot of western dress.
ICELAND'S £1.50 COMPLETE ROAST BEEF DINNER is in the microwave. Cooking merrily away. 6 mins then 3 mins then put the blinkin Yorkshire pudding in then 1 min how many mins mins chuck 'em in the bins shuttup. O man it's WINDY outside. There's been gusting gales the last 2 days.
That brainy Susie Dent is explaining something to do with etymologies of snake bites on Countdown. Susie Dent is my ideal woman. Brainy. Looks like she can handle herself in a fight (joke).
O man this dinner is doing my head in. Microwave. In. Out. Stir it all about.
I just spent an hour in a car in a carpark talking shit with someone to pass time. It was fun in a different way. O man I'm craving alcohol. Shall I get some yes I'm out the door one second...
No I'm not getting any. Yeah I'll get low alcohol Smirnoff cloudy lemonade. If they've restocked. I bought all the last batch!
A load of Yum Yum Smirnoff Vodka stuff went through my head on the way too and from that voddy shop. They've restocked. Know a good vodka customer when they see one (me).
Yeah my name is Gledwood I'm an alkie. I know. I confess. I don't like being a lousy drinker.
I feel hyped up enough already without drink dulling me down. I only took it to dull pain. I'm not in pain now I'm in pleasure so why dull it down? See: stupidity.
Eh that find the money programme is on. When you open boxes. Can't eve n recall the name. DEAL OR NO DEAL! That's it. Thomas is on. "I think this is one of those we're going to remember for a very long time," says Noel Edmunds. Not likely. Who remembers crappy gameshows. Don't answer.
I hear my name come from inanimate objects on the street: does this mean I'm a mentally ill nutter? Don't answer!
Right I have to go, cheerio!
PS Why do people mix up honesty with frankness? I'm frank, doesn't mean I'm honest. I am but I don't see that one means the other. Maybe frankness is a TYPE of honesty. Yeah that'd be it...
PPS That Iceland £1.50 roast beef dinner tasted like the smell of dog food
20:20 DOES MY BODY ACTUALLY REMEMBER how much I drink? Why does "it" want one more now? Does "it" know I usually take 2? Is it just me? I've been drinking for 10 years between 7.5 units (75mls) and 22.5 units (225mls neat alcohol) that's 2-6 half litre 7.5% vol white cyder cans.
20:52 I'm on Smirnoff Ice vodka-cloudy lemonade 4% vol 700mls which is 2.8 units 28mls alcohol and it is much nicer than the "gutrot" I was on before. Also I can water this at will with cans of cloudy lemonade. (Huge bottles I will probably just glug through, I know me.)
I came in from the shop met the nice guy downstairs who told me he hears voices (I don't care if he's a nutter; so am I!) also it's an alliance against the people who hate me here, so it's important. We also give each other money. Both ways. I like this guy. He was on "white" (crack) running between crack houses. Doesn't even smoke a spliff now. Is still hyper and I know someone on drugs he ain't on drugs. He struck me as "mental health" the second I first saw him.)... I was in a good mood, With a rush I used to get from drugs. Hey at least this means I've not burned out my brains on all these chemicals. Otherwise I'd not be ABLE to feel good...
Gotta run: Iceland's best cauliflower cheese in oven!
22:33 NA Basic Text p294 ("What Makes Me Happy Now") Japanese woman shares about NA in Japan: Many women shared how drugs were a good thing for them, until their using became unmanageable. I didn't understand this until the new translation. These woman also had a hard time with the word "recover". In Japanese "recover" means "to go back to the way you used to be." Surviviors of abuse don't want to go back to the way they used to be. In recovery, they want to move on and grow. People who had nothing to start with were afraid that they really had nothing to recover...
And THAT, my friends, is what put me off stopping for ever such a long time. I had nothing to come back TO.
187 LOCKDOWN: GUNMAN Thanks Lizzy (spelled correctly this time) I like this
SNEAKER PIMPS: SPIN SPIN SUGAR (ARMAND'S DEEP GARAGE MIX) for Melody
"We are E" means the same as Urban Shakedown's Some Justice "we live as one family"... we're all together, all as one, on this brilliant stuff E for Ecstasy. Which lived up to its name with me, I thought it was fantastic, more fantastic than anything before or since ...
LENNY DE ICE: WE ARE IE (GARAGED UP) one more for garage-lovin' Melody
LENNY DE ICE: WE ARE IE (ORIGINAL 1990)
WE ARE IE (HIJACK MIX)
WE ARE IE (CASPA & RUSKO MIX)
Illustrated: bolt cutters ~ I need these to cut through my drinking obsession ....
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.)
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)
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.
THIS POST IS REALLY FOR MORE MUSIC (see below). I slept about 10 hours from midnight to 10am. Took 2x2mg Risperidone 1x7.5mg zopiclone; had 2 or 3 drinks (500ml White Stars/White Aces 7.5% vol alcohol). The day before yesterday I drank about 5 of them. Today I'm sticking to 2, or even 1 if I can do it.
2 drinks I can get to quite easy. 1 in the morning; 1 in the afternoon. Going below that has been difficult. I could cut out the morning drink most easily.
The Dual Diagnosis Worker phoned me the other day, post Psych Dr Appointment; we talked about ways of reducing. Everybody says I want to switch drinks as White Cyder is "gutrotting" and "has never seen an apple". It is NOT a romanticized evening Cyder House near Stonehenge beautiful Keats Ode to Autumn type drink. It is liquid Brillo pads, for homeless street drinkers to get pissed-up as quick and as cheap as possible. Mixed with tropical fruit mixed cocktail it's a beautiful budget alcopop. And probably super-bad for my teeth. Which are acid-eroded enough (to quote the toothpaste commercial).
OK so that's me and drink. I don't know my mental state it's probably higher than normal still but high feels good. I only say "high" knowing now what that is and how it reacts and how it feels (not the same as drug high, by any means: feels more "normal" goes off like a Pinnnnng--gggggg-ing Pika at no notice. Is intensely cheered by social situations. Speaks quick. Is highly distractable. Is paranoid more on the lower levels than the high ones, when it is full of grandeur...) so that's me.
I'm OK. I hope I'm staying on topic and being relevant.
Anyway here's music!
FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON: PAPUA NEW GUINEA Thanks Lizzie
OBIE TRICE: GOT SOME TEETH Hilarious. I love this "song"; only rap thing I really like
ARMIN VAN BUUREN FT. SHARON DEN ADEL - In and Out of Love (Official Music Video)
Illustrated pinging pikas: they live up mountains in North America and Central Asia, look like a bunny rabbit crossed with a hamster. They ping everywhere, and collect bunches of flowers to hoard and eat when the flowers rot down. Russian Dwarf hammies live in disused pika burrows....
13:25 severe hunger pangs; going up Iceland for a Family Steak Pie (proper chunks of steak, no mince) which I eat with mixed veg dumped on top (there's enough carbs in the crust in my view...)
CADBURY'S WHISPA (x2) and Yazoo chocolate milk (x1)... severe chocolate craving. Despite the pill I'm not sleeping, waking up for ages. Been surfing since sometime before 2am, intermittently sleeping, (absolutely impossible to fill out a sleep diary for tonight I haven't the faintest idea how many hours)...
The drinking is around 3 cans per day at 7.5% alcohol in 500ml cans. I'm not "out of it" because I'm "drunk"; "alcohol is a depressant" as they loved to tell me. So not being depressed at all, being the opposite of depressed, I should be able to guzzle as much as I like, shouldn't I??! Or they shouldn't patronize us with such an obvious semantic "terminological inexactitude". Yeah I know I shouldn't drink. If I didn't think that I'd drink a hell of a lot more.
It takes some edge off me. Me who I am supposed to be (at last). You see inside every white mouse is a tigress roaring to get out. That's what my thought pattern was doing yesterday. Not me speaking in my head. Me ROARING in my head. I felt pretty hyped up, pretty good. I'd rather be a tigress than a tiger. You can have cute baby... cubs! That's the word. And aren't tiger cubs the cutest! Also tigresses are fiercer than tigers. What's the metaphor for fierce? Tigress, not tiger.
I've no idea what NA made of yesterday's speech except some scattered titters of laughter at the funny bits. Better than the reaction I got last week when I started ROARING. A jolt went through that room. That's the point, I wasn't "roaring" at all. I use that word in exaggeration and retrospect. I was merely making my point in a restful, easy manner.
But the woman I was next to, a reformed heavy pothead, is one of the kindest, brightest spirits I have met in that association (if I'm any judge of character: we've never conversed; I've only heard her share). I don't want her wary of me.
Now I'm going to have to go round making mental notes of damage to repair. Slight damage. Another way of repairing damage is by having a nice attitude. That one might do more. I say having... attitude rather than "being nice" I don't want merely to be as in being for a moment; I want to BECOME the best person I can be. And being on gear was scuppering that one constantly.
It also totally messed up any attempt at self-help. I mean the type of help discussed in self-help books, which in my view, if taken with a reasonable dose of perspective and moderation can actually help one affect constructive changes in one's life. I saw my existence as a means of change. Never wanted to be the same person at the end of a year as at the beginning. Wanted to be better. Gear messed all that up.
It's hard to say what heroin did to me that was negative, bar the obvious cliches. What did it do? It blanketed my feelings, which I'm beginning to see might have been more intense than I realized. No not all the time but I look back and see myself at various times and think hmmmmmmm what was going on there? So it was self-medication as the clinic told me (not my expression) I got heavily addicted. I cannot imagine being more addicted to that drug than I was at the peak. I relied on it utterly, not for happiness so much as bearability through life. To sleep, to get up, to eat I most definitely needed gear. It would feel weird, if I let it, eating without having a hit first. What else did it do? Well something eroded my self-esteem like nothing else. So badly, at one point I had barely any left It made me homeless It killed my friends The whole situation made me feel hopeless and I had no life to go back to and I hated the world we live in. Not strong ingredients for a good recovery.
Which is one reason I am not giving up on NA. My interpretation of their Ways is given below, one thing I've heard said a few times goes along the lines "my friend hasn't got a programme, but my friend isn't an addict"... in other words the friend is worse off, poorer than the Recovering Addict. Because Recovery means everything else good apart from just not taking drugs. That's what Recovery is. Recovery. It's what I want...
KLF FEATURING TAMMY WYNETTE: JUSTIFIED AND ANCIENT (JAM BY THE JAMS) ...this lot tend to get left out of early 90s compilations, nostalgia etc. theirs was by far the best non-ravey dancey pop of the time.... as an "art experience" they also burned £1,000,000 cash they'd made A 99 is vanilla ice cream with a stick of chocolate flake shoved in at a jaunty angle...
SCOTT GARCIA: A LONDON THING the proper video this time, Melody
SCOTT GARCIA: A LONDON THING this is faster, the much more like original pirate radio mix
I HAVE NOT GIVEN UP BLOGGING I AM STILL HERE AND WILL BE UNTIL LIFE OR DEATH PREVENTS ME.
17:12 I FEEL really really upset. Somewhere sometime I have done totally the wrong thing and now I'm paying for it. I don't know what to do except a whole load of nots. Not drinking being a big one.
The rest of it is stuff that I don't want to face. I don't want to do anything at all. I'm totally sick and tired and I have had enough.
22:03 I went abysmally low this evening I really felt bad. i went out to get money from someone who owed me £20. my old best dealer had just come back on. my first reaction after being told at the end of my road was to ring straight away. then i thought hang on a sec you don't need that.
even if the gear had been ok which i doubt it would only have set me back and i'd have to go through all the same stuff. i was lucky enough to be crazed through the first 14 days which is supposed to be the worst even if it is just methadone switchover.
Still, I went out and got a £20 I was owed, the person wanted to pay in 3 days time but I said no I need it now. So I had the option to use and declined the option.
A pervert tried to pick me up on the way home. This did nothing to help my frame of mind.
The gist of what went through my head was repeated aloud a couple of minutes later. I was hearing myself, someone was repeating me, whatever I wasn't really listening. I went home and stood outside my house but didn't want to go in. So I walked round and round the block, not wanting to be anywhere. It started to rain, I didn't want to go inside.
I went to the Mongolian Chinese takeaway, finally it was open. Somebody else was standing there I couldn't face another person so I handed over my cash and went outside in the rain on the pretence of smoking. Rather get wet than be near another person. Sorry: simple truth.
I still can't eat because I feel sick. Chicken curry mix vegetable fried rice is my favourite meal it's half left at ten to midnight I can't handle it.
I had 3 drinks. Drink number 3 made me feel a bit better. I got another just now it's going in the fridge.
How I'm going to give up the only crutch I have left I cannot envisage. No I don't feel powerless over drink. What I see is a future where the one thing that holds me together goes and I fracture up. Imagine you took a chisel to your own reflection and smashed the mirror so none of you connected any more? That's how I feel when I crack up. I feel ill now. Better than before; still ill. I'm going to bed I've had it with today.
3:30am still awake. It occurred to me a couple of hours ago that come 4am I'll have been awake 24 hours, that this isn't normal. I tried to sleep. Not in mood for it. Appetite terrible, did force entire Chinese takeaway down throat over course of 5 hours. Usually I'd eat half, then eat the other half a couple of hours later.
I'm back on the black coffee.
Yeah earlier on I went into real depression only for a few hours, I don't really feel too "well" now. Yeah it could have been a bad mood. A bad mood where you hear echo-thoughts, are too low to go in your own house and would rather walk aimlessly in the rain than be inside even though you've fallen out with nobody, are avoiding nobody who's there. The reason I wasn't at home was that I didn't want to be there, I didn't want to be anywhere so I walked on and on and round and round and up and down the road. I could not engage with myself with anyone else with food with sleep. I am engaging with ITV Nightscreen purely for the music. And coffee and cigarettes. And that's it.
I'm going as long as possible on no sleep at all. See if I can break my 4-day zero hours record.
So there's self indulgent post number infinity+1.
Did anybody out there know Trisch Li personally? Trisch Li as featured in "phone calls to Jen" videos posted over last few days....? Please get in touch.
I'm posting this without reading back, not in mood.
Here's how you do a chart that shows how you feel. Mine was too simple. Dur.
06:30 Uuuuuuuuh. I don't really wanna go more than 4 days without sleep, but what do you do when you can't? I'm gonna bed now. At last. Ignore the rave videos unless euphoric recall is appropriate (got that expression from NA, doncha love it?!)
LIQUID: SWEET HARMONY I don't know if the vid looks as terrible on yours as on mine. Like heavy psychedelic without ya contact lenses in:~
PRODIGY: EVERYBODY IN THE PLACE I remember this being played at 6am on white label in a barn in Thetford forest, Norfolk, tripping on Domes/snowball Es.... wooo
I'M SWITCHING OFF. I'm sick to death of any talk of how I feel and what has happened and what it might or might not be and blah blah blah it's all too much, I'm fed up, I feel sick and tired and still not well and I've had enough. I said I would do a drink diary I don't mind posting that. The mood thing I might go on trying it online for a day or two but I feel too exposed too nauseated too confused to be posting stuff about what was basically the nastiest thing that has ever happened to me. Now I'm switching this machine off; it has been glaring at me all day between lots of other things that were basically just time-wasting. I have to find a life somewhere and I won't find it online.
I SLEPT! 4(ish)PM TILL 4AM. 12 glorious hours. I dreamt about this boy I went to school with at my 1st 2ndary school. He left midway through the first year because his parents moved to Bedford. Then came back, still living in Bedford. His Dad still worked in London or Hertfordshire (where we were) and drove him in every day. The time before when I slept, with the exception of an hour or 90 mins early Saturday morn was Thursday afternoon into Thursday evening when I dreamt I was in Madonna's house. I found a crappy old radio in the corner, picked it up and said "whose is this?" and Madonna said "that belonged to my mother". Then I realized I had really upset her and Madonna started ignoring me. Madonna's mother died when she was about 6. She says it was the worst thing to happen in her life.
OK I said I would do an alcohol diary. I had 2 cans, 1 litre. 7.5% ie 75mls alcohol, 7.5 units. Being as I partly couldn't and partly didn't want to sleep and was drinking quite a bit of black coffee, I set my mood from -.15 to +1.5 peak then it dropped back to -1.5 because I was exhausted I felt sick, hungry but couldn't eat.
OK IF YOU'RE AS BORED AS ME OF MENTAL HEALTH SHIT SKIP THE ITALICS.
The mood scale works like this. Zero means absolutely normal and not at all depressed. If something funny came on telly I would laugh my head off. If something good happened I would feel really good. -1 is noticeably depressed but able to shrug it off, except it returns within half an hour. I distract myself a lot by using the internet. -2 is the higher end of "moderate" on a doctorly scale meaning feeling pretty rough but still able to act out, sometimes snap out of it except it crashes back, still able to use distraction. I could sleep 10 hours every night. -3 is the worst I usually get, lower end of "moderate" meaning absolutely abysmal mood. Whereas suicide crosses my head in any low, here the impulse or fantasy to do it can get relentless and I just want to curl up and die. Self-esteem goes low, concentration is terrible, I can write but not read much. I can sleep 14-17 hours or longer every day. -4 is very rare for me, I've only ever been down here for hours or days at a time, it means total incapacitation, staring into space, unable to put on any meaningful act. I feel broken and injured, totally worthless, guilty and filthy. I don't feel suicidal, this has always felt like the very end, life is over. You can start tripping out in this state but I've never tripped intensely (thank God). -4.5 would be so bad I wouldn't be blogging at all, not even single lines. I hope I never go that low. In this state they'd seriously think of ECTing you. ECT is the treatment I least want. I know someone who had it and had half a life wiped away. Google ECT, you'll find witness to this fact. Look at what doctors say, they'll never admit it happens apart from "partially impaired short term memory loss". Yeah I know a lot about this subject I used to have a stock of how to (or rather how not to) books with titles like Depression Workbook. Ukh. Lent them all away and sold the rest for heroin money.
O crap, now I have to explain pluses. OK here we go. When we get to the + and - 2s and higher bear in mind not everything happens at every moment, most things happen at some time while it's going on:
+1 hyperthymia means a good mood, a really nice buoyant good mood like swimming floats you cannot push it down in my late 20s I'd get like this, constantly, days at a time, but it always meant depression was on the way or I'd just come out of it (ain't life great); +2 hypomania racing thoughts or thoughts flooding the head, distractable, disinhibited, pacing, euphoric and/or irritable, like being on speed. Urge to say stupid stuff, eg repeating same words/phrases over and over, or doing it in head. I used to get flashes of this over the past few years, I just thought it was the heroin now I'm not too sure. +3 mania very disinhibited, saying inappropriate things though I'm not an impulsive person and try not to, periodically rushing high alternating with crystal clear shining mental state, irritability tipping into rage: especially at psychiatrists and drug services, endless composition of letters, posts, monologues in head or online, cannot sleep more than 4 hours max, bad paranoia, don't want to go outside. I was in this state when I saw the shrink last time (unfortunately, now I can't get out of what I rantingly told him), some hallucinations eg hearing words spoken by the tap when it runs +4 hearing voices, floridly at the peak, visual hallucinations e.g. seeing fur growing out of everything, flashes of light, Northern Lights style visuals, lights outside look amazing, police car lights make me ecstatic, extreme paranoia, people are talking about me, intruders in the house, irrational thinking though I'm a very sane person and can still distinguish or remember what's meant to be normal. Like the effects of an extreme crack/uppers binge when you've lost it and just cannot come down. No sleep at all at the very peak. Head feels like national electricity grid wired through brain. Eyes closed my mind is lit up like a TV set, brightly with constant moving pictures. This is what happened in early December it was only this bad for about 2.5 days. Into this got mixed depression of the worst type and suicidal urges which were extreme and terrifying. I wasn't even thinking English at some points just bing bing bang bong ong ong ong! Still able to write and post despite all this. Can't get head round stuff like texting on phone, signing into email, putting key in lock though. Bear in mind I can type by touch so typing is dead easy +4.5 you'd be totally incoherent, wouldn't know what you were doing, where you were going, why you were there, what was happening, could do anything and not know it. Never been this bad, but was able to see this was where it would end up if it got any worse. I've witnessed this from the outside (in nuthouse) it's not pretty. I'm glad I never got this far.
+3 and +4 have only happened once, in December. In summer 2001 I got into a horrible state coming off gear cold turkey, very hyper very depressed. Kept losing touch with what was thinking, what was going on at times. Everybody feels mentally terrible but it was more extreme. This isn't just my opinion the nutnut nurse at the druggie service thought it sounded "manic". Antidepressants (Prozac) used to put me +2 for a few days to a couple of weeks. Last time it was worse and I didn't sleep for 4 days, though i don't remember feeling that euphoric I wrote some ridiculous stuff in a letter to my Gran, I'm so glad I didn't post it. Then I crashed, still on mirtazapine (Remeron/Zispin), still at 30mg a day it bottomed out at -4. For 3 or 4 weeks until someone realized what was going on and I stopped it. I never even knew an antidepressant could make you worse.
OK so that's the scale and it's rated conservatively, you give the minimum applicable number. Feeling really nice for a few minutes doesn't mean a plus whatever that's just feeling really nice. These moods are constant and marked and the more extreme they get so the ability to act normal or snap out of it diminishes, eventually vanishes.
Ukh I'm fed up of all this. I wish I had never seen that dr. I had to. What am I meant to be doing? Cleaning my house. Going to AA. Yeah. House has turned into mess as life turned to chaos this past week. I'm not always the most focused person. Yet I can focus fairly well in certain ways. And nearly everything I am, think and/or feel I'm also the opposite. So I try not to be self indulgent but what is a blog? Self-indulgence of the most extreme kind! Life is like that it doesn't bother me unduly. I'm bothering me far more than anyone else ever has. My own behaviour. Drink drink drinking (still). I shouldn't be drinking 7.5 units a day that's double the maximum recommended allowance. I should be cleaning up. I should be nicely well organized. I should be physically clean. I should cook food from scratch because I know how to do it. I should get up at the same time every day so my sleep cycle is as regular as it can be. I should look through mail that comes and open stuff addressed to me. I should wash my clothes, not sleep in them and buy or at least obtain new ones (you can get free clothes by diving a clothing recycle bin). You can also collect them off the street, which I do. I should also do a million other things I cannot remember/be bothered going into.
That's it. See ya. Wouldn't wanna be ya. Wouldn't wanna be me either. Ha ha har!!!!
Illustrated: top Madonna; bottom Trisch Li or Trishli who appeared in video 1 on Fridaymanic +3 or more on my lovely scale. In video 2 she's sane and looks amazing. She died 2 years ago. I don't know why. I like her. You can also find some good links re cocaine or crack psychosis or mood episodes and mixed mood disorders and other nauseating things
PS if you want to see more Trisch Li and Jen on the telephone here's 3 more:
Trisch and Jen on phone 3 Jen's weird night
Trisch Li and Jen on the phone 4
Trischli and Jen on the phone 4 later that night I love the background on this one
I NEED to keep a drink diary and a mood diary, I have decided. This should show how wonderful life gradually becomes once the evil substances are flushed down the metaphorical loo.
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.
*******
OK really these links are for other people. Once you've read around this topic, as I say it gets stultifyingly boring. I skimmed through every one and got no real answers. Yeah I got symptoms that match bipolar ones. Bipolar isn't about "mood swings" between "happy and sad"; it's about extreme swings in energy that affect the mood. I'm tired of this subject now. I'm writing for myself as an aide-memoire. My private notes are open for anyone and everyone to see, which makes me slightly circumspect in what I say. I'm fed up of thinking about something that happened that was so immensely powerful it was worse than being hit by a truck. I literally did get hit on the head by a truck some years ago and was so concussed I didn't know what I was doing all week. And yet I was able to count fingers, so I got instant discharge from hospital. What I couldn't do was tell the time, the day or sometimes even where I was. I knew I was forgetting things but obviously couldn't remember what it was I'd forgotten! So at the doctor's office I was at something of a loss to explain myself. My point being whatever happened to me whacked me even worse than that. I felt more badly jolted and jarred than I've ever been in my life from anything. Considering the length of time it lasted, it was the most intense mental state I've ever been in, on or off drugs, including acid, ketamine and crack. Everyone who met me that week thought I'd been piping because that was how I was acting. All hyper and paranoid, unable to calm down. Now I've had enough of talking about this I really am bored with the entire issue. As I say I'm only posting these links in case they help some other person, I glanced through and once you know the basics of coke, and what can go wrong, you'll know this stuff. The video is posted because it's funny.
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:~
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)
PS HERE for comparison is the same woman, Trisch, totally sane. See the marked difference in her composure and behaviour. I love her look and the film exposure, doesn't she look amazing:
BEFORE I START I WILL GIVE YOU ALL ANOTHER REASON TO BE DISAPPOINTED IN ME. I scored heroin last night. I felt so depressed I didn't know what else to do. I have never felt that way before and not used. Once I had the heroin in my hand I cheered up a bit and blew the last bit of money I had on Chinese takeaway.
The heroin was crap, even worse than usual. It solidified twice in the works but I recooked and banged it up anyway. I lost respect for my body a long time ago. I only hate having to live in it.
Despite this heroin I didn't sleep at all last night. I was looking up ways of inducinga mood-switch. These are 1. stay up all night or get jetlag 2. abuse stimulants (including caffeine) 3. drink alcohol 4. (possibly) eat MSG 5. take antidepressants: I have a 28-pack of expired Prozac, which makes me hyper, agitated and euphoric. Drinking 3 cups of tea in a row on Prozac used to give a speedy high 6. stress (not much you can do about that). Stress induces racingthoughts, and sometimes "voices" (same thing, higher volume) which feel really good 7. sugar. I ate a Cadbury's Creme Egg yesterday and the day before. And the day before it was a Caramel one. Could this tip me over the edge~??
The sleep deprivation (which wasn't intentional) didn't work anyway. I slept all afternoon into the evening and woke up feeling miserable, sinful, full of guilt and wishing I hadn't seen that NutNut doctor when I did. Because I have made a reality out of what was previously dismissed as me lying to make myself look more interesting. I know what they thought of me. Well they can spit on my grave, those bastards.
A week or two ago I the same experiences I had when I went cuckoo started coming back but at lower grade. Racing thoughts, euphoria, disinhibition, less sleep etc. Then of course it just mingled into depression and I've felt miserable ever since. I know a lot of you out there want me to just do myself in, well I have a proposition for you. I'll provide the broken bottle YOU slash my throat you bastards. You want me to die, you fucking kill me. I get death you get life and I hope you get ****d every single day you're in there.
So there we have it. I am an illusion. I'm thinking of getting a job as a support worker. Most people feel miserable. Act their way through life, especially at work. Get home, don't even kick off shoes just fall into exhausted coma only to have to get up again far too early to work again to pay for things you don't want. That's what I should be doing. I'm not taking heroin today. I only had one drink.
I know I should work with the dying but I was thinking about that earlier and I couldn't handle the misery. Doesn't mean I'm not doing it though. I've pushed myself through loads of things I didn't feel up to, past tears and into complete physical and mental collapse. How come other people do stuff they don't want to and are fine, but with me I'm in bed for a week too ill to move? I sweated so bad that week the bedsheets looked covered in white wine stains.
I don't know what to do. I know no-one can help me. I always told myself if I ever felt really crap again I'm going straight in the nuthouse but the nuthouse wouldn't take me because there's nothing wrong with me except life.
That's been the problem all along.
And I don't have bipolar disorder either. The drugs worker, the mental health nurse, the social key worker all say my experience sounds very bipolar but the dr wants to think it's drugs and I'm with the dr. If I actually am a true manic-depressive I will kill myself and have done with.
Anna you bitch leave a comment under that REM song or was it really such a cliched choice? I put it there specially for you. Or are you really still feeling too shit for words? Anna has the most gorgeous blue eyes and a blue wig. I love all things blue. I love Anna.
There was a pill out a few years ago called Blue Mystic. With a name like that I'd have ran to try it, had I not already been engulfed by heroin by this point. I knew it was good as the press claimed several deaths (I've taken heroin for years and know loads of people who died on or via it; I went clubbing two years and didn't even know a friend of a friend of a friend who'd ever died on ecstasy or been put in hospital by that, bluemystic (2C-T-7) or anything else.
That bitch from QVC is on terrestrial television. How this is allowed I do not know. Home shopping! On ITV. And worse still LIVE ROULETTE for hours on end. Imagine this on ABC, NBC, CBS in America, that's what ITV is to us.
*******
Question: have you ever wept bitterly to this tune?
REM: LOSING MY RELIGION This is way better than the official video. The official one's crap:~
The council (who are my landlord) sorted this out because my rent arrears (a £20 a week accommodation charge) got so severely out of hand. The last time this happened was because I went mad. I told the lady all this stuff, it sounds really good on the forms. But it's also put me off getting help in the past because I feel I'm profiting from problems I need rid of, which is unhealthy. I prefer to go through life pretending to be well than doing an "I'm sick" act. There's nothing sicker than that!
Now I might be able to get all my arrears wiped off because, as she pointed out, I was housed as a "vulnerable adult". I could get a proper home. She can help me get more state benefits as I'm not getting everything I'm entitled to.
I've also got a new keyworker at the druggieservice. Next time I go in I get to see the headshrinker again. I'm writing down a timeline of what happened before, which proved it cannot have been "withdrawal" that set me off so badly last time as the first symptoms appeared when i was still using the gear. Things spiked the weekend that I stopped heroin, but I was on methadone in split doses (in Britain you take methadone home and drink it when you please, so I drink half of mine in the middle of the night so when I wake up it's going full blast). The other half I drink before bedtime. I had smoked the tiniest bit of crack the previous Sunday which meant when I went truly dingbats I'd have tested crack negative (though I was so paranoid at the time I believed the druggieclinic had spiked me with Ecstasy and coke). Writing this down might help with diagnostics. You see I need a diagnosis for all these irritating housing forms. Being a nutter actually helps with this, so I did myself the biggest favour coming in to see the headshrinker when I did. Funniest thing was, I thought I was OK when I saw the doctor. I don't think the dr saw it that way.
This is what I hated about the benefits system. I felt I had no entitlement to anything. So I didn't see doctors except when essential and that tended to be for physical complaints such as abscesses. Didn't get the benefits I was entitled to. Got zero housing points because the local council (who are technically my landlord) assessed me without seeing me.
Things reached an all time low with Maple Syrup, bitch druggieworker from hell. She knew nothing of my medical history and wanted to believe my troubles were entirely down to heroin addiction. I couldn't handle her overbearing and bullying manner without stoking myself up on heroin before the appointments. I acted my way through our sessions with constant false smiles and so much eye contact it hurt. Things reached a head when I realized I'd have to see a psychiatrist with Maple Syrup in attendance and basically lie, saying I was fine when I wasn't fine at all. My first impression of old Maple was that she saw me as a soft touch and that she was out to break me. Then i told myself "no, that's the addict in you talking". Nope. My first impression was right. Maple was the only worker I've ever sacked. And it turned out I wasn't the only client who dumped her due to her overbearing ways. The other guy was not the type anyone messes with, yet Maple Syrup messed with him. He dumped her too and probably put in a formal complaint, which I didn't. A couple of months later she left the service. Hurrah!
I've scored no heroin since 5am Tuesday morning. My new druggieworker knows how much I'd been drinking. I fessed up to the 3-litres of cyder a day. That level of alcoholism is the lower end of very severe heavy drinking. The street drinkers I know tended to drink somewhere between 10 and 12 cans (5-6 litres) a day in white cyder (7.5%ABV) or Super Skol (9% alcohol). A full 700mls bottle of Scotch at 40% ABV contains 280mls of drink of 28 units. My three litres of cyder were marginally MORE alcoholic than this. That's why I bang on about the matter so much. Up until very recently I was able to buy a single can and if I didn't want any more, my drinking stopped there. But something's changed and that doesn't happen now. In my post-heroin phase I was drinking one can then another can, then another then another. Of course the drink was substituting for gear. It always was a heroin substitute, or more to the point, a heroin-intensifier, being another downer. Somehow alcohol superseded heroin in my affections and I need to stop it. If I don't, I'm going to be one of those shambling old drinkers you don't want to stand behind in the checkout queue at Sainsbury's.
I asked the Housing Key Worker (who's more like a type of social worker than just a housing officer) about doing this voluntary work. She said there's a scheme when you befriend someone who's ill and/or dying and needs basic practical assistance and basically friendship. So I'd be well up for that. No I don't think it's depressing that I'd be making friends with someone who was going to die. We all die sometimes. I always take the tack of acting well, even when I feel unwell. That way you get treated as healthy, you're not using illness as a crutch to gain advantages in life (which, let's face it many people do). And being with someone who has no option in their life's direction might give me a new perspective on mine.
The lady did say this has to be something for the future, not now. My priority now is cutting out drink. I'm back down to three cans a day ~ 1.5 litres.
I'm also getting a new GP, that is, a family doctor. My present one is so dire I don't ever see her. They're setting up a "multi-agency approach" where the GP, psychiatrist, druggieworker and Housing worker are all in communication. I don't ever want to get into a situation again where one professional asks one set of questions, another asks others, so three or four entirely different versions of me appear in the notes and nothing adds up. I have enough issues without a multiple personality disorder to boot!
OK I'm off. The new Chinese I found when not scoring a couple of nights ago offer a lunchtime box: chicken curry egg fry rice, Pepsi for £3.50. Monosodium glutamate is calling my name!
By the way, when I eventually started googling my crazy episode I found out some disturbing facts re glutamate and manic-depressive symptoms. In mania brain glutamate levels are thought to be high; in depression they're low. I had a half-kilo bag of MSG I was sprinkling into everything at one point. Once you get used to MSG the dose creeps up and up as tolerance rises (what does that remind you of).
Here's the main link: MSG and bipolar disorder A lot of the other stuff was couched in highly scientific language. Glutamate apparently instructs neurons to fire off neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitters involved in mood are dopamine, noradrenaline (norepinephrine) and serotonin aka 5-HT, 5-hydroxytryptamine. None of these neurotransmitters operate alone. For example when the serotonin system is in full-swing, dopamine kicks in too, which is why when you go out raving the first E makes you feel like Buddha (serotonin), by pill number two you're really rushing (dopamine). By pills three or four you might find yourself tripping because once you've gone as high as you go, the only direction left is sideways! Low glutamate levels are implicated in depression and schizophrenia. High levels are suspected in mania. I'm just not sure whether my obsession with MSG-laced Chinese food is helping or hindering. My 500g MSG bag is almost empty anyhow. I only bought it a year ago, so I've been pretty restrained by Chinese standards.
*******
ORIGIN UNKNOWN: VALLEY OF THE SHADOWS "I was in a long dark tunnel..." Thanks Lizzie. This should be my anthem:~
I HAD TO GO VISITING today. My friends live in flats. Downstairs. But no light on. Seemingly she saw me as the intercom crackled with her distinctive Liverpool voice: "wait a sec!" So I did. Then I thought I'd phone anyway and she sounded off-beam, like she hadn't just spoken to me a few moments before and I thought, That was odd.
Then he comes out and I said "Did she just talk to me through the intercom" and he said "No, what are you talking about! That hasn't worked for years! What are you on?!"
And I said "Nothing," he said: "No you're on something." So I said, "No, I'm not drinking so it must be DTs." He looked at me carefully and said, "I'll go and get you a couple of Librium," so he did, he got me nine and said "Don't tell her."
I'm to take three every four hours, then they should hold me till next day. I don't know the milligrams but they're blue and white, like Prozacs. I took three as directed and barely felt anything.
So they probably make a good substitute for alcohol. Pills that don't do anything are easier to cut down on than drink, which I can feel something off.
Later on someone quite different asked me whether I'm on LITHIUM. Thanks so much, Friends.
I'm not on anything. I'm not taking gear, that's why I'm falling apart. I feel the fractures. It doesn't feel bad, it just feels bizarre. Quite fun though. I've been sleeping like a harvest mouse. Hibernating for hours on end.
O will I ever get off these drugs? Yes, because I have to.
Tomorrow I'm planning an expedition to Mr Temazepam (Mr Librium cannot go on sparing his partner's pills.) Mr Temazepam wants good dollars for his supply but as I say, if it's more "medical" than cutting down on just drink then I'm willing to go for it.
I got hooked on the feeling of drink. Now I'm without that feeling. So it's a step ahead already!
There is a significant risk of pharmacological dependence on diazepam and patients experiencing symptoms of benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome if it is taken for 6 weeks or longer.
(Wikipedia: Diazepam) Being as I shouldn't be taking it for any longer than 10 days maximum, I ought to be fine ...
THAT'S HOW DEEPLY I SLEPT last night. 36,201 feet, 11,034 metres deep*. And I slept from about 3am till 8pm, that's about 17 hours. I was tired. All that cleaning has exhausted me. And that was natural sleep without pills or potions other than the prescribed methadone (back to the full dose, half-dosing made me sick about a day or a day-and-a-half later). I don't obsessively check times and doses with methadone. For someone who's been labelled neurotic more than once I'm remarkably unneurotic when it comes to detoxification. I have in the past cut myself down very steeply from methadone (and felt dreadful) and heroin (and felt fine). Not that methadone is FAR WORSE and a TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE TREATMENT FOR HEROIN ADDICTION but there you go!
I cut my drinking by about two thirds yesterday down to 2.75 cans, each can holds 500mls so I had somewhere around 100mls alcohol, 10 units. My maths fails me. Today I've had 2.25 cans, which would be around 80mls alcohol, 8 units.
I could swap over to benzodiazepines (e.g. Valium) and taper down on pills. Clinics do this (they don't give drink!) and lots of people do it informally. Or I could cut down by just drinking less. I don't know. A Smirnoff cloudy lemonade 700ml bottle is 4% ABV, only 28mls/2.8 units for £3 and that's really nice. Unfortunately in the past I tended to knock it down very quickly in compensation. I'm already drinking my drink mixed with fruit juice. This makes it less dehydrating but has the disadvantage of being a bit too tasty. Nicer than any premixed drink sold in the shops and I've tried a few.
So I'm not sure what to do, whether to cut down on drink or to switch to pills. The advantage of the pills is you lose the buzz of alcohol and once you cut down tiny you cannot feel anything at all. So it's actually cleaner. Alcohol is just too nice. Akh I don't know what to do.
The other thing is, clinics usually use Valium or more frequently Librium or Ativan (lorazepam). I don't trust the supply of Valium because a lot is if not fake then unreliable. The temazepam I got was OK. Normally if I got something like that I'd go for Valium, but I got temazepam on instinct because it's not internationally as well known and I've never heard of it being faked. (Bootleg meds are made in far-away countries; the manufacturers tend to go for the best-known and hence internationally most saleable product.) The main difference between the two is that Valium is a better muscle relaxant, temazepam is more sedating. (Temazepam is traded as Restoril in the USA.) Being as I'm not in it for either effect I suppose I have my answer. If I want a benzo, any one will do.
I still don't know what road to take. I'm very tempted to ring Mr Temazepam and make the switchover. I'm only posting this so you can follow my reasoning. Would I be doing something wrong to essentially replicate what hospitals and clinics do?
My fear is of simply derailing one habit into another. Alcohol is more dangerous than benzos. Both are addictive. Akh. I don't know.
Welcome to 2011 everyone :-)
It's 2am. BBC News Channel has started already on BBC1. Sometimes it comes on early. Whenever it does come on, I feel like I should sleep...
*Vityaz-1 Deep in the Mariana Trench is said to contain the deepest water on the face of the earth
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 WENT TO BED AROUND 3AM, GOT UP AT 7:30AM. I felt dire. I spent an hour in a chair, knocking back methadone and three huge wine glasses of tapwater. I drank so much last night I was actually (slightly) hung over. Buying white cyder in 3-litre bottles was not the good idea I thought it was.
I barely get hangovers now. Somebody told me this has to do with opiate-dependence and I think they were right.
Actually I spent more than an hour in that chair. More like three. Finally at approaching quarter past eleven after two more enormous wineglasses of Hair of the Dog white cyder I'm starting to feel OK.
Everything I said in that earlier post "Gun to my head" was (unfortunately) true.
I got a comment from Gattina just now. Gattina is now a grandmother. She lives in Belgium with her Italian husband. Is German born, but speaks French (and English). In fact she speaks four languages fluently plus Dutch*, which she always says she doesn't speak, but if I can follow it just from knowing German and having studied a tiny bit of Dutch, I know she can. Notice I say "follow" not "speak".
She says I have to do what I have to do and in my mother's words Take Responsibility.
This is the crux of the problem: that's exactly what I tell myself! So why won't I listen?
Anyway who cares about listening; it's doing that counts. So I'm doing what I have to, albeit far FAR more slowly than I'd like. Chucking everything I don't need out out OUT.
*Gattina's grandson lives in Amsterdam and the northern part of Belgium speaks Flemish or Vlaams, as they call it, a dialect of Dutch.
I'M NOW ONLY ONE DAY CLEAN. Last night I wanted to score. I turned the idea over and over in my mind. I wiped my old text messages then a new one appeared, timed fifteen minutes earlier. This was from Dealer #1, the one who used to sell giant £20 bags. So I thought: You want it that much. You get it. So I did.
In a way there's nothing to post because the gear was so crap* that drugs-wise I might as well have chucked £15 down the drain and saved a perfectly good needle. It cooked up far too dark. It smelled of heroin being smoked, rather than cooked (a different smell). I thought that's odd. When I tasted a droplet: nothing. So I banged up the entire lot at once and felt the faintest opiate tinge for all of 45 seconds.
All I've done is ruin my number of Days Clear, not get high, throw £15 away.
On the plus side I got the craving to use out of my system. The same way I gave up crack two years ago, yet wondered back six or seven times afterwards, I never wanted it again the next day. I just remembered why I hated it that much. I no more want to use again than a person who went to Disney Land on Monday would wish they were on a rollercoaster again Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Heroin is a spectre from a past life. More a ghoul than a spectre. A monster who tries to deceive: You give me everything, then I'll give you More! Somehow, in the end, it didn't work.
So don't worry about me, I won't be hurrying back any time soon. I have Caramel Baileys, mince pies and temazepam, so I'm well sorted for Xmas.
Hope y'all have a Merry One one too. If it can't be Merry then may it be Tolerable. If you're 100% substance-free then may it be Serene (and of course Clean).
Plus I hope 2011 is better for you than this Bag-o-Shite year ever was!!
The doggie is an American Akita, the sort of dog I really want.
I'll be online on Gabbly tomorrow so if anyone wants to talk I'll be there.
*To anyone who hasn't followed, there has been a severe drought in the British heroin supply for over 2 months; that's why my formerly reliable dealer was selling crap. It's hard to find a constant, reliable source of heroin anywhere now.
But I got a Narcotics Anonymous leaflet last night about the issues surrounding medication and see no reason why you cannot do the steps while on methadone. It's not like I'm rushing about scoring heroin any more. My life has changed.
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