Back to NA

IT'S NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS TONIGHT. NA hold meetings every night and every daytime and as far as I know most mornings in London, but tonight is one of my favourite ones, so I'm going.

I'm thinking of just telling them how I feel about being (as I see it) misunderstood. Then, if I am misunderstood I'm sure somebody will feed something back to me. But if I was understood all along I'll find out that too, so it's win-win.

I have no word to "yell in their face" as I so delicately put it; and more than once, if I remember right... If I were that wound up then I would yell it too, but I'm striving to avoid over-confrontational behaviour, even if I'm merely confronting the Group rather than a person in it... If I had an issue with one specific person then I wouldn't share that to the group, I'd tell that person alone.

What I will tell them is that I'm going to a dual diagnosis group and that I feel better understood there because the dual group accept that I walk in every week hyped up to a greater or lesser extent and the specific culprit drugs that tend to make hyper (cocaine and amphetamines) are ABSENT from my wee-tests. (I love the word "wee"; it reminds me of being four and saying "a wee and a poo"!)

I will have to tone myself down if I do feel amped up and I have felt amped up for most of today. I don't want a repeat of the time when I was raging angry and sent a very tangable jolt round the circle. A jolt of bad-feeling. The woman next to me, who is an itsy-ditsy-smiley-happy former pot-addict nearly jumped out of her skin and I only wish I could find her again to say I'm sorry. (As an ice-breaker.) There's another NA member who gave a fantastic chair (which means a 20-minute potted history of your using and how you got out and stayed out of the chaos everyone comes to NA to crawl out of)... I went and made a mess of the meeting my very obviously hefting up my loud rustly carrier bag full of stuff just as he was cruising towards the finish line.

I wasn't trying to communicate anything to anyone, but that's how it must have looked and I feel guilty because he looked at me a few times as he made his points and I just want to say I'm sorry ~ again as an icebreaker. I don't feel ridden by guilt and I don't feel he's desperately pissed off with me, but if I could speak to either of these two again I think they're both fascinating people to be friends with. Both are brimming over with their own distinct spirits. I suppose I feel bad for having given out bad vibes that it's obvious both have felt and I don't want to go around emanating nuclear radiation. I want to radiate Serenity, and charm. If I am charming now it's very much by accident. I feel most people pick up the vibe of precisely how I am, even though they sometimes misinterpret it. If it's "drugs" it's a distinct lack of, rather than a presence they're picking up on!

It's obvious to me that I'm nearing the end of an over-long story drugs-wise. Because as I said earlier, if I'd done gear at any other time after a break I'd probably have gone on using it until I was penniless and then had to stop (because I wouldn't go out and graft up money these days). I'd use the days without drugs to reset my priorities, then by the time I got paid again I had willpower not to use. This only happened on one occasion, some time in January. I went through four phases with heroin.
Phase one: I only used what money I could "afford" ~ usually £10 a day, though I still got into trouble, running up debts. When the shit finally hit the fan I went hurtling into phase two, where I begged up as much as I possibly could every single day of the week most weeks. I never took a day off at weekends when I already had money. I made as much as I could when I could, and nearly all this money went on heroin, not crack. Crack was only ever a minor part of my using, apart from one binge I indulged in for several weeks. I considered myself addicted because the small amount I did use was very important to me. Eventually I reduced to one day a week and from that to "nothing" ~ I probably lapsed on crack about eight times since giving it up "for good" for new year 2009. And I'm well aware how pathetic "eight times" sounds in conjunction with "gave up for good". I had my last ever toke on the crack pipe in early December 2010. I couldn't go near crack now. Considering how high I get without it, I'd go so far out of the stratosphere on it, I doubt I'd ever come back!Stage three was me as a "giro junkie"; this is an addict who only uses money paid by the state for sickness or unemployment. The final phase is now: no heroin at all bar a couple of lapses, which were me being depressed enough not to care any more. I only crave gear when I'm very low and down in mood or a methadone dose is overdue. If I can manage not to get depressed like that again, I cannot see why I'd turn to heroin. It never did much except salve my pain.

In the fifth and final stage I'll finally have kicked methadone. And I will never have anything more to do with Drugs ever again.


God, grant me the Serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the Courage to change the things I can ~
and the Wisdom to know the difference.


Illustrated: apron representing 15 years clean and serene (other items of clothing, including underwear, are available) I wish I could wear something representing some vast number of years clean and sober and for it to be true. But the truth of that matter is down to me ...

Anna Grace You Naughty Girl!

I WROTE SOME BABBLESOME CRAP at 3:30am that even I couldn't understand so I'm leaving it.

My friend Anna Grace "untruthed" about relapsing back on to heroin. That is she said she DID relapse when she DIDN'T.

Somehow I wasn't too surprised and I do believe she's telling the truth now.

I believe her for these reasons:

1. I know Anna pretty well and she glorifies opiates a lot, yet doesn't use them. I know that if she was using over the last 2 years or so it was very light because heroin (or Dilaudid* which she also loves) take your life over completely and that would have shown.

Her reason, she said, for not using was that it upset her parents too much and she's living in their home. I said "if you truly wanted to use heroin, you'd just go out and do it whatever your parents thought".

When I wanted gear, I never gave anybody else's opinion a second thought. Or my own shame for that matter. When I wanted it I went out and got it immediately. Anna didn't do that, which tells me she isn't into it as much as she thinks she is.

2. Anna does have mental health problems very similar to mine but she's no weirdo and it would be very strange to say "I said I was on heroin but I'm actually not I just thought it would make me seem more interesting" and that not to be true.

The "heroin makes me more interesting bit" seems to be the crux of her problem. When she was on heroin, despite the misery and pain and being lost in it all, it probably gave her an Identity (that of the Junkie) and a purpose. It might be a purpose most people can live without ~ a desperate need to get funds, get heroin, get high, get more funds, get more heroin, use again... and so on. But you're always busy and never bored. I think Anna looked back to this time and romanticized it and though she gave up the drug she couldn't give up the fantasy.

She's booked into a Dual Diagnosis Rehab in about 2 weeks where for once she will get mental health treatment and addiction therapy at the same time. Anna is already on Suboxone (glorified Subutex) so she's done the nasty bit in switching on to that stuff (it puts you into withdrawal). Buprenorphine reduction is a walk in the park compared to a rapid methadone taper so she really should not find the detox hard.

Anna's mood issue is currently depression that just does not go away despite mood stabilizer, antipsychotic and antidepressants. I keep telling her that her meds aren't working the way they ought to and I hope this clinic will recognize this and tweak or better still switch them to something better.

She's on nightly sleep meds which I'm sure she'll be allowed to stay on for the sake of her mental stability. The "going 100% clean" thing isn't done in Dual Diagnosis where most patients are expected to be on medication long term if not life-long.

Dual Diagnosis means mental health problems as well as drug addiction. In practical terms this is usually severe depression, bipolar, schizo-affective or schizophrenia. With these conditions you do not play around with medications, so she'll get a much easier ride than she would in a straight rehab where you still find the rather dated attitude that using any psychiatric medication is the same as using heroin and crack when this patently is not true.

The rehabs I've been in were all "regular" ones where the street drug users prevail. There's lots of prison talk, lots of crime talk, everyone's full of front and "we're all in the same boat" (except we weren't: it was me getting the extra meds and endless counselling sessions, nobody else seemed to have a breakdown every time they detoxed...) This isn't the type of place you necessarily want to be if you have mental illness so she's definitely doing the right thing going to a specialist unit.

Good luck Anna!


*Dilaudid is hydromorphone. Diamorphine (pharmaceutical heroin) is banned in America (to back up the American government's fictitious and politically motivated claim that heroin "has no medical use") so hydromorphone, another semisynthetic opiate, is used in its place. Dilaudid is known in America as "hospital heroin". In British hospitals actual heroin is used when a powerful painkiller is required. Heroin is very occasionally prescribed to addicts here, but prescription is so rare you have practically no chance of getting a heroin script, hence the widespread heartache and misery of oral methadone which leaves addicts craving heroin all the time and using on top every single day they can afford it and feeling they have to bullshit the methadone clinic that they're doing really well when all the addicts I knew were doing terribly. For years I told them I was using on top "nearly every day" so when diamorphine therapy did come in I'd be first in line. Then I got a bitch worker who basically put me under blackmail and duress (literally) so I just lied and said I used twice a week. I might use twice a week on Mars, but not in London. Now I use zero times a week because I hate heroin. I'm turning back into my old self from the mid-90s. Someone who actually enjoyed being clean. Wow.

Tonight at NA

I WENT TO NA TONIGHT. I WILL KEEP COMING BACK. And no I do NOT think it an American cult, Jess! I know I'm repeating myself but you must have misread my quoting other people as my opinion. I never have considered NA or AA an "American cult". Antiamericanism wrankles with me and the "cult" accusation is true only in the sense you pointed out.

No offence was ever intended, Jess. It was you who reminded of the Serenity Prayer (which I miss, due to Group Hug Aversion):~~

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the Courage to change the things I can
and the Wisdom to know the difference.

My focus is on the Courage to change the things I can. I think I have a pretty good handle on the Wisdom to know the difference.

But what NA have that I really haven't got is Serenity. That is what I come to NA for. That's why I keep coming back. I want a piece of this amazing Serenity they all seem to have ...


*******


SHOPPING REPORT:

INSTEAD OF 2 TEX MEX PIZZAS and two familiy steak pies for £7 I went DVD shopping in the supermarket instead and got Gladiaotr for £4, D Day the 6th of June for £3 and just one pie for £2.69 (2 for £4 but I'd rather get the films before some other bastard runs off with them!). I'm watching D Day in German. I love this multilingual opiton it's highly convenient. Especially if you set it to German subtitles to read anything you don't catch. Or German soundtrack English subtitles for the lazy!

Hey I've just altered it to German speech, English "Untertitel". Because lazy is what I am!! D Day is in lovely full colour. Unlike my budget war films.

I was watching Gladiator earlier but that's only in English, and 2 languages I can't follow (Spanish, Italian). So I want to save it until I'm in the mood for Gladiatorial entertainment.

Slept/drum & bass/jungle/hardcore/cleaning/shopping/etc

I THOUGHT I WAS running out of energy, having spent most of the night awake, then pinging down the chemist for my methadone, then going home, then having a black coffee for energy (physically tired), then another coffee, then having the most fun cleaning I've ever had in my life. Then feeling physically like I was on speed. Then feeling like I was going to have a panic attack.

Physically exhausted, I put myself to bed, saying "you are ill, and you are mentally ill, lie down, this will pass" ~ so I slept the expected two hours till it sounded like Loose Women or Doctors was on (different channels; couldn't have been both) ... I put the covers over me like a tent and slept some more, aching all over and genuinely feeling ill. Then I got up feeling so hungry I was sick. I seem to have lost a stone in weight: or the scales I found on the street were inaccurate. I've no idea. [One stone is 14 lbs or about 6.5kg.]

This evening I did some irritating little things I had to. Then shopping. Morrisons supermarket. Tex Mex pizza. Best ever. The self service till was like a robot at a hardcore rave. Please please scan (an) the next itemplease scan WAIT FOR AN ASSISTANT!!) lots of fun. And that pizza is amazing. I only had chips (which are Iceland American style curly fries (do they actually have curly fries in America? These are lovely). Then Holby City (hospital drama) came on. I missed EastEnders.

I'm scanning the radio for decent pirate stuff. The drum and bass they're playing sounds a good 17 years old! Proper Ragga Jungle. That's what I'm looking for.

Drink is down to 2 cans at 7.5% ABV ie 1 litre. It's up to 85p a can! Will this torment never cease??!! Nah, don't wanna be a drinker all my life. The alcohol is GOING!

Now I have to not drink coffee, which I appear to be hypersensitive to. I mean this was full on speeding on TWO cups normal one heaped teaspoon. Coffee has never been quite that strong before. I mean, this was physical, hence the anxiety. The highest hyper highs I have had have been totally out of sync with any coffee drinking. E.g. the Mental Hospital Day ~ hadn't had a cup for five hours. Had only had one or possibly two. Don't need caffeine. Nicotine has to go as well. Cigarettes are a terrible poison. Why should I be dependent on outside drugs to poison myself.

Now I have to finish what I barely started that is clearing crap I don't know what is relevant or not. No I'm not allowed a flamethrower, which would make clearing up far easier. Yeah yeah highly irresponsible I know so it's boring old chucking out. Let me indulge a fantasy once or twice. So now the hunt is on for Proper "Old Skool" as they call it to make me feel ancient (ie hardcore rave 1991, 1992) or Ragga Jungle (probably won't find that) or ancient sounding but probably modern rapid drum & bass with an overgrown schoolboy running out of rhymes on top.

Traaaaaaaa!!!! How are y'all. See I'm not irritably ranting tonight. Clean clean clean and cleaner. Clean me clean up. Live a clean life. Clean and Serene. That's me goal ;-)



21:29 London Radio: Eh, the Greek stuff ain't bad...
01:22 hrs Love FM Live .com (lovefmlive.com) good garage after midnight

Clearer

THE MAIN AREA OF MY HOUSE is beginning to approach normality. A cluttered normality with an Everest Heap of clothes in the middle, books to one side all higgledypiggledy because there's too many to stack up... there's still a week's worth of cleaning and clearing to go.

It doesn't quite look like the photo, but it will do. When I win the lottery and move.

If you go away

I'M STILL clearing up. I'm hoping to get the worst of it done by tonight, then I have one clear room. Not completely perfect, but within the bounds of "normality"... At last!

I've thrown away one black bag full of empty sin bins, and I'll have another black sack full of full ones for the exchange! I'm so looking forward to turning up as Junkie of the Year. Not.

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD: IF YOU GO AWAY
This tune just came on tv. I like:~

Toothpaste stains

I GOT UP AT 4:30 this morning. I feel like I could do with a year's more sleep but there you go. After smoking lots of cigarettes, trotting down the shop for smoked mackerel, Hovis bread and 2 litres of cyder (I'm cutting down) plus my tropical fruit juice (supposedly it's as good for you as eating veg, but I find that hard to believe)... after all this I scurried back home and wasted an hour watching BBC's early morning news and rubbish. The guy presenting used to be ITN's royal correspondent but I can't remember his name. Nick something. Being royal correspondent meant tilting your head slightly and inflecting the voice all sentimental-like whenever mentioning the Queen Mother. I was never convinced the Queen Mum was quite as kindly as portrayed. For one thing HM the Queen appeared, from the vast distance I view her, to be completely under her thumb. Since her Mum's death she seems to have become much more of her own woman. Her fashion sense appears to have improved immensely. The Queen is the funkiest-dressing old woman alive. With the exception of Rosie, the Trance granny who made luminous laurel crowns. I met her at the Warp club (Rosie, not the Queen) under an enormous railway arch round the corner from the London Dungeon, but I had seen her picture in the music press. She was famous for her octogenarian psychedelic ways.

There is a bevy of sparrows down my road. They live in a hedge and chirp their tuneless little heads off every morning. Cheep! Chirp! Twit! Twat! Twitter!! They say. My nightingale, who used to live in the nearest tree to our house is still on migration in West Africa. He or she won't be back until the spring. I know it was a nightingale because I matched the bird by appearance and song. The song was amazing, it tweetled and twittered all night like an LSD canary. I kept my window open especially. O man those sparrows are chirruping LOUD this morning. Sparrows all but disappeared from London about 15 years ago. They used to hang out in flocks along with the pigeons in parks. Even today, though you see them more, they're rare.

HEROIN! I haven't used any since I non-used the other day.. how many days clear am I now..? Seven days. I scored on December 23rd. Just checked me blog. That's the convenience of being a blogger. I know the day and date I did everything. Now I'm off to get my methadone. They're usually open by 8:30. I took half as much methadone as usual yesterday and today and am not feeling it so far... does this make me Addict-Invincible or will a horrible rebound come and slam me with creepytime withdrawal..? I bet it will. But there ya go. I want OFF that crap. The sooner the better. Chemical slavery. Heroin without any fun at all. I hate it.

I've got to go. Those sparrows are distracting me bigtime.

This is the twit-twit jug-jug chirrupydirrupydoodles song of the nightingale:



WOW I can't believe this, this is ROSIE from the Warp on film!!!



Warp Club London 1999: on lots of lovely MDMA hippieflipping I accidentally took 2 Mitsubishis at once in here, fell asleep and woke up flying through the roof. That was a good night (well morning: the club finished at 9pm so I never usually turned up till 6 or 7 in the morning)...
The place looks sparse because it was probably 11am by the time this was shot, and there were at least 5 more rooms of equal or bigger size, it was a HUGE club...
... ukh was the dancing really that terrible? I must have been on drugs!!



Illustrated: wow! a sink dirtier than mine! BBC Breakfast with Dermott Murnughan and Sian somethingorother; HM the Queen, looks good in a hat; a nightingale

Clearer

CLEARNESS IS SLOWLY STARTING TO APPEAR! My cluttered home is steadily decluttering. It's taking a LOT longer than I would like. I think it will take another 10 days to get things totally clear but the rate I'm going it's going very well.

I can't sleep and I'm exhausted. As I said I'm not doing anywhere like as much clearing as I'd like... but it IS being done. I'm so glad.

Everyone have a look at my cat video below; it's fantastic. I like the way he keeps patting the cat and that seems to palcate the poor purrer as it's wrapped in paper with a bow put on its head ...

Illustration: a 1940s housewife would go nuts in my house

2:48am Cleanup

UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS has just just finished on reapeat. The original was only on a few hours ago. This was a classic TV serial about servants and posh people in a London townhouse from my childhood. Now the BBC have brought it back with the same actress playing Rose. If you're across the Pond and get BBC America, watch this, it's A1 costume drama. I like a good costume drama but it does have to be good. Upstairs Downstairs is even better than Downton Abbey. Next week that dreadful Larkrise to Nowhere is back on I cannot stand that.

I've been watching night time television. Prince Charles showed us his bird-chirping garden. The feathery little entertainers were singing their tiny hearts out for the heir to the throne. I'd like a garden like that, but I'd go for 10,000 acres, not just 15.

Now enough about television I have just had pasta in Lloyd Grossman tomato sauce. My Mum bought me the pasta sauce. Normally I'd buy Ragu. A Ragu means you can have five times as many tomatoes as weight as they're evaporated down in an oven dish. Welshcakes Limoncello probably knows how to do this. Her Xmas dinner pictures at her friend's house are amazing.

Now I'm in a buzzy mood. Having woken up feeling vile and dire. Like death warmed up. I said I was cleaning and I did have a stab at it but I basically felt ill so I went back to bed in the afternoon and slept till 9pm. Now I'm up and racing nicely. No I have NOT been taking amphetamines or any other drugs. It's just a natural mood swing. I'm only drinking for medicinal reasons. Keeps the jangly edge off. Now I must go I have to scrub this ******* floor. ******* houses. ******* landlord. ******* life. **** **** **** ****! See I'm being awfully prim by depriving you of my obscenity tirade.

I have to go. Keeping moving keeps me UP. And UP gets the cleaning done. I am crystal clear and shining. Gotta move gotta move gotta MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE!!

Do you like my blue smiling face? Isn't it amazing. Blue is the best colour. There's nothing unhappy about blue. Blue is a high by itself. Cool blue ....

4:14am: a catalogue of freak accidents in the US. 8 homeless people burned to death in New Orleans, 5 teenagers asphyxiated in Florida motel, 8 injured in ski lift disaster in Maine ...

Oh yeah and a riot at a Moscow airport due to no de-icing spray (no: staff probably drank it!)

HOW TO WRAP A CAT FOR XMAS
This film, with 4,000,000 views so far, provoked "outrage" among humourless animal charities who seem to spend most of their existence flailing about for something to be upset and offended about. I hope they really got their money's worth from this because it's hilarious:

Still here

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.

Riddance

I WAS IN A SERIOUSLY ANTIMETHADONE MOOD yesterday wasn't I? I was despairing that I'd ever have a life on methadone. I'm not sure I ever will but I
can try. And if I can't do that, I can get rid of the methadone. Not sure how I'll survive, but I'm determined to try that too.

My current priority is to clear my house, which is in a terrible mess. I have rubbish rubbish rubbish. Stuff I've picked up on the street ~ furniture. A television set also retrieved from the street I haven't even plugged in to see if it works. Clothes, sheets, crap all tangled and strewn. I have about 30 black sacks in readiness for the Great Chucking Out. I threw out quite a lot last week. This week the rest Has To Go. I'm setting a time limit of New Year's Eve, by which time my home shall be gleaming like an operating theatre.

Does anybody know a magic cure for unhappiness? I google stuff on depression and get the same useless DSM Diagnostic Criteria. I don't care about that rubbish or whether it's genetic, environmental, drug-induced or all three (probably all three). I want to know how to get Rid. Along with all that Rubbish. Rid Rid Rid.

Good Riddance, Bad Rubbish!

Drink Day

I ACTUALLY FOUND MYSELF entertaining the idea of taking heroin earlier on. With a longish history of heroin addiction this is hardly a surprise, it just hasn't happened so far (this time). On previous attempts at coming off, it's just about ALL that happened. Apart from wanting to die.

My deepest fear as a heroin addict wasn't dying, it was living. Something I had little-to-no idea of how to do.

I had been all day at a friend's house where we were drinking. First just me and him. Then a knock at the door. Someone I haven't seen in maybe 8 years. He remembers me when heroin addiction was all new and still felt (to be honest) like Xmas every day. Xmas with a lot of desperation and despair and puking on the doorstep waiting for our terminally slow dealer to show up, it has to be said. But the good atill far outweighed the bad...

Nobody drank very much. There was a lot of talking. It was boys' talk. After 3 drinks (I know how much I had, only three!) I started feeling sick from lack of food. So I bought a cheese and red peppers bread in Morrisons (79p). That made me feel better. I tried to go to NA. I went right there, but the meeting that used to be there wasn't on so that was annoying. But I felt let off the hook. Really I wanted to get home.

On the way back I felt empty without heroin to come home to. Very empty and desolate. Even though I was tired and knew what heroin would do: just make me sleep, I still wanted it. In days gone by I would have wasted no time in scoring. Despite being tired and cold and pissed off, I would have ensured lovely heroin was in my hand, then in my veins, making everything all right.

Which is annoying as I was saying only an hour before how much I loathed everything to do with drugs. Mostly the people. I told a story of where I used to live. I would get up at 2 or 3am to buy drink (24-hour shopping, doncha love it!) very often I'd get accosted by a crackhead I knew. There were two in particular, who I knew pretty well, who begged money off passers-by. If I had £4, £4.50 or so, I'd sometimes go in halves on a £10 rock, which we smoked on the mid-level bathroom in my house. One particular night we found ourselves a few streets away, in a downstairs room full of black men who I didn't know. Both of these addicts were black, I suppose I point this out to say it made me feel the odd one out. Being White Boy in this room full of crack smokers where the atmosphere was like something from a lower circle of Crack Hell.

There was a white girl on the couch by the window. Long blonde hair. Sour expression. The archetypal "crack whore". And one on whom the tables have been turned, as they often are. One of the men said to her will you stay here and watch the door/my phone. Something like that. She said yeah yeah. they left, after telling us they had no drugs. One had at least 3x£10 clingfilm crack wraps in his hand. The girl rolled her eyes and said in a quieter voice "As if I have any choice."

I think we left before any more crack returned. Outside I said, "Don't you think there was a bad atmosphere in there?" and he just stared at me, blankly. He was far more interested in his pipe. This is just one event that convinced me I was no true crackhead. Heroin I would have been more than happy to bang up, if only there's been a decent light somewhere in that gloom. Heroin insulates from sensation, like being wrapped in furry blankets inside a bulletproof bubble. I never cared very much what went on elsewhere, as long as I was stoked up on gear. Of course most of the time I never had enough gear and that seemed to be the problem.

When I did have "enough" it got to the point of heroin just not "working" on not much more than 2g a day (speedballed*, with coke extra). In my one proper crack binge, my body said NO NO NO to coke, quite early on. Maybe within a week or so of 24-7 snowballing and piping. (When I slept I don't know. I think I just conked out at various points round the clock. woke up and carried on hitting up, drinking and piping.) Heroin my drug-saturated body said MORE MORE MORE to. But just could not feel it. Yes I was blowing way way too much money on drugs. And of course I'm not proud of it. A friend of mine smoked a house. He inherited a bundle of money and put £100,000 or more on the pipe in a single year. This stuff didn't make me happy (certainly not impressed) then. Now it makes me feel sick.

I know I need to drink less. Thanks for all the comments. Caeser I'm sorry I seem to have missed answering you. I'm answering every point in a second. I want to say to everybody I do read all comments. Not necessarily precisely when they come. The only reason I wouldn't specifically answer one is when I'm upset about something or when lots of people are saying lots of things and I feel deluged but in a good way. I would rather be deluged than left alone, I think any blogger who says they don't want comments must truly live in la-la land.

When I got home, by the way, I slept for five hours, till 1am. Without heroin. See what I mean..?

Re my drug history, so it doesn't sound contradictory the timings are this. All drugs: about 20 years (started age 19). In the 1st 10 years there were long spaces when I just did not use them. I did experiment with everything that came my way so the list is long. I also took acid and other drugs (especially speed) when I really shouldn't have. I was clinically depressed, on high dose antidepressants, seeing a psychiatrist. Me on acid then was not pretty, and I probably caused damage. Full-on heroin (+ heroin/methadone) addiction dates back almost exactly 10 years, though even it is hard to pin down a precise start date. Heroin experimentation began in any "meaningful" way about 2-3 years before that. So that's why I mention 20 years and 10 years. It's not a typo and it's not lies.

Methadone is the only drug I'm on now. The dose is far too high for my liking. I want to cut down and come off as soon as I can. Me detoxing is not a beautiful sight at all. I have had a "nervous breakdown" to some degree every single time I tried and it would be really foolish to try and achieve detox too quickly. Some of these "breakdowns" (I use the word losely) involved symptoms of bipolar** and more serious conditions than ordinary anxiety/depression. This is not to say I think it is bipolar or anything else. I'm trying not to think too much about that particular issue. Probably any inpatient detox would be too fast for me. The standard would go from around 60mg to zero in about 2 weeks. The longest I know of goes from about 120mg to zero in 6. Staying off drugs and cutting down slowly in the outside world, if I can do it, is probably the most sensible route FOR ME. Perhaps for many other people the opposite would be true.

Drink is still an issue. I know I drink too much. I drink about 3 x half litres of 7.5% ABV cheap cyder. Yesterday I managed one litre, by buying it in a bottle not cans, and drinking three smaller drinks. I think I'm going to try the 1-litre bottle from now on, cut down from there to one can. There's no great hurry and this isn't me making excuses. Bear in mind this addiction is 10 years old. To break it overnight may well put me in a Fool's Paradise. The progress may not be real. I need reality now.

I am supposed to be "taking care" of myself. So I'm trying to be responsible. I have to be consistent on the one hand (not breaking resolutions) and not get over-enthusiastic go too quick on the other. Bearing in mind I lost my marbles just transferring to methadone, I cannot see that rapidly cutting out anything would (in my own situation) be wise.

To anyone in a similar condition, my best advice is find yourself a good doctor (not easy). Or a good drugs worker. Or a good drugs/mental health professional. Drugs come under mental health anyway. I say this because what's good for me and what works for me may not be best for you. If you've had specific problems detoxing/switching meds/taking any psychiatric or other meds you need to explain this clearly. The problem could be mental or physical or both. Here in the UK if you need special treaetment due to a co-existing condition, you should get a programme tailored to you. I have tried to explain how a methadone detox would be tailored to me. In a way it's good the dr saw me as I was. Now they know I'm not just exaggerating or fantasizing when I talk about going cuckoo. I was bouncing off the walls in that there office!

Better leave it there. I hope I will look back one day and be able to stand by this when I say: CONGRATULATIONS DRUG DEALERS, THANKS FOR THAT DROUGHT. YOU'VE LOST YOURSELF A LONGSTANDING CUSTOMER.

*speedballing or snowballing means mixing heroin and crack (or cocaine) in the same IV shot. It's v strong and v dangerous

**bipolar disorder is what used to be called manic depression; it differs from ordinary depression in that bipolar involves swings from feeling slow, sleeping a lot, eating a lot and pretty down to going very fast, being irritable and angry and/or euphoric and high and barely sleeping at all. The moods can become mixed up and don't necessarily come in clear-cut "episodes".

Anna's description of bipolar depression (yesterday) is here

A little knock on the head

(SARCASM: A BLOODY GREAT KLONK ON THE HEAD)

That's why I don't feel too right. A shedload of drugs over about 20 years (though I did months with nothing over 2-3 years; though I might give the impression of having once been on EEEEEEEEE all the time, I wasn't, I just liked it and was still able to go out with it and not take it when I didn't want to. I never lost control of drugs till Heroin.)

And... I'm feeling dazed.

Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello!

I once got hit on the head by a truck. That gave me concussion. Concussion is nowhere near as strong as this. This is the biggest thing to hit me ever. And you wonder why I don't want to know what it's called!

Thanks for all the comments. I'm not v good at emails. I have to try more.

I hope this makes sense. I have been told I make a lot of sense. The day I stop making sense is the day it all ends. If I went that barking, I would be mistaken for an American Akita and be apprehended to Battersea Dogs' Home. Hopefully a nice Middle Class family with ferns in the hall and a nice garden would pick me up.


** For those not into drugs, E is what Americans sometimes call X: Ecstasy **

Slept!

WOW I SLEPT! For far fewer hours than it felt like, it has to be said. I thought it was evening when I woke up. It was midday. I didn't sleep till long, long into the night past 5 or 6 am. Cannot remember when. Then I slept!!

Without pills, which I didn't really want. Or glugging excess methadone (not really a temptation). Or drinking. I did "imbibe" 2 White Stars last night. To prove what was going on was not DTs.

To even think you have DTs you must be pretty far-gone.

Last night, when I was still going batshytcrazy, the POLICE were everywhere. I have no idea what happened. They were parked up all over the place. Wherever I looked some lady police officer in fluoro jacket seemed to be in the car. One particularly attractive one proved to be a parking meter. Ho hum. I was not in an "ordinary" state of mind.

The lights looked absolutely amazing. Then 2 police cars, blue flashers full on. Wow!! That was a moment!!

Then there were police everywhere, following me. Before that, my house, road, and all the shops were full of obvious crack dealers. Talking their horrible way they talk. And just being horrible people I want to avoid forever. Because i hate crack.

I am not trying to say people were serving up all over the place. Just these off duty bastards. Making piles of cash out of other people's misery. Spending the money in my local shop!!

Haven't a clue what was or was not real. That out of it. At one point my room seemed full of radios left on each babbling some different speech or tune. Then I started hearing voices speaking Spanish and Chinese. Now that has to be loony tunes.

I don't know what the hell has happened, and I don't feel I have fully come down. (Don't want to. Who wants normality anyhow??)

But I did sleep. And I am a bit less destructible, disinhibited... still barely any appetite. At all. Not hallucinating smoke and bubbles. Everywhere. This the baseline. Crazy stuff on top. Saw the Northern Lights in candy colors in my own house!! How amazing is that!! All free of charge of course. No drugs.

I did crave a go on the heroin. For about 0.2 seconds. Then I remembered how crap heroin actually is. First time I properly tried it all I could think was "is THIS what all the fuss is about!!" Marianne Faithfull put it best: "Big waste of time."

So there we go. Don't want that any more. Always kind of knew it was an expensive Chemical Lie. As people off it, especially people who had never been on, seemed far happier and more contented than any addict I had ever met, especially the ones still using.

No amount of heroin, no matter how good (and I know I wasn't being ripped off: nearly always disappointed with intros to other people's dealers) even when I was nearly unconscious, still wasn't good enough enough enough enough. Never ever enough.

Thank God all that is Over.

It actually feels Over. Over. Done with. Gone.

THANK GOD!!

PS thanks mental health person. Did get what you said. Was in a slightly "distractable" state. Couldn't get head round charging a mobile phine, putting key in lock, signing into internet stuff. So was only randomly able to achieve anything at all. How I posted I have no idea!

PPS 2303hrs just found this discussion on my favourite cheapie drink White Cider. (White Star #1 choice; White Ace #2 choice. White Ace doesn't taste quite as nice in my book. If you're foreign, get out of your head any apply cultured drink country pub fantasy. This is dirt cheap alcohol. Like liquid brillo pads. With bubbles.
Really nice with tropical fruit juice though. Addictively so!!
Not bad on its own when you get used. I use a mixer to be a bit responsible and make it less alcoholic. As do not WANT to be an alcoholic.

PPPS read this for a lurid depiction of Xanax/etc Valium/benzo withdrawals. In America. Sadistic Doctors in a rehab clinic?? Surely not!!

Me/Valerie/etc

I still have not slept. The trip to the chemist to get methadone was the all-time pits with people swearing and spitting. Only way to deal with it was remind self it is called "paranoia" and not real. But that's not easy. My mind is still tripping out, everything sounds incredibly loud. People on the street do my head in. I still hear voices words coming from everywhere. I have stopped worrying that I am losing my mind and trying to have fun with it. It is a bit like free drugs. Still there are dinnerplates and bottles and glasses everywhere. I mention this because anyone who's been genuinely suicidal will know instantly what these items can very quickly be used for. But I don't feel depressed I just feel weird. I am trying to blame it on bad heroin, but am not at all sure that is true. I actually rang the nuthouse earlier. First thing I mentioned was the drugs, I'm not hiding that one. I asked whether anyone has menttioned trippy stuff in heroin he said no. And there is the place they would know about it if geaer was sending people crazy. If anything I think what's doiong it is NO GEAR. I have been self-medicating for years (not my expression, drug clinic came up with that one) and now I'm not self-medicating and methadone is just a hopeless replacement for heroin. I'm only not complaining about it because I am so fed up of drugs of all kinds I never want any more ever again. Including sleeping pills even though I can't sleep and I know 3 people who would give me them. I have never been the type by the way to take 4 or more downers at once and spend the evening hanging off a lamppost. I only ever used them to sleep.

Anyway subject change. I haven't got a photo of her, bc she's an international narcotics trafficker, wanted in 46 countries. But meet Valerie, who comes from St Kilda in melbourne. (Is St Kilda even v posh? I have no idea. I just made Valerie's house enormous.)

The Anna in question is Anna Grace in Wisconsin, who Viv desperately hopes knows a good heroin chemist to turn the next crop of Burmese poppies into top grade shit!

Val said...
Hi Babes Melbourne here. I have a 700kg delivery of that lovely Burmese white sugar coming through Sunday evening. Should come in at Sydney Harbour on a North Korean registered ship at around 1800 hrs. So I'll be getting me spoon out in readiness for a fresh new batch. The shit we're on at the moment is, quite frankly, stale. I know what orifices it has been in, whose they were and for how long. And yet still I'm banging away at it like crazy. As for the baby, guess what that was? Gall bladder problems!
Now I MUST HAVE A MOAN about the police. Have they nothing better to do than harrass innocent housewives like me? There I was driving down the lane, taking my 8 and 12 year old (don't know whose the 12 year old is, but he ain't bruce's that's for sure. Bruce has strawberry blond hair and blue eyes. This kid looks African! I said oh it must be a genetic throwback as I'm partially Australian aboriginal, and he bought it! Plus a 17 carat blue diamond sparkler for me neck. We were doing real well on the China white back then. Importing tonnes of the stuff. Those kids out there in Sydney and Melbourne go crazy for the stuff. I'm not that into it meself. Only do an eighth a day me. Which isn't much when you know there's still 44kg we haven't bothered to fish out of the fuel tank on the rusty old tractor back at our farm (near Perth, Western Aus, lovely place to bring up the kids. Only Bastard Bruce, always after a Brucey Bonus (got that one from shit british tv we get imported in on cable. Sell shit, you buy shit. Law of the jungle, darling.
Now Anna my dear I know you are well connected, tell me where can I get one thousand metric tonnes of acetic anhydride? I nead it real quick.
Those peasants will be scraping away at those weeds in not too long! Would you spend all day in the long hot sun just so some bastard in Western Aus or wherever could get high? I wouldn't. Keep it for meself, I would. Apart from that 44kgs which had fucking better be where they're supposed to be, or there truly will be trouble I proomise you that. Apart from that we've barely 80g left and that has to last me and Bruce possibly into next week if those North Koreans get lazy. Ukk. How bad can life get.
Anyway I was having a rant at the police dear wasn't I?
Yeah, just driving merrily along. Delivering the little sweeties to school. Having a nice pipe on crack behind the wheel, as you do, when some bastard pulled me over. At first I thought he thought it was a mobile phone! Gave me a real talking to about "drinking at the wheel" I never said "darling that was crack cocaine you just saw" me head was really whooshing there was a good $20 worth of Bolivia's best on that pipe. Surprised I ccan drive at all the amount I smoke.

December 4, 2010 12:19 AM


Val said...
I'm not a crackhead though. Don't they work in whorehouses and stuff. O yeah I used to. O ho hum. Shit happens. Well assuming this shipment comes in OK and you can sort out this Mr Kim/whatever the fuck he's called. Long as he's Chinese and can turn a China White he's for me. Tell 'im to bring 7 tonnes hydrochloric acid, 7 tonnes ethyl alcohol 7 tonnes ether. We have a big batch to stir up in those there hills!
By the way we have 12 brands going at present. As well as the Double Uo Globular, there is Panda, 999, 5 Star, Magic Monkey, and rabbit brand. Did the design on that one meself. Two rabbits howling at the moon with some shit in Chinese going down the side. Got it from a Chinese takeaway menu. Aparently it means number 26 with fried rice.
Anyway rabbit brand means it's real crap. Double Lion's (aka UOGlobe's the best). Am I giving you an education in China white here? I wanted to launch a new one called Herpes Brand "keeps coming back" but Bruce doesn't approve. Possibly because we both have it.
Honestly you would not believe the amount of emailing we have to do just to secure ten tonnes of illegal narcotics from Burma to here!
I hope the police aren't reading this. Surely they have better things to do. Knocked at the door the other day to inform me I'd left an upstairs window open and did I know, what with the spate of recent thefts and all (bastard junkies, doncha hate 'em!) Long as the fucking heroin's where it should be everything's OK. Anyway must dash. More crack to pipe before another fucking school run. Oh no because it's Saturday. Thank God for a day off!!
Anyway you get your Mr Kim here pronto and I'll get ya a big pot of neat dilaudid, how does that sound. I also manufacture that and that oxy shit those Americans are into. Oh sorry you're American. Scuse me French. I'm Australian, that's all. Well I must dash. Police at the door AGAIN. What do they want this time?!!

Waiting...

I WOKE UP TODAY, late. In misery, bordering on despair. I had the darkest thoughts. Couldn't move myself for an hour, 2 hours. It felt like all day. Then the phone rang. FREEBIE! It was way better than anything I remember. Of course, standards have fallen.
That makes it v hard to give marks out of 10. Isn't it best; it's not as good as it was, but it's way better than what's been around. That's the best. B is a long-term business. Customers come back and back and back, over years.

That is what certain kiddie "shotters" (as they call themselves) need to understand. Just because someone glides past on a mountainbike. Nobody hands over £10 without a sample. If the gear is shyte or the bags are small, nobody comes back, except as a last resort. Trying heroin is a foolish thing to do. That doesn't mean addicts are fools. Addicts are stuck in addiction. If you're spending as much as many of us do, you want the best possible deal: Basic human nature!

I can give an example. Someone I have known for ages passed his phone over to someone else, who is full of smoothtalk and slang (even American slang, he said something to me I couldn't catch. Afterwards I realized he was probably saying "it's fire, innit?" (v. good). Well no, it was not extraordinarily satisfactory at all! Not "fire" as nobody says (do they?) this side of New Jersey! This guy, who sounds all smooth over the phone, was telling me it's "peng" (strong) ... etc etc etc. My feeling was right. He does not know what he is talking about. And his bags are well undersized. Everyone else says this too. Great way to lose all your customers. Put someone like that in charge.

If this seems a mush, o man... you really have to realize I was so so tired and woke up feeling like I'd fallen off a horse/bike/giraffe. Acheing all over. That's why a good 25 comments built at the DROUGHT NEWS: HERE.

RE this morning's comments on the heroin drought post, can I add, if you can't find any new ones it's because numbers have exceeded 200. At the very bottom of the form are words to click on: "newer/newest" that's how I got to them. Moderation is staying on, not as censorship, but so I know what people are saying. I cannot reply to every single person individually. I do very much appreciate that y'all have come here.

I am going to post this quickly, else it will never get done.

I am irritated with the government, for giving me and so many of us methadone. Yes it's FAR better than nothing, but still nowhere near as good as something else. Theoretically, "substitution therapy", as they call it, could involve any of the vast pharmacopea of opiates and opioids. Dilaudid/hydromorphone, "oxy", pethidine, morphine... fentanyl even (patches, lollies)... up to IV diamorphine. Yes it might be giving addicts a free fix or non-injectable pill. But what is worst? Rampant shoplifting and crime or cutting the dealers' market off? Making addicts suffer just does not work. To those not ready to give up, it just sends a personal message "I will never let this happen to me again". And when you're lost in addiction you tend to do that by carrying on using.

I don't want to go into just how bad I feel sometimes, because I know lots out there are suffering also. Suffice it to say: I really do find it difficult.

If only they could change the medication (not necessarily to an injectable) it might be x100 easier to stick to a script.

Me and Pads are waiting on a G, hoping it will come fast. The gear's not "normal" but it's far better than "TCP", not full of sedatives, doesn't block a works. I saw it, I know. What it does do is go cloudy on a foil (makes you cough), looks like orange juice in a works.

Re: being clean. I despair. I felt so bad this morning. Suicidally bad. I feel torn in two, it's never been this dire. Knowing I'm blogging to say what I think and feel, yet not wanting to (appear to) give blessing to some dangerous idea someone else might be contemplating.

I feel I have a moral responsibility to help or save from harm, not condemn. There are plenty others out there doing the condemnation.

Da man is taking ages.

Sorry to my friends who know me from before who are more used to a higher hamsters than herion quotient. There is crisis here. I am only doing what I think I can do to help.

(And what else can I do.)

Gotta dash. Alcohol-glugging way down. Which is v good, considering it's a Monday (drink day).

Illustrated: fake-looking B

When are you coming round again?

MARIANNE FAITHFULL: SISTER MORPHINE
She wrote, or at least co-wrote this.

Please, Sister Morphine, when are you coming round again?



AS TEARS GO BY

It is the evening of the day
I sit and watch the children play
Doing things I used to do
But not with you
I sit and watch as tears go by...

This is a more recent recording, when she truly understood the meaning of those words.
Nothing to watch. Is that the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem?



WELL THIS IS DEPRESSING. I wrote a long post on Things You Can Do In A Crisis, banging on about ways of detoxing, treatments, options, clinics, psych clinics but it goes on and on and sounds preachy, and I don't know if anyone would want to read it. I know I should post it up. It's not meant to be preaching, just a collection of ideas and some phone numbers. I don't know. Don't know. Don't know and do care. The thought of people sick and desperate out there was doing my brainbox in last night. Big time.

{The post is a dog's dinner!}

How long is it now? I have not bothered phoning anyone. Even on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/when was it? They texted me. Then the idea gnawed away at me until I phoned. Even then I hesistated saying I'll think about it. Dealer knew exactly what I meant. Could tell by my tone of voice I wasn't too bothered. When I saw him, his phone was going mental. So some comment I left about them making less money, even that's untrue. O how sad. I was hoping sales would go down on crack, but even that's not necessarily true. When I still did it, I wouldn't do crack without "smack". Lots of people would. So these bastards are still making money, out of thin air!

(And things that go blue on foil and things containing all manner of bashed-up God knows what... In the 2002 drought there was stuff called "the oil slick gear". I thought I'd left the old filter in by accident (was v scrupulous like that, back then). Something floating in it. Fished it out. The strong smell of myrrh ~ yes, as in gold, frankincense and... ~ was coming up. This was myrrh resin. And someone had cut multiple kilos with it, because it was all over the country from Birmingham to East Anglia. Someone must have walked into the bourgeois herbalist's and said "gimme some resin man, I need it for me B" and they said "resin? What resin? We have this wonderful myrrh. Look how golden brown it is. Just pestle and mortar it and it'll go down a treat."Yeammon, gimme dat, me gotta lotta B to jump on." Resin in gear. What the..!! Resin makes gear stick in the works. It is not good. If you have to stamp all over it, sugar is safer. Gloopy, but safer.) This paragraph was added later so back to :

CRAVING! Why why why is it eating at me the way it is? I feel like I'm being eaten from the insides out. I took more syrup just now. That might stop me. Might not, but it might just. I thought I felt OK earlier. There is food here. I don't want to eat it. It's not curry. Not Chinese. Spice is what I want. I can't be sick then. Spicy food + dying sick do not go together. Even spicy food + methadone not working full-on = no. I used to have big troubles surrounding gear and food. Hitting up by fridge, tearing into cooked chicken legs like Attila the Hun. Not good. Wasn't thin. Wasn't fat. But could barely eat without gear. That made rehab really difficult. Never known anyone with a problem like that. When heroin and food become intermixed, the person is usually female: girls tend to use gear not to eat. With me it suddenly gave din-dins 10 times more savour. (Never worked with sweets.) It took a long time to get round that one.

Is it normal to feel so torn? When I decide to do it (something non-sobriety-related, it has to be) I still have the gumption to do anything I really want to. If someone crosses me I will let hell freeze over before I give in or let them get the better of me again. (I am thinking in particular of my former druggieworker, Maple Syrup. I called her this bc I could never remember her name. Loathed the bitch, and sacked her. But it took a whole year for open hostilities to develop.) She thought I was weak-willed and could get the better of me. Really didn't know me.

I have heard of people testing opiate-negative (comments on this blog). If this is so, you are clean and free and very fortunate. I know it doesn't always feel like that, but it's true.

I have also heard there is a huge premium on Subutex on the street. I have never heard of people buying Subutex. I would have quite liked some at one time... But that's another story. My own involvement with Subutex was not pretty. Took it. Thought I was doing really well. Everyone thought I was doing really well. (Makes you feel clean.) Decided to cheat, hitting up gear in a bush. It was in a remote corner of a park, where no-one would have found me for a long time if I'd died. I did this a few times, waking each time about 4 hours later, cross eyes, barely able to walk in a straight line. Then I hit up where I was staying. BANG! Down like a felled tree. Straight down. Straight Girl went nuts. Not pretty, not at all. I had been overdosing every day. Or at least a borderline overdose. Maybe in that bush, an angel was giving me artificial respiration. The gear and the doses were the same on each occasion. As was the 4-hour unconsciousness, followed by extreme bleariness. On me, Subutex kicked most of my habit off my brain, so I could take a third of a ten pound bag and be happy. On two thirds was out of my tree, even a fortnight later. I don't know if I'm unusually sensitive to it, but anyone on the buprenorphine, be careful! Anyone testing opiate-clean, be ultra careful! If you really are opiate clean, just remember this is hard-won. How far back do you really want to go? See preaching again.

Well I have garbled on enough now. I'm off! Take care everyone.

The HEROIN DROUGHT POST with all the news in the comments is here.

Bonjour!

HI FOLKS. I've still got goblins in the broadband so I'm at the internet place round the corner. I tried logging into my neighbour's system, but could't crack their password... Oddly though there are two networks, BTOpenZone and BTHomeFon that will let me, after registration and a costly SMS payment, log in for the princely sum of £3 for an hour, £5 for a day or £39 for a month! So what is this? Broadband for those who can't be bothered to get it installed? I was on mobile broadband before, which worked perfectly until ... GOBLIN ATTACK!
I could also take the computer to the public library, which is wifi'd up, but I'm afraid of getting infections in the machine... is there any risk? If so, what is it..?

WELL IT'S A ROCKY ROAD to recovery of any kind, as I'm discovering. Every time I try, or even think I'm somewhere near level ground some PERSON will appear, ANOTHER PERSON ~ SOMEONE ELSE will come in and throw everything up in the air, like a mad psychiatrist shovellng cows' diarrhoea in his rose-beds.
All I want is to be left alone.
And to feel OK.
My biggest, biggest problem with methadone is how lousy I feel when I wake up in the morning. Unless I can save the entire dose all day and sleep with it next to me,ready to drink at 4am ~ so I can get up before eight with the level in me high ~ then I will wake feeling like a block of ice, unable to get warm (yet sweating heavily if I wrap up) and craving craving heroin out of my mind while the methadone takes its one hour twenty minutes to come on. (Yet another thing I hate about methadone, it takes so very long to kick in, even if you've been sipping it faithfully for years.) You'd think that by the time I feel OK again I AM OK, but that doesn't usually happen. My mind's in so many pieces by this time, it never goes back together all day.
The worst days on methadone are such empty stretches of blank despair the only constructive thing I can do is go back to bed, cursing my body for ever bothering to wake up and wishing I could have some slider switch installed on the back of my head so that when I'm depressed I can sleep for 23.5 hours out of 24. And when I'm not depressed sleep not at all (sleep, after all, is a big waste of time if you have anything to do). When I used to work proper hours I never had any time outside work for anything except jumping in the bath, eating and going back to work. The entire rest of my life was spent working or sleeping.
I didn't have particularly good mental health in this period.
If I had only discovered heroin many years ago, I'd have gone on it then. Back in the days when the only cure I had for depression was cakes and cocoa and lying in my Arabian Nights style bed with about 15 pillows and eight quilts watching telly. I also used to smoke one cigarette a day. Just the one. Which I'd ponce each evening off the mandy secretary downstairs...
Then along came heroin, a far more efficacious painkiller. And life seemed amazing for a while. The first two years of full-on heroin addiction were like Christmas every day. I got to use my drug of choice morning, noon and night.
Of course I had to beg on the street to get the money to score ~ but even that was a novelty. And I was young.
And didn't look like a bloated, puffy old alcoholic ~ which is how I looked at my worst.
Anyway I decided to throw that life in the trashcan of the past. Still everything is going badly. (Actually I don't expect things ever to go well...)
And I must run. Else the goblins in THIS computer will time me out!
See yers all soon :-)

Clothes handwash

I SPENT THE BEST PART OF AN HOUR handwashing four pairs of socks, 2 undies and a teeshirt this morning... It was 5:30am so the launderette was shut anyway.

When they first went in the socks were crusty like you wouldn't believe. I have eaten Mr Kipling's bramley apple pies with less crust than those socks, I can tell ya. I have been wearing 2 pairs at once because of the workmen's boots I always wear (steel toecaps, all the better to kick yobbos' heads in down the park ~ haha!)... then I washed mySELF in the same washing up bowl (a socalled "whore's bath" as someone once said in my comments) and that took very nearly an entire HOUR too... I know this because 2 episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond played out during the course of the scrubbing. I think it takes a long time because I soap on, scrub off seven times. Otherwise I am not clean...

And you wouldn't believe it but my clothes washed really clean also. I mean, considering my remiss latherorial ways it is a sheer miracle. The water eventually ran CLEAR.... And THAT has never happened before, I can tell you!

Sorry about this. Yes it is DOGS AGAIN ~ but I could not resist:

An Akita-inu and a Shiba-inu puppy...



NEED YOU TONIGHT by PROFESSOR GREEN
A modern take on that classic INXS tune...

It's really funny:



ANTIHEROIN AD
I like this one because it has that tiny doggie tearing round the park
Also I don't know WHY they insist on doing this, but the 10ml "drug works" they showed would have room for about TWENTY addict-strength fixes... nobody uses needles like that. Nobody!!
The tune is nice though, Mad World from the film Donnie Darko

A gaggle of geese, a murder of crows... a donkey derby of pizza boxes.

YES REALLY I'm talking of abortive posts scribbled on old foodcardboard, untapped in, unfinished. Sometimes I accumulate loads of them, but they're always boring (hence unposted).

In days gone by I used to scrawl out man a post in advance... not "man a post" ~ MANY a one! Lately I haven't done this, hence the boring blog and the degeneration into a morass of chinchillas and Japanese inus.

By the way, Morrisons own sweet chili chicken is nothing on Iceland's fiery chicken pizzas, which are proper stonebaked, and far more generously chickensprinkled.

Now talking of donkey derbies I think I need a Narcotics Anonymous sponsor more than I need a Native Japanese or European curlytailed furrydoggie... Also, living in the big bad city I'm scared somebody might burgle my furrydoggie from outside a shop or NA meeting (well I gotta walk the thang ~ mightaswell kill 2 birds 1 stone, ya know...)

And I don't think naming the shiba-inu "Snarler" will necessarily rub off on her character enough to put off local tea leaves.

Which is where sobriety comes in. Sobriety doesn't moult everywhere in spring, never gets bored and tears up the newspapers, will not tip over frying pans full of sausages and run off with them. It doesn't bark at strangers or scurry past park railings and into main roads.

Sobriety is hard-won yet free as a bird. It is guaranteed never to pee on the carpet (and you are less likely to pee on the carpet when you're sober), it does not need an ID-chip and unlike a cute lil dawg, nobody can ever steal it from me.

So sobriety it is.

God, grant me the Serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the Courage to change the things I can ~
and the Wisdom to know the difference!

3 GOOD SONGS ~ or ought I to say "top tunes" to be hip-n-down wid da kidz..?

tHESE ARE BY FAR THE BEST (in my view) OF THE uk TOP 20 ON LAST NIGHT'S TV

#18 PROFESSOR GREEN ~ NEED YOU TONIGHT
Classic tune ~ with that DER-DER-DER from the original.
And rap WITH AN ENGLISH ACCENT ~ very modern & all...



#15 KATE NASH ~ DO WAH DO

Phoney American accents are bang out of fash these days, if you're Brit. And I love the air-hostess stuff, it reminds me of the late Princess Diana's fashion sense...



#1 LADY GAGA FT. BEYONCE ~ TELEPHONE

Musically I don't think Lady Gaga's tunes are that catchy or amazing but I do like this vid featuring Beyoncé ~ Beyoncé who ticks every gorgeous-by-numbers box, yet sexy-on-video she ain't. I think what I've seen of her acting's actually much better than her shrill singing... but anyway.
And doncha think Gaga looks like Aimy Winehouse wid da shark-eye curves?