SLEEP. My sleep has been abysmal. At best I can sleep a few hours. Or go all night and half the next day ie going to bed 24 hours from when I last woke up. So I got some zopiclone and took one in the early afternoon. I don't think I've ever taken a pill to sleep at this time. I thought I might sleep a couple of hours but I slept about hours and hours, probably 10 or 11 hours.
It's now past 3am. But I woke up feeling OK, like I could focus and concentrate and maybe even read a book.
I gotta go methadone clinic tomorrow. No choice. Gotta go. I hate going because the last few times I was high and caused great amusement. Talking to everyone. Being friendly. High on nothing.
I can't bear to walk in there as my normal boring self now. But I have to have to no choice have to. Hate being a methadone addict. It's not as bad in some ways as being a heroin addict. You don't wonder what the dose is going to be like strength-wise as you never feel it.
Heroin barely feels like anything, even when I took grams of it I never felt more than hot and chilled out. Which is strange as withdrawal literally makes you feel burning hot and freezing cold at the same time. Which is strange as apparently ancient (non-Biblical) descriptions of hell give a very similar account of simultaneously burning and freezing.
I want no drugs. I wish I'd never tried a single one.
I WAS SURE I posted something else but whatever I said got lost. My memory is poor these days. Chemist says I missed a methadone pick-up Monday but I'm not sure I did. I'm pretty hot at methadone and making sure I have enough. I need to be as I'm fully considering dropping the State Controlled Prescription and merely buying methadone on the strreet. Which is my option for when they start messing my head even more than presently.
Earlier today I was in the bad mood I've been in for three days. I crashed down. So this afternoon I took heroin therapy and feel far better for it. Frankly I don't care about myself or my life or whether anything is good or bad. Gear is the same as suicide so I'm self-medicating with slow suicide and it works. Doesn't stop me feeling manic and/or over the top, doesn't stop me being depressed and/or mood swinging. Stops the worst of it though. Which implies if I'm in withdrawal as y'all want to tell me I'm still withdrawing when "high" enough on gear to be in near-unconsciousness. So shove that in your expert pipes and toke it.
Baino can you please explain something what do you mean the dr says I'm psychotic? But I'm not? How so? I don't get this you're really confusing me. You think I'm exaggerating? Then you're wasting your time here if I write a ficiton blog it would be WAY less sad thatn this one come on. So what do you think is real? I don't get it. As I said I'm not a psychotic what really happens is psychic, that's how I hear other people's thoughts. Telepathy. If you can't hear the reason is simple YOU'RE DEAF.
The shrinko is the only one I trust and even him I think he is trying to kill me when I go to an NA meeting. So I trust no-one. I wouldn't post anything if you knew who I was so THAT, ANNA GRACE IS WHY I'M "HIDING BEHIND MY BLOG" as you put it when you try and push me gently into behaviour I'm not comfortable with. You might want people to look at you; I don't need my neighbours reading my blog. That might be a buzz for you; to me it's a buzz-killer. I want to be read, not stared at. Leave a comment Anna I leave them for you and you won't even leave a single one when I specifically ask you.
Baino, Anna, Gattina, please answer in comments I cannot do email it's a total headfucker. Unless it really is confidential please everyone use COMMENTS. Comments I can do; email I just do not do. I just do not do it; ask my family. I get your point Gattina: your blog is a shiny happy blog where you don't want my heroin-talk so I'll email that from hammynutter@lycos.com. Please anyone who emails, no matter what the subject LEAVE A COMMENT SAYING YOU EMAILED or I won't be able to find it. There are no rules chez moi that anyone needs to comment on the post they answer under. If you want to tell me anything, relevant or not to anything else, just slap it under today's load of Gledwood-drivel and I'll get it. Don't email me unless you really do need to use email. OK?
I am going to ask this Consultant Psychiatrist yes/no am I in detox on methadone? Yes or no; tell me. Methadone is a substitution therapy and should leave you in no withdrawals. I certainly don't withdraw physically so how can I "withdrawl mentally" without craving? I only want heroin in depression. Depression I had for DECADES before I ever tried heroin. Question number 2 will rear its head: that being so, why on earth are you giving it to me KNOWING it turns me into a psychdedelic shaman who's not taking psychedelics? And can you please make the psychedelia stronger? Thankyouverymuch!
I can't go on I'm too sleepy to focus. Things I cannot say are seeping out of my mind so I'm leaving it here. Nutter Club report comes later.
MADONNA: HUNG UP time goes by so slowly for those who wait; no need to hesitate...
I JUST SPOKE TO MY MUM i rang her yesterday when i was in a really good mood but she was out, now i'm feeling better i went to bed for ten minutes it's not good to sleep during the day i was feeling ILL physically SICK and EXHAUSTED i'm on tea and ProPlus I took 6x50mg caffeine that's no more than 2 Starbucks coffees and it did f-all to me. Personally i think TEA is stronger than pro-plus.
I don't know what's happening. I feel like an idiot for buying endless films endless endless enough to watch constant movies for days on end because it seemed like a good idea at the time and I kept thinking it's only 4x20B (£70) then another £10 then another £10 then I spent all the rent money and bought more thinking well fuck 'em.
What a diseased world we live in where I'm not even allowed to be in a good mood without it being labelled an illness. Fair enough I was a bit aggressive, confrontational and disinhibited to the point of calling Naomi's colleagues "cunts" but that's just the real me coming out. I spent YEARS depressed, just wanting to curl up and die. Now I'm not depressed and they want me to medicate my energy DOWN DOWN DOWN.
I could go on an alcohol bender because they tried that verbal trick on me where they say "alcohol is a depressant so it makes you depressed" which is actually a semantic trick. Does that mean because I'm hyper I can drink like a fish then? Well no. But it means their trickery is exposed as another druggie service con. Like "methadone stabilizes you" yeah pull the other one. That one has bells, whistles and the keys to Buckingham Palace jangling off it.
Methadone stabilizes you! Methadone stabilizes you! So that's why EVERYONE I have ever known on methadone uses HEAVILY on top. They use heroin because that makes you feel OK, methadone makes you feel suicidally depressed, well it did me. Nursey said it must be my "underlying mood". And promptly did nothing whatsoever to remedy this or help me. Nothing at all. Only when it gets so bad I think we're in 2012 and the walls are talking to me only then do they actually accept I was telling them something was wrong and telling the truth. Oh yeah and I waved and yelled at her last time she skulked past me into their little office where they hold their witches' coven, refusing to acknowledge my presence. This is Nice Nursey With Too Many Ideas, not Evil Bitch Nursey. I can't wait till I bump into Evil Bitch I'm going to tell her what I think of her. Naomi thinks I ought to calm down. Naomi's OK and I could see I was winding her up. Maybe I'd better drop this Nutter Club if I'm only causing chaos there. Whole point in going is to express how I feel. Now what I feel is unacceptable because it's too vehemently expressed, too passionate and too TRUE.
I'm off I have a pie to eat.
No I didn't cut up with that bottle. As I said the broken glass was blunt on every side so even when I pressed hard I only got cat-scratches. It means I wasn't meant to cut up. I just thought it might be therapeutic. Like a therapeutic relationship between me and some glass.
Hey I'm down very nearly to the Acceptable Limit drinks wise, that being 28 units per week, 280mls neat alcohol. Wow.
I MIGHT AS WELL CUT STRAIGHT TO THE CHASE: I AM MENTALLY ILL. Naomi, the Dual Diagnosis lady thinks I’m getting too hyper. My Key Worker seems to think this too. Naomi went and spoke to a psychiatrist for me to find out what I’m to do about these meds that disagree with me. Answer: do as I suggested and take all 4mgs risperidone at night.
Thing is I’ve not taken any for 2 days and felt wonderful this morning. Speeding on my own neurotransmitters (and NO SPEED) and going on a DVD shopping spree. I now have 28 films on 27 discs. Meet the Parents and Meet the Fuckers, which I got for £5 is a double movie.
I also got the Incredible Journey 1 and 2, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which is on now, Bounty Hunter starring Jennifer Anniston (love Jennifer Anniston); Gladiator; Cleopatra which I nearly had an argument over at the till over how boring it was. I said it’s moving wallpaper: you put it on silent and listen to music, eat Chinese takeaway and smoke cigarettes nobody WATCHES Cleopatra. I put it on for a bit but had to keep fast forwarding when Elizabeth Taylor was off screen that lady has some beautiful Bulgari jewellery by the way ~ thumbnail sized emeralds; The Queen (Helen Mirren); The Last King of Scotland, which I saw last night and is brilliant; Bucket List which isn’t a rude misogynistic sexual gibe at worn out women it means “a list of things to do before you kick the bucket” starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman; The Good The Bad and The Ugly which is by FAR my favourite western (I’m not into westerns unless they star Audy Murphy); Wall Street 2 disc version (what on earth is on disc 2 I’ve no idea); Silver City which is some spoof about politics (£2 from a charity shop); and The Devil’s Arithmetic which was £1 and is about a New York Jewish girl from the 21st century transported back into the holocaust. I’ll have to be in the mood for that one. Well that’s the main stuff. O yeah and Breakfast At Tiffany’s has soundtrack in German!
Pinky, my schizophrenic friend phoned me today. She thinks I sound really hyper and says I ought to be in hospital. Hospital shmospital. No way! And I’m not taking my meds for at least another week. I want some free Natural full-on Ecstasy high. I LOVE being high.
I asked Naomi whether she thought I had substance-induced mood disorder and she said no, because that’s directly phased in with a substance like crack and loses steam pretty rapidly when the crack is dropped (or whatever: nearly always an upper or a withdrawal state and I’m not on uppers and not withdrawing and she knows my heroin/methadone situation). My illness waxes and wanes and is currently getting stronger. I am going back into a 48-hour day. No sleep at all last night, I was buzzing too much to be bothered sleeping and did recline in bed in a position I’d usually sleep in. No sleep came so ten minutes later (waste no time, that’s my philiosophy!) I was up and pottering about. By early morning I felt pretty high. Mid morning I felt wonderful. I’m tired and a bit ragged now but still hyped up and it feels brilliant to be high not on drugs. Like I’m finally coming home to a Perfect State of Being. I don’t care whether it’s called mentally ill or not. I did point out that hypomania is NOT an illness, but neither Naomi nor my Worker seemed convinced. I was rabbitting so much they had to just tell me to stop talking and start talking about their own boring matters which I’ve forgotten anyway. Also I called the Mental Health Nurse a c**t which made both of them laugh uproariously then have to compose themselves and be all professional.
I also googled substance induced mood disorder and substance induced b-----r and was shocked to find nothing matching me at all. And I checked the American Journal of Psychiatry and everything. “Substance induced” should not be confused with the so-called “kindling” phenomenon, where antidepressants and illicit drugs intensify mood episodes, possibly triggering bipolarity and making the illness more severe. After “kindling” you get mood swings anyhow whether or not you go on taking drugs. Substance induced means DIRECTLY induced by a substance or substance withdrawal. I checked carefully and what Naomi said seems true. Unfortunately. Because if this is so I’m really going to have trouble convincing this psychiatrist I’m not mental.
So this means I have to find ingenious ways to wriggle out of what I knew was wrong with me anyhow. It has ALL the major symptoms of a certain condition with 2 phases. In one you get depressed, in the other you get hyper. A third state exists where you have aspects of both at the same time. I’m not naming it as I don’t want to curse my happiness. This condition is labelled a “severe mental illness” which made me blow my top and rant loudly about the Mental Health C**t who suggested I might have a personality disorder an an anxious-avoidant one at that! This certain condition which I decline to name which I might well have is pretty much DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE to anxious avoidant personality disorder, though avoidant behaviour is common in the depressed phase. This disorder is associated with artists, business tycoons and high achievers and it is NOT schizophrenia. It is a mood disorder. And if you can’t work out what I mean look up bipolar.
I still have no official diagnosis. If I do get diagnosed as a pie-bowler I shall be intensely upset I can tell you that for nothing. Because that will mean I’m a manic-depressive junkie. I mean what greater Loser title can you get? And if I do have that one I’ll probably be on psych meds for LIFE. The fact that I go UP not down off meds is yet another sign that this nasty thing is probably me.
That is all I want to say on the subject. Until I hear more news I’m going to try and steer off this issue because it doesn’t make me happy. It makes me feel very upset and angry because I suspected I had this disorder more than ten years ago and nobody listened. The people who said I acted like I had it (on selected occasions) had ALL seen it first-hand and knew the behaviour. Behaviour I was displaying by being hyped up, impatient, irritable and euphoric. As years went by these symptoms were initially squashed by heroin, then they started emerging again. Weird symptoms like a racing brain accompanied by a very nice buzzing feeling, buzzing so much I remember on one occasion about three years ago having to restrain myself from yelling obscenities out the window into the street. I just felt really really hyped up that day. And I thought I was depressed!
Well I’m going now I refuse to muse on this issue but I’m warning y’all this is what everyone seems to think is wrong with me. Mental health professionals, mental health sufferers ~ and me. And they’re not picking up the idea from me, they’re TELLING me, you see. I have been scrupulously avoiding using any vocabulary associated with this condition, yet they still seem to recognize it in me.
I won’t despair until the Consultant Headshrinker (yeah I have a consultant psychiatrist, not a trainee one) tells me my life is over. Until then I’m thoroughly enjoying yet another free high!
Take care everyone and don’t worry about me. I’m not worried. You shouldn’t be either.
L8Rs xx
PS sorry if this doesn't flow nicely. I'm not reading back over stuff I don't want to know about. I have to put this down for the record. Naomi's sayso will be confirmed or overturned in due course but only my Consultant can do that. My Consultant is on leave. I have an appointment in two weeks' time ... perhaps I'll know more then ...
PPS Nutter Club tomorrow. I hope we talk about little fluffy clouds and other nice things. I'm not in the mood for ANY MORE talk about ANYONE being mentally ill. It's starting to do my head in
I say one thousand because that's very approximately 3 years and I think anyone Recovering from serious heroin addiction would be hard pressed to truly be able to say they'd broken free in less time.
All I'm doing at the moment is
1. seeing psychiatrists 2. going to mental health groups/meetings and methadone clinic appointments 3. sorting out housing problems (I think this social worker type person is meant to get in touch soon) 4. looking after myself in basic ways 5. going to NA
I'm not sure I could do more than that. Not today.
My attention was so scattered last week I could focus on nothing. Cooking was fun because everything burned (couldn't hang on to the fact it was in the oven) and the smoke alarm which "went right through me" felt absolutely fantastic. Rather than just pissing me off the way it normally would.
I didn't realize I had a truly "high mood" until last Wednesday when I got taken to a Mental Hospital for being too hyper (and proving I wasn't on drugs with a drug test) and having complained of mood swings (up and down) for a long time. And now being tired of just not functioning the way others seem to find it easy to function, and living in a mess. And also getting pretty badly depressed on occasion. These were and are what I'm trying to sort first. Drug addiction itself has to come second. As my old Worker, who was a mental nurse, told me I was "self medicating". At first I thought this was just a load of tosh that sounded good, though I'm sure I repeated it here. Then I slowly realized how true that was. Now I'm after either Nothing (ie I piece my life together myself with no chemical assistance) or I take psychiatric meds. The word "antipsychotics" has come up repeatedly and not out of my mouth. From doctors' mouths.
Yesterday I was in a meeting and couldn't focus for hearing voices. I was nowhere near as hyped up as I've been before. Yesterday morning, for example, I had this weird sensation of actually being in my body, the way I was before, but hadn't been for about 9 days ~ and didn't care about, at the time...
So I'm off to this doctor in about an hour's time. I will post what happened, unless I just decide to hibernate.
This is another problem, and I suppose it comes under self-care in the above list. I just am not sleeping the way "normal" people seem to or the way I used to (which often involved feeling crap and sleeping too much).
I was taking sleep meds (zopiclone 7.5mg). I was prescribed a week's worth and took it every day in an attempt to reset my sleep cycle.
It hasn't entirely worked, as on Tuesday night I slept between 1 and 2 hours then just woke up and got up. Yesterday I was absolutely exhausted and slept about 7 and a half, going to bed in the early evening and getting up at 2. Yes I know that's not ideal timing... just you try and be that tired, that distracted and not sleep, knowing there's a good chance you might go UP and keep going through the night.
Yeah I'm pretty sure this is what doc-docs like to call a "mood disorder". I certainly had one before (depression). Whatever this one is I cannot diagnose so that little issue has to remain there.
Now I'm off. I have pizza cooked for breakfast. It's only 10 past 10 in the morning, but I've not eaten since I got up. I have no appetite, interspersed with sudden, intense hunger.
So that's what I'm up to, and thanks to the person who said get a life at Melody's, you inspired a fairly focused post for once.
I told that person to get their own then tell me about it. I wasn't being entirely sarky: I'd be interested to know what that person does do with their time. I mean if they keep house, have cats, kids, a job. Or whether they're just some addict who cannot break their habit. I know how the latter feels, but not really the former.
MESSED UP DR APPOINTMENT: something went wrong re the dr's appointment between me, my family, my worker, the dr, and the time but I've got another for later today so no harm done. I had to pick up a methadone script for next week anyhow. And I saw some nutters I know. And some junkies I know. Nutter-junkies are the best. Only type I truly understand.
Where me and normal junkies go off at tangents is in lifestyle as there was no way I was barging into shops every single day, multiple shops per day, stocking up, hiding it all in alleys and bins and hoping no other bastard shoplifter or tramp runs off with it all, then when all that's done having to sell the crap, probably feeling tired and your lovely customers being able to read how desperate you are (not that I've ever "sold stolen goods" but say, hypothetically, that I did it as a favour for someone else; then that someone would have been really surprised at how much cash I got, as I came in daisy-fresh and got money for their toothpaste and shampoo (when I didn't know it shocked me just how humdrum these shoplifted items are! I thought addicts nicked nice stuff. Not coffee, headache pills and razors! Another thing that shocked me was realizing that stuff on sale in small shops was often shoplifted from bigger shops, sold on at less than wholesale. The kind of shop that would go nuts if you got caught nicking from THEM, the hypocrites!) anyway shoplift thing over... what was I on about. O yeah
here's a point (at last)
how can I possibly know how much another person suffers? How good or bad they feel? That's (part of) what stopped me thinking I was clinically depressed when I was. Not having a point of comparison, even among people I hung out with and/or knew very well. As everyone's personal hell is their own, y'know...
Well I SLEPT 8 HOURS which was lovely. From about 6:30 to 2AM. OK probably 7 and a bit all told, and that... does it make up for last night's hardly any sleep? I dunno. I got up at 2am last night after taking the zopiclone late so I can't have got much more than an hour and a half sleep. I write down my sleep for this diary thing I WAS doing properly. Or going to to. You ALL won't remember; someone will.
O I hate going to doctors to describe how I am not how some physical ailment is affecting me. That's a headfucker if you think about it. Doesn't psychiatry mean "care for the soul". Does my soul need caring for? Shouldn't I myself do the caring? What can a headshrinker actually do for me? Apart from write down their medicalized version of how and who I am and think about prescribing drugs of their own. While telling me not to take ones obtained for FAR TOO MUCH MONEY from bastards on mountain bikes.
My phone is full of desperate text messages telling how THEIR gear is the best how one "runs" amazingly even though I'd never in a zillion years SMOKE THE CRAP. Unless it's H4 [for injection] I'm not in the remotest bit interested. H4 is pure white heroin hydrochloride. China White is still heroin. Heroin is shit. I wouldn't actually take heroin. But enjoy the oblique "your wares are shit" dig. Plus being way more knowledgeable than the idiot selling it. Surely if you're retailing you wanna know your product? But they don't. Hence the absolute SKANK sold during the worst part of this ongoing drought....
Khhh. My worker listened very closely when I described having once given up caffeine and cigarettes. Caffeine for more than a year. Cigs for at least 6 possibly as long as 9 months. And the mental persuasion entailed in dumping nicotine. My point was I was so intensely addicted to heroin none of that ever worked on me. Heroin was as intertwined round my soul as anything ever has been. Total and utter addiction. Never again!
And yes I do need to remember this. I'm the sort of bastard who doesn't recognize the same landscape in summer and winter. Message to self:~ Seasons change. No heroin in any season. Thank you.
I was so knackered today. I actually came down to the ground in the morning. Like coming home after a wild an whacky holiday (Vacation you Americans! Not Xmas hols)... yeah an adventurous holiday. Imagine sunning yourself on a beach on Ko Phi Phi, which is said to be sublime, somehow the walls of your own living room impinge into this scene and a sun-lounger turns into your own chair. Wow! Then I had a bit of coffee to get me through both these appointments and I was flying yummily again. On less coffee than most people take to get to Work!!! How amazing is that. Free illegal drugs in my coffee. Wow. Anyway I was so tired I was zombified on the outside, bizzy-buzzing on the inside. Which meant whenever anybody asked me a question I suddenly sprang to life and wouldn't stop rabbitting. Then stared into space again: wearied close to exhaustion. That's why I slept so very long, and it did feel like 18 hours, not just under 8... like when you wring out a sponge and wring and wring more and more water so I got all the sleep out of me I could. A nice good long lie in. Getting up early AM. Yeah I know it's stupid. It's also fantastic not to be addicted to sleep any more. Not the way I was. Not struggling to function on 10, 12, 14, 16 and even more hours. Get my attitude to sleep now? It hits me like a disease and I can't function through exhaustion, depression and sheer ukkhhh-ness. THIS is why I have a rave, an ongoing party when suddenly I'm OK, don't need DAYS of sleep don't need don't want get rid of my old shitty life... ukk. Live on fresh air! That's the ideal. Like a sky blue flower aginst a blue sky. Blue into infinite sunny blue and cool fresh air. I'd love to live in Switzerland, wouldn't you? OK I'm gonna leave it there else this will never get finished.
RESTFUL CLASSICAL MUSIC. OK the restful is sarcasm. Sometimes I am sarcastic you know. E.g. when I asked would a caramel cadbury's creme egg set me off hyper. I'm not the kind to get high off a red smartie you know. And as for caffeine... all it used to do was give insomnia and anxiety. Never got high off that cept when I was on Prozac or naturally high anyway (not drug high).
MOZART: REQUIEM TRANCED UP
MOZART: LACRIMOSA (IE SAME PIEC) TECHNOD DIFFERENTLY oh man: well you might like it, I'm saying nothing about this one
EVANESCE: (MOZART'S) LACRIMOSA OK we're starting to go down a blind alley with this one but here: 05:04 finally got this to play properly: what an oppressive dirge! doesn't suit my mood at all. I far prefer that On With the Story Higher than the Eiffel track (look for a tiny little box, shrunken youtube screen last Sunday) for clish-clashing waves of music. Does anybody like this?:~~~~~
Illustrated: I was trying to find bindweed to illustrate heroin and me and that's the flower ~ WHAT AN AMAZING COLOUR BLUE! The bottom shows what bindweed actually does, view from a beach, Ko Phi Phi (Thailand) which is pronounced "pea pea"
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:~
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
I AM GOING up Morrisons for Baileys or Baileys substitute. I know I am not supposed to be drinking but I tried the one litre cyder. It's all gone. I tried eating, it makes me feel sick. Not literally food-nausea, more I don't want to eat it so it's like forcefeeding. I slept from 8pm till 1am last night. Thought I was doing really well on no sleep.
First thing I went to the chemist. Gulgged a bit of (methadone) juice. I have more to glug. I'm thinking of glugging it now as I'm so down.
I entertained the thought of heroin for nearly 5 minutes today. But it never made me happy. Also I don't even know where there's any good stuff. Totally off the circuit. As far as I know the drought is almost as bad as it was before.
Most of today I was asleep. From about 10 till 4:30. Complete exhaustion. I don't know what to do. My friend is feeling really crap. We are holding hands across the Atlantic. She is on Suboxone and not enjoying it. Subutex (also buprenorphine) made me feel really "clean". Very much wide awake all day. Sense of smell about ten times more acute. Which probably all sounds good but not everybody is ready for that. On methadone I feel "normal" drugs-wise.
Methadone never intoxicates me. Taken at night it can help you sleep, but it's not like a sleeping pill, that, taken too early, would make you feel drowsy. It's not in the slightest bit a "state-sponsored high" as Anne Widdecombe MP wanted to believe. Addicts hate methadone because it DOESN'T make you high at all. Most say it leaves them flat and empty. For the vast majority of hardened addicts, unless they're ready to be clean, methadone doesn't work. They use and use and use on top, invariably. The reaction I had, if methadone played any part, was extremely unusual (never met anyone else who experienced that).
Now I don't know whether to go supermarket or not. Re O'Grady's/Carolans/Morrisons Own Baileys substitute it's more the sugary gakkiness putting me off than the alcohol. Akh. I think I'm going. I hope those big drug dealers importing lorry loads get really broke. Between them, they cannot even orchestrate a reliable supply from Afghanistan to the street. Far as I know, there's still a drought. I hope some supply chain from Burma and Colombia starts up. I would never in a million years have gone near #3 Afghan Brown Sugar (heroin base) if the proper #4 China White (heroin hydrochloride salts) had been available. Makes me angry to this day just to consider the matter. All that nasty vitamin C and citric acid I banged into my veins. No wonder they're gone. I'm telling myself I'm only using China White from now on, but that felt no different from good brown. So I wouldn't bother. Been there. Had enough to last a lifetime.
I'm not interested in heroin-assisted treatment for myself, but I think it should be dished out liberally to others. Contrary to what you might assume, people on HAT take a level dose, which means they are highly unlikely to overdose unless they have liver disease (which affects drug metabolism) or have been drinking or using sedatives heavily on top. All these can be easily tested for at a clinic, as can street heroin, which has a totally different signature from pharmaceutical heroin (narcotine, codeine other stuff is in street heroin). Numerous trials (e.g. RIOTT, link below) rating injectable diamorphine's efficacy against injectable and oral methadone have shown it more than twice as effective as methadone syrup and a lot more effective than injectable methadone amps. ADDICTS HATE METHADONE.
Illustrated: lovely gakky Baileys; about 20mg British 1mg/1ml green methadone; Swiss Diaphin pharmaceutical grade injectable diamorphine 100mg/1ml. It's mixed up with water a day or two in advance and must be used quickly, otherwise wet diamorphine degrades into 6-monoacetylmorphine (hence the legendary heroin "dry amps" given to a v select bunch of gear-heads in this country)
DIDO: HERE WITH ME This tune has been going round my brainbox. I had no idea what it was called until just now:~
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
THE PSYCH DOCTOR APPTOINTMENT has been done. I think I got out of hospital by a narrow margin. He asked me if I wanted to go in. I said I had a toothbrush on me, nothing else was fixed, ready. Windows could have been wide open for all I knew or cared. Well I rabbitted on. Feeling anxious and then trying to cure the anxiety by pacing might not have helped. He asked is this me? I hope that question didn't get me too confused. I said yeah. Then asked who I was meant to be then (after room being barged into by script-wielding worker). Then tried not to get real upset about a certain person I know who supposedly hits the drs for a schiz sign-off when he's actually well. 'Because then there's me saddled with all this shit not being listened to, when I intermittently tried to be, not knowing what's going on or what to do. I am supposed to "take care" of myself. I don't think this dr was being as half-arsed as that might sound. He seems real cautious and intelligent even as shrinks go. And wisse. And I trust him, even as shrinks go. The other main one there I do not trust. Mind Game Playing is the absolute last thing I need. No diagnosis. He did mention the all time pits NASTY WORD 8888888 fill in the stars with more letters. Everything is doing my head in. I have to change clinics. Same staff. Old clinic. He says he thinks I am not myself. He also said he thought I'd been real helpful. That's all I can do is, 1. try and explain; 2. leave matter in professionals' hands; 3. try not to think about. Forget worry. Even think. No antithinking pills were offered. No pills. Did ask about ones I'd had complete with names. Antipsychotics. Marvellous. Gotta run. Got to close eyes. Go to bed. Something.
HERE'S MY IMPRESSION of what a Psycho Dr Really Is And Does... Sorry for the ambiguous picture. The others I looked up REALLY DID MY HEAD IN.I seem to have got distinctly thin-skinned recently.
O man. How did I get here (I ponder, not!) Too confused for too much pondering, me!
CAVE IN (scrupulously avoided, with heroin-like horror going anywhere near any "mental" write up since declared self (or world) mental): Ended up manically checking diagnostic criteria in order to cut short "manic episode" ideas by a good day or two. (Because I didn't get hospitalized after 3 days but before 7 and... o getting confused. Basically it's gotta last 3 days then you get hospitalized, or at least 7 days and to clear it all up I'm not at all sure I've... been so badly out of my right mind for that much more than a week at most. Bloody psycho dcotors. Forcing me to second guess myself!! Hate 'em. Hate it (thinking about self). Obviously love spouting off crap on blog as y'all see. But not really into serious self-analysis. Or serious anything.
Re Psycho Doc Situations: I know I shouldn't talk like that, but the way I see it, it's my job to be severely Confused and/or Desperate; theirs to shove me away, or lock me up and never let out; or mistreat (severely); or prescribe dangerous medication to (would rather have a bit of that fun back than risk going near Physical Hospital, partly because I've seen what happens to people in need of both physical and psychiatric attention, but deemed on the psych side. Nutnut nurses don't know HOW to care.
O no no no no no. What you will have read, if you didn't skip right down here, will be an edited version that tries to clarify mud basically. So if anybody gets a Clear Idea of anything: I Don't.
I am v fed up and annoyed. And was surprised that last night, when I thought I was OK but just tired, annoyed, avoiding people, I should kind of go off rocker in car. "Mental health person" in post below is kind of friend of friend type person I came to by accident yesterday night and wasn't expecting to be there. Otherwise makes it look like this wonderful supportive network is all there when I need it when actually it barely is. I thought it wasn't there at all, that I had no friends. Then I realized (by having to explain away bad behaviour, to put it bluntly) that I did.
I just had to bang out some more crap as I'm terrified of being sectioned under the nasty mental health act (don't think even the lawyers know what year ~ some time in the dark ages). I don't think I'm going anywhere. Unless I end up being "hostile" to a dr. (Ie going off on one a step too far.) Bitter experience has shown me that these people ... are just annoying people, like most people. That's why I don't trust them.
Well I'm sure this has been a rivetting read. Gone way past wondering whether anything might interest anyone. Too tired, jaded, uncared-for/uncaring/unUN for that.
Is it Distinctly Unwise to just click Post and run off? When blog is only meant to be non-fascinating stream of consciousness?
IN A NUTSHELL: I JUST HOPE I SLEEP.
As no sleep means ragged and insomniac-feeling at best, likely to go off like a dingbats fire-alarm from hell at worst.
Please please please stay calm. I need to come across as calm. (Don't care what ACTUALlY AM, long as it appears Calm). Hopefully to make confused account of what supposedly Brings Me Here utter lies. Because what things seem and what they are are precisely the same thing. So if I'm seen to have concocted a story you'd have to be utterly cracko to come in and tell to a psycho doc ~ then I'm lying. When actually I just did a real nice job of keeping still and Behaving. And not being inappropriate.
I used to think I was dead grown up, in some little ways. I wouldn't be presumptuous enough to think I was anything good at all now.
Akh!! I'm off. Hope this has captured some icy terror in face of Dingbats Doc stuff. Then when I'm 84 and have a Printed Copy (bc the internet won't exist then) I can have a real good laugh. If I ever live till 84 and if I am actually able to laugh at that age. I wouldn't put anything past myself now. True lack, utter lack of any sense of self worth. I mean how would you feel if you knew you had got to a pretty short space from being sectioned, just 5 days ago?
Well I'm fully intending to come home after this appointment. Sorry for going on. I mean if you wanted something really boring I should have committed to internet the thought process that went on after I realized I might actually get diagnosed Schizophrenic. That was a good one!! Excepting Jumpf Off Bridge crap (see below: thought had missed methadone chemist (well what other way is there of dealing with a situation like that??)) that was the last time I seriously had a nasty urge to do myself in. This morning.
O that sounds sad. Ho-hum. Well I STOPPED HEROIN didn't I. Anyone having a real good laugh at this, look in the mirror and ask yourself, what's your poison? Or are you just poisonous?? Hope y'all realize this is only meant to be stream of consciousness and not to be picked over for hidden meaning. Otherwise I would never post, never cease second guessing myself... and NEVER SLEEP!!
PS just looked all this crap over after posting. no i didn't "edit" anything. just kind of randomly added chaos to confusion.
pps sorry i probably should/said i would check emails but if i get through that needle's eye at this hour i truly never will SLEEP
SOMETHING IS CHANGING. Changing in me. I have felt it all week, all last week, the week before as a strange mixture of increasing desperation. I am attracted to and yet bored by drugs of the opiate and sedative types (as far as I know, all the heroin I have used lately has contained strong sedatives to make up for the low purity. Even the "good gear" nowadays is far weaker than it was a few months ago. This is thanks to the Great British Heroin Drought we find outselves in the midst of.)
As I posted yesterday I have found myself drinking heavily enough to lose track of what I've been doing. My life feels more chaotic than ever before.
I met a dealer for a free sample of heroin and crack this evening. Now hear this for some poetic justice or whatever it's called. My feelings, right from the start were mixed. It was so cold and the dealer tried to just drop the drugs into my hand. This is a stupid thing to do with something weighing a fraction of a gram because of course I could not feel it. Dropped it. Spent about five minutes scrabbling on the street with people walking past wondering what on earth I was doing. The heroin I never found, but the crack I did. I walked home, turning over and over the idea of simply flushing it.
And guess what? What I'd brought back wasn't crack at all, but a pinky-white lump of quarz that just looked like crack. Broke in half like hard crack. Nobody was ripping me off, I paid nothing for these drugs I lost. But my point is it felt like an ending. Instead of going crazy, I didn't really care. I had enough heroin for 2 hits left over from the morning. Because the drug contains so much sedative, whenever I take it I fall straight to sleep. I still have some residues lying on the TV. In a sec I will cook them up, cool them down (because some idiot put a little bit of something that turns into tiny crystals as it cools, and if you don't let the solution cool fully before filtering it will block the syringe). There is incidentally another way of getting round this problem, but it's potentially dangerous. Some of the gear a couple of weeks ago had about a hundred times more of this weird stuff in it. Within two minutes what should have been a liquid shot had turned into murky clods.
I pick up my methadone usually within half an hour of the chemist opening and for once I'm looking forward to a day on the "green". The thought haunts me over and over, as the madness of my drinking and drugging comes back and back that I never have to do this ever again. I am so lucky having methadone. An instant escape route. Even if it's not the best escape. Even if I feel lousy on it. Even if other therapies were more widely available here (but they're not) ~ methadone is with me. And with methadone, I never have to return to the madness of heroin. Ever again.
Illustrated: British green "methadone mixture" 1mg/1ml; this type of brown powder I fully intend to go on using till I die ~ cocoa powder
Note the phrasing. I didn't see my Mum. We were there together. She saw me. She said I reminded her of when she first saw me on the gear, about 5 years ago. Lank hair. Pushed self into shower. Probably nowhere near as clean as I'd have liked to think. Pinpoint pupils. The B ain't that good, but it's chock full of benzos. (I know this because I tested my piss.) I felt Valium'd out of my brainbox.
It's interesting that she rang my druggiworker in despair. I do not feel that she forced my hand in this, as I was planning to steam in and tell the unacceptable truth about me and my addiction and this crappy methadone ANYHOW.
This is me on methadone. No showering. Barely bothering to do anything, unless absolutely essentual it's done NOW.
Endless depresssion. Aged 10 I was depressed enough to believe I was dying. I have never felt the same, ever again. Parents' divorce. Parents' remarriage. Both parties wanted me to live with them. I loved my Mum. But my Dad's was the place to be. Had I insisted on going with Mum I would have torn my family apart. How selfish would that be?
I am still depressed. Clinic barely ever ask why. I could go on. Suffice it to say, if this is "therapy" it ain't working on me. I do WAY better on heroin. Sad, you may think. But true. Absolutely 100% true.
I wish it weren't that way. But that's how it is.
The could-be's, should-be's, ought-to-be's. All these I have pondered and indulged. I "should" feel some other way. "Should" do it that other way. I have tried and tried. It just does not work.
If only somebody in power would put forward a therapy that actually works. I'm not talking 1 and 2 year habits where methadone might work. Subutex might well work. I'm talking decades lost to ineffectual methadone. And every spare penny STILL going on gear. If methadone worked so well, no-one would feel the need to use on top. Ever.
Such drugs are out there. The government just do not have the balls to give effective Therapy. Injectable diamorphine. Morphine tablets. Morphine and hydromorphone (dilaudid) amps are also available. Somebody, somewhere, use some imagination. PLEASE!
Rant over.
I despair. I look like a homeless. Lank, greasy, dirty. Haven't been near a laundrette in over a month. Yes a lot of this is down to me. But a half-decent therapy might push me half-way to "normality". The other half would of course be up to me.
Opinions, please! Just say what you think. I'm sure a lot of you disapprove anyhow... :-(
:-) I'm waiting on da man for a G. He's taking ages.
I HAVE TAKEN NO GEAR today or last night and don't intend to.
Yesterday I ran into 2 brothers. We got talking on the inevitable topic ~ huge heroin shortage all across UK. I said I couldn't be bothered and was drinking instead. At least it is legal and therefore 100% safe, 100% respectable. Nobody has ever died because of alcohol, because the govt. allow it, we all know this. Anyway, they asked where I found the rubbish I found, and I told them. Then I asked them where they got their rubbish and they told me. They said one person had "decent gear" (ie it was rubbish), I didn't know them and didn't ask for the number. I did have money on me (was carrying huge Andy Warhol Diaries back), but sensed they did not. I have one of their mobile numbers and will not be ringing asking for an introduction. Their parting shot after the good gear mention was "I bet everyone's saying that" and that said it all.
It is 11am and I've had just over half a can, mixed down with fruit juice. This is way down on yesterday and especially Monday's consumption. Bearing in mind I get up at 6 to 7am and usually guzzle it down then (if I'm carrying on) drink more smoothly just supping it from there on.
The govt. (and what do they know about any real life? The rubbish MPs spouted about casinos was a case in point. If they knew anything about gambling, they'd have seen that every local betting shop has at least a couple of roulette machines and I've seen people feed the best part of a month's wages in there every half hour. Staff have to empty them several times a day, they collect so much money. + roulette is now on ITV! That, is channel 3 of old-fashioned television, every night!)... what was I saying? O the government. They want to increase the price on alcohol per unit ~ ie 8g or 10mls of neat booze. It's easy to work out units per can. Mine are half a litre at 7.5% ABV so that's 3.75 units per can, 7.5 units or 75 mls alcohol in each litre. They want to make my cyder something like four times more expensive. What is this if not a tax on the poor? All they will do is take food from poor kids' mouths. Make people with drink problems even more undernourished than they already are. And what doesn't come off the food bill will come off clothes, bills anything else, because to a drinker, drink comes first, and always will. If this policy is introduced, a huge market in bootleg liquor will spring up overnight, and I know exactly where to go to get it. Everyone will switch to spirits, thus causing themselves more harm because most won't bother mixing in lemonade or just water. All the profits will go to fund other criminal activities. So nice one, Tories. Just go ahead, see what happens.
Booze rant over. Actually just writing that has made me want a drink...
... Ha! It's right here and I didn't do it. Am I actually getting cleaner in my old age??
Was I really offensive yesterday? I had to edit what I said twice after posting, bc 2 particularly ridiculous things were in there. Proof if any is needed that less gear does not (instantly at least) bring more sanity. Opiates are antipsychotic. You can google this yourself, though you won't find much official research. First thing I noticed about heroin was a marked mood-stabilizing effect. It still is a huge antidepressant, especially compared to methadone. I think the clinics are (by and large) barking up the wrong tree with methadone. Morphine continus pills would work far better and can be taken twice daily. Injectable diamorphine is far safer than injectable methadone. It's only expensive bc the manufacturers are taking the pee-pees. (It costs £4.50 or so for a 100mg dry amp, about half what very good gear would cost. It just shows the "we profit from your pain" motto levelled at pharmaceuticals corporations is so true. Diamorphine is mostly used for terminal pain management here, NOT for addiction.) I fit the criteria for diamorphine treatment exactly. If they'd only given that several years ago, I might actually be clean now. What would not work about diamorphine therapy is making it really hard to get on to, or not letting people up the dose if it's dipped, or when people switch from injectable diamorphine to oral morphine, or actually come off altogether, not to let them back on. If they do make it seem so hard-won, as it is now, people will feel like they're onto a sure thing, to be prized and treasured. And they will not give it up. Basic psychology, but I'm sure the govt don't understand that either.
What they are saying now is that because methadone only has a 3% success rate (I haven't seen it to be that high), rehab style treatment is the answer. Well good luck paying for it in a recession. How many rehabs are they thinking of paying for for each client? They may well need 4 or 5 or 6 before they finally get clean. I've been in City Roads Detox once (horrible) and proper rehab/detox once. I left on day 3 both times. Couldn't do the detox. Too in love with heroin. Nothing else about life grabbed me. Not without heroin being there as well. In other words I was trying to exit into outer space, where there was nothing for me.
Stop smoking clinics like to compare nicotine to heroin, saying it's more addictive. Perhaps it addicts faster, but even that would be spurious. When I had no habit at all, I now know (only by looking back in confusion on a certain day when I decided to give up long-sleeved teeshirts forever because I was too hot/too cold/never right) that I got myself a mild one, and I do mean very mild ~ still but noticeable ~ within just five days in a row of smoking it from tinfoil. I can tell you this. Craving heroin and craving a cigarette aren't even in the same universe of comparability. Have you ever seen someone puking because they needed a cigarette that badly? Well then. Anyone who wants to enough can give up smoking without too much bother. Just use gum or something else that gives a nicotine hit, albeit tiny when you want it ~ I don't think a patch would work for me. I've given up twice, for months on end, and I used gum. Heroin is a totally different ballpark. Whoever they used to be, whatever they did, once people get a taste for it, they invariably go on and on and on taking heroin. Just the average habit is 14 years. These people aren't weaker than you or me. A lot of them are stronger. In fact heroin turns your strength against you. The more willpower you have before heroin, the more willfully you will use it, once you get addicted. Now that has to be an obvious equation.
The drug treatment system in this country (not to mention elsewhere ~ AMERICA, very good example) is totally corrupt. Run for the convenience of the staff. All about box-ticking, quota-filling. Workers being seen to work successfully. This actually makes them complicit in all the lying that goes on in-clinic. Typical pattern on methadone is: cut down heroin perhaps by as much as three-quarters. Give up crime, if you're tired of it. But then whenever money comes gear is what comes first. Crack usually goes out the window relatively early on. From my experience anyone in treatment still using crack frequently 6 months on is probably barely following the programme at all. Or has just been pushed into it because they got caught shoplifting. Lots of that about.
I have seen old age pensioners, who've given up "grafting" up money, been on methadone for years. And yet they still spend the best part of their pension on heroin. The image of an old lady injecting heroin, reading glasses on, is still emblazoned on my brain. Methadone does not sooth the itch for heroin. Unless the person is unusually motivated. Simple fact: it just doesn't. Keeps you OK. How anyone could possibly hold down a job on methadone I do not understand.
I think a better way of running things would be to give people an assessment but NOT put them on methadone, or anything else automatically, unless they really do want it. You could give them a card, and then when they actually want it, they can get scripted within one hour something that really will take them off street drugs. Ie probably not methadone.
Methadone is a tool, so I am using it. But it certainly is not the best, and absolutely not the most suitable tool in the pharmaceutical box.
Alprazolam (Xanx) + Subutex/buprenorphine (no!) found in UK heroin thanks to shortage: http://www.talkingdrugs.org/benzodiazepines-sold-as-heroin Thanks for the comment directing me to this; I had heard about the alprazolam (somewhere) and someone told me he tested Subtex positive, even though he doesn't take it. Alprazolam is really weak compared to Valium and Subutex you would never in a million years mix in heroin. It has no hit, to any hardened junkie. It actually REVERSES the effects of heroin. Whoever did that has no clue...
I FOUND OUT that I suffer from something called "Racing thoughts". Now this is why self-diagnosis is such a minefield. Because if I didn't know better, I'd assume "racing" thoughts are ones that appear quickly one after the other. Not so. My experience is the same as the wikipedia definition, where the head becomes full of music, voices, snippets, logos and mottos and swirling about. Like a radio tuned to several channels at once. Wikipedia:~ Racing thoughts may be experienced as background or take over a person's consciousness. Thoughts, music, and voices might be zooming through one's mind. There also might be a repetitive pattern of voice or of pressure without any associated "sound". It is a very overwhelming and irritating feeling, and can result in losing track of time. Sometimes racing thoughts are accompanied by an elevated pulse, including drumming in the ears. Generally, racing thoughts are described by an individual who has had an episode as an event where the mind uncontrollably brings up random thoughts and memories and switches between them very quickly. Sometimes they are related, as one thought leads to another; other times they are completely random. A person suffering from an episode of racing thoughts has no control over his or her train of thought and it stops them from focusing on one topic or prevents sleeping. They don't make me feel anxious or irritable. To me, they're like free entertainment. They can even be exhilarating. I also relate to the statement about a repetative pattern of voice... without associated sound. That's the milder version. These are a symptom of bipolar disorder, anxiety and supposedly some obsessive-compulsive conditions and in their severe form are said to be exceedingly oppressive. I mention these because they came back to me lately. The other night I actually lost track and thought my mobile phone was on speaker, because someone was blar blar blar-ing away at me. I'm glad I actually know the name of this phenomenon, which, incidentally I'm sure is mostly not drug-induced. I like the kind of drugs that block things out. And those are the only kind I take now. Not psychedelics. Not crack. And certainly not that nasty cannabis stuff. Last time I toked on that rubbish I was hearing paranoid voices for several hours, which was highly inconvenient. I was reading over personality disorder criteria. I am not flattered that the nut-nut nurse implied I might be on the anxious-avoidant or dependent "axis". I am diametrically opposite in many ways to such people. For example, I would never pass over to somebody else a decision affecting the course of my life. My family, who know me best, would frequently call me stubborn. That is the exact opposite of a dependent personality, who would give in to others' wishes as a matter of course. The only personality disorder you could bundle on to me is the borderline type. (And the least flattering diagnosis, apart from "psychopathic" or antisocial personality disorder.) I've been told I have this twice, and what sets off alarm bells is the fact that both these individuals also have (actually, had, such a diagnosis ~ one committed suicide in January. Here are the criteria: 1.Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Note: Do not include suicidal or self-injuring behavior covered in Criterion 5 [I don't think so.] 2.A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. [I wouldn't put it this way; but I have had a pattern of getting into over-intense frienships, and having read further, yes you could say this "criterion" applies. Though I wouldn't word my experience this way. You could say many if not most people feel such ambivalence.] 3.Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self. [Absolutely. When I was younger I had almost no concept of who I was.] 4.Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving). Note: Do not include suicidal or self-injuring behavior covered in Criterion 5 [Drugs; food. Used to eat under 1500 cals a day as matter of course.] 5.Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars (excoriation) or picking at oneself. [There was a period when I used to cut up with broken glass, but it only lasted a year and I don't do it now.] 6.Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days). [Definitely some mood disturbance, sometimes to suicidal extremes. And often it is highly "reactive". Isn't everyone prone to be put in a bad mood when things mess up? Not all my moods are as brief as this criterion suggests.] 7.Chronic feelings of emptiness [Absolutely.] 8.Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights). [I frequently feel irritated, but try to keep it under my hat.] 9.Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms [I don't think I'm anything like as para as I used to be. Some of those "racing thoughts" experiences have a dissociative quality, because they are heard rather than thought. I still suffer depersonalization and derealization, that is feelings that self and world are unreal, but not as hallucinatorily intense as in former years. ] Personally I don't think I have any personality disorder. I know something is "wrong" with me. (Well, I don't feel "right".) Further to yesterday's post, I feel an uncanny need for self-protection and care. Sorting myself out might be a nice place to start. I have access to doctors, so I may as well use them. But I think psychiatry is a religion, involving its own world view and set of values. Doctors function as priests with nurses in roles parallel to monks and nuns. Psychiatry's holy trinity is pharmacology, counselling and the DSM IV-R diagnostic criteria. I don't think I'm mad. But I'm absolutely sure that the world is.
I SLEPT FOR NEARLY FOUR HOURS, from late morning into early afternoon slumped in a chair at the back of the public library today. What the staff thought of me, I've no idea. But I wasn't drugged or drunk, so who cares what they thought. I was exhausted. I slept most of yesterday through. And the day before. I had an appointment at the druggieservice which I dragged myself down for. My worker, who is a mental health nurse, noticed the change in me at once. All I could think was: how am I to fill half a gaping hour of blank blank time? The Personality Disorders Specialist has offered me an appointment for assessment. Being as I do not consider myself personality-disordered, especially on "axis C" as Nursey was suggesting (the anxious-avoidant-dependent axis ~ full of snivelling, simpering shy types, burdened by terror of social situations and irrational worries. This is not me.) I thought I would go 1 for a laugh and 2 because I am desperate and it's an untrodden avenue. If I did have some such disorder, I actually have more in common with type A, the schizotypal personality, with their off-the-wall view of things coupled with a linguistic jamboree of trotterdonkey self-coined phrases, pinging like the tiny tits on the trees when they spot tubby roborovski hamsters scurrying near their nests (ahem...) Yeah so anyway... I've got schizophrenia, not. The other personality disorder I could be shoved towards would be the borderline type. Two of my friends had this condition. I say had because one threw himself under a tube train and is now dead... I don't really think I'm borderline at all. The nurse did admit there's "definitely a mood thing going on". I didn't tell her my "not sleeping" had basically involved not bothering to go to bed for days on end, feeling pretty wonderful ~ I had an amazing perspective on life. I was refreshed as a granny smith apple is refreshing to a desert explorer's palate. I didn't want Nursey to assume I might have been "hypomanic", which it is my position that I am not. I am just prone to mood swings that occasionally sweep up high only to plummet me down. And I felt so so down yesterday. People kept asking what was wrong. Today I am avoiding human company and have had excessive hours of sleep so I feel sour on my own. But as you can see I'm chatty enough with my important friends... ha-har! Now, you English speakers, let me probe you with a question: is all this German getting too annoying and should I post it in another blog? I haven't the energy to post exhaustively in German every single day. On the other hand, I do need to practise my language otherwise it'll become as rusty as it was during the 20-year "hiatus" from study. You wouldn't believe the amount of courage it took to rustle up, having said I would like to do a BA degree in translation into and out of German, with French and Dutch on top ~ then to show how flabby my German had actually become it's humiliating. And if it does look impressive, trust me that is the lure of the exotic. If you only can sees how many I much not good grammar make, trust I would you know excellently how much very I not good can do it. See? Now I've got to go. One last PS on the birds: I've yet to mention the SPARROWS who have returned in chirrupsome profusion to my neighbour's bush. There seem to be about twenty of them cheeping endlessly away to some more sparrows across the road (perhaps they are deadly sparrow rivals, having a rapper-style showdown about whose porch roof is theirs~?!) Sparrows had been largely absent from our towns for nearly twenty years. Sparrows and pigeons it always used to be. Pecking about in vast numbers in our parks and squares. The BBC shot an excellent documentary: The Sparrows of St James's (the park behind Downing Street and Parliament). Then they disappeared! O and one last PS regarding my leaving the country. I know Britain has looked after me very patiently for too many years, but Britain is tinged with bad memories now I expended such a lot of time and effort trying to learn German and French and yet I've spent not spent even a month in a pays francophone and I've yet even to set foot on German-speaking soil! (German-speaking soil, die kleine Wurmchen sagen "Guten Tag!" und "Auf wiedersehen!"!) So you see, having been trapped here with an addiction for far too long, the very first thing I wish to do, if I ever CAN break free ~ is to flee!
If you want to see some good birdie-videos have a look at my tiny tits, the cutest of all British birds, posted earlier today in German (English translation below)... and these:
BTW, the quotation, by the Swiss writer Alfred Polgar, across those other tiny tits says: "I command the German language, but she doesn't always obey..."
VIDEO 1 HERE'S some chirpybirds, rather than songbirs: SPARROWS!
VIDEO 2 ON WITH THE SONGBIRDS THEME ~ HUMAN SONGBIRDS... ... this Jewish girl, I think, has one of the best voices ever recorded. I mean, can you think of anybody at all whose vocal timbre sounds "like Barbra Streisand"..? This performance of Evergreen from the 1976 remake ofA Star is Born (Chris Kristofferson adding minimal harmonies) was shot in one take and it's one of the best vocal performances of any Hollywood film from any time:
Her sister, Roslyn Kind, has a deeper (some might say richer) version of the same voice. I posted her up on Sunday, but I don't think anyone heard her ...
