I NEED ANTIDEPRESSANTS. But they don't work. They make me cuckoo (high). I have a great big crispy purple £20 note that could buy antidepressants in brown form. That one doesn't get me cuckoo. Crack and mirtazapine belong in the same category. Difference: mirtazapine (ironically) = more manic-depressive (I went DOWN on mirtazapine after going UP how crappy is that from something that's supposed to level you out?!) crack makes more paranoid. Extreme paranoia. I once thought people were climbing up the walls of the house and hid inside a home-made tent... the one you use once you're fed up of flashing at hidden cameras. That's nutnut for you. I never thougt I was a nutter despite all this. If I'd been a bit more naive I'd have blurted loads of this to psych staff years ago but I knew what paranoid/suicidal ideation meant. Knew what implied what and what they might eventually diagnose from what pattern. Because it's like joining dots. Akh I hate doctors. All I'm trying to do today is join dots of happiness. I have what they call a rapid cycle. That means I confuse myself because I don't know when Im up or down except when it's so extreme... I mean yesterday despite the nerves I was dunking biscuits while I shared at NA. All casual-like. (Manic-casual.) Not one person said anything except someone laughed knowingly. I'm not offended by THAT if I was I'd not have shared to start with. I didn't expect Absolution. Hey it would be funny if that person thought I was lying, would give me something to play up to. Sometimes I annoy myself by doing this; if somebody gets an idea of me that I don't agree with I'll show them the idea is true in the most ridiculous, eventually pantomimic way. When another person is there I never break eye contact with the first to shoot a look over. That gives you away. I do it like a professional actor, never once breaking stride, despite the ridiculousness. Usually I am pretending to be naive or stupid, my 2 favourite things I love to show people. I wear soft on the outside! Just like a tiger. All furry and cute. Nobody sees my teeth unless they rile me to it.
Did you know the lifetime "risk" of developing a substance disorder in type 1 bipolar (severe type) is 61% according to one study. I thought 50% sounded ridiculously small. I would estimate the true figure to be around 85 or 90%. 50% was supposed to be the number of bipolars who ever used drugs. Type 2 bipolar means mostly depressed with manic blips that never amount to full mania. I never got full mania until this year it's the only "up" I would recognize as illness because my head starts saying "power hour shower power shower" that's literally what I think and I say a mixture of things (incoherently, so I'm told that is with the topic jumping all over the place). I have every single diagnostic category among the 7 or so including reckless buying sprees (DVDs) I have so many they fill an armchair and they were bought mostly in 4 days. Great thing is EVERY SINGLE ONE is one I'd ring in the TV guide, so they're shit I WANT. Ben Hur I might not be in the mood for every day. Or Cleopatra. Or Dr Zhivago (a triple £5 pack) but they're there for when I do feel like watching lots of beautiful music and snow (Dr Zhivago) or Burton-Taylor (Cleopatra) or ancient stuff (Ben Hur). Shit no Gone with the Wind was the third in the treble pack, I hate that one but it came essentially free.
Does anyone care about any of this I can't think Up anything to say now so I'm going now.
Illustrated: famous people supposedly with bipolar. Vincent Van Gough is a maybe. Virginia Wolf definitely. Britney Spears absolutely no idea. Kurt Cobain: writing a song called lithium and then shooting yourself does not equal bipolar!
Plum Tree by Van Gogh, Japanese lettering even worse than mine
23:22 Schizoaffective Link. I still don't know what bloody disorder I'm meant to have or what the hell it actually is. [I got diagnosed schizoaffective.] I'm just NOT COMPLAINING that my main symptom is ELEVATED MOOD despite the fact that I had pretty full-blown melancholia this afternoon: exhaustion, Siberian low mood, suicidal thoughts, a feeling of intense guilt and wrongness and the idea that I would never ever feel any better about anything, by mid-evening I was fine by ten o'clock I felt a bit manic even..... PLUS I have "schizophrenia"..! Only fucking disease that made me cry just thinking I could have it and I fucking have it! No-one can ever say I was blowing things out of proportion again because I wasn't I was keeping something so fucking intense it was like a road drill through the head (psychotic mania) and keeping that like it was a little furry hammy in a nest, keeping that inside me head... ukk. How did all this happen?
SINEAD O'CONNOR: REBEL SONG this is a traditional Irish ballad; despite the title it's more a lullabye than anything else
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 ...
I CAN'T KEEP UP. I can't keep any buzz any happiness anything good that I feel, it just falls flat, like an actress in a long dress walking up steep stairs in high heels I fall down flat. I've lovely alcohol in my system but I just feel slightly drunk plus depressed. And I have to go to this doctor on Thursday and try not to present as a picture of self-pitying misery. If I do he will just laugh inwardly and think "bipolar". I feel like such an idiot for ever getting swept away on a high that was somehow of my own making, except I can't make it now. Trust me if anybody could get high like that the world would be full of hypomanic and manic individuals spending, bonking, dancing and wandering round in psychotic confusion, clothes inside out going "dib-dib-dib".
Ask any psychiatrist which mental condition they'd chose to have and I guarantee they'll all tell you "hypomania". That is mild mania: euphoria without paranoia, delusions or voices. So I'm watching Meet The Fockers and I still can laugh at Robert DeNiro and Barbra Streisand. If they can outdo Ben Stiller they're A1 comedians. So I try I do try I keep on trying. Where did I go wrong? Considering this was going BEFORE the heroin. I remember a friend of mine saying she wanted nothing more to do with me "while I was on drugs all the time". But I wasn't! It was mood swings she was seeing. Not drugs. I never was a druggie (a drug-taker; yes. A druggie: no!) I wasn't a druggie until I got into heroin and then I took heroin every day. Heroin flattened out my mood. No more depression. No more highs. The "high" of heroin is very mild and weak as drugs go. I only really took heroin as a chemical coping mechanism, not the indulgence people seem to assume it is. That rubbish about recapturing some original high is pure bumkum for me and most people.
Most people, self included feel little more than an indistinct wuzziness, a hot and itchy body and nausea when they first take heroin. More likely than not you'll end up with your head down the toilet, puking. Only when you get used to it: ie get hooked, do you get the full-blown opiate high. And that rapidly fades into an enhanced version of OK. I OD'd on heroin before I'd ever had a major habit, was in hospital for 2 days. And the high I got (in terms of strength, not niceness) was little higher than a 4 out of 10. Heroin feels weak. It feels clean and fluffy as fresh towels. It doesn't feel dirty or depraved and it certainly doesn't feel "hard" like a "hard drug". Crack does. Crack is drug-induced madness. Heroin makes mellow, gives very little but takes much. It takes away pain. It might eventually take your life. So this feels like it's come to and end. See ya later.
Illustrated: what Americans call a pratfall. Looks better when a pretty girl does it
AUSTRALIA'S "CRUELLY IMPRISONED" HOUSEWIFE CHINA WHITE QUEEN, major supplier of Heroin to all of Down Under including New Zealand, has been tapping those blackberry keys in the direction of Anna Grace, her "partner in international narcotic crime"! Part of what she's doing is thanking Anna for a 6-kg "loan" of Colombian White Heroin. Here's the jizz:~
Valerie said... Anna, Sweetness
Are you seriously after a bare-ass spanking? Me with my pingpong bat? Post some new revelations from the Dark Side of the Gear Spoon.
Listen honey you're doing that poor little mite Gledwood's head in here. Every fucking message that tosser writes comes up on MY blackberry now how wires got that badly crossed I haven't a clue, now it won't stop chirping at me all hours like a deranged cicada!
Well it's all news from here in Sydney Women's Punishment Centre. We're being punished so severely we're off our tits on China White and Crack. Constantly. At least I am, as I'm the Fucker in charge here.
Ho Ling is Dealer to the Stars. She actually shots the deals out. Fat Trish holds on to a lot of shit that isn't stored in Ho-Ling's filing cabinet of private parts. Do you know she even seems to have BOOK SHELVES up there..??! You say "listen honey, here's the gear, here's the crack, here's the sleepers, here's the whacko stuff (got in a few designer drugs to perk up our Dull as Dishwater evenings)... say "oh Sweetness, 2 pieces H, one crack, a rohypnol and a Blue Mystic and there they are before you can say "cockadoodle-do!" she's produced 'em from her "tuppence". That's what me old ma used to call me private parts when I was little. Ho Ling can carry several million units of LSD from a minor European country to here in that Wonderworld of hers, but she's very angry I even suggest the idea so THAT one's out (till Ho Ling's desperate for a year's constant supply China White heroin + yummy coke!)
Now Baby on to your shit. Honey you're back using again; shit happens.
Are you really unhappy about it? Or just unhappy being slammed for telling us?
January 24, 2011 6:54 PM
Valerie said... That might make a one of those delicious posts of yours. Your attitude to heroin. Mine goes: take as much as you possibly can each and every day. Life's too short. Cracked off ya tits feels wonderful. Which is why when I'm at home with Brucey the little darlings actually live in a separate dwelling next door with their Chinese nanny. Takes the stress off our constant piping if ya know what I mean.
Plus it gives us REALLY WELL EDUCATED kids: they're fluent in Chinese!
Barely speak a word of English, mind. Chinese they can do marvellously well. So the future of Double UO Globules for future generations of Australian fuck-ups looks pretty wonderful.
Thanks for the six kilos Colombia's best Poppy Power. I'll reimburse ya with 10 units 999 or Double Lion, take ya pick. 10 units is seven keys so I'm giving you one extra honey-buns.
Your Mr Kim is doing extraordinarily well, pottering innocently about in that minefield-protected hut, humming incomprehensible Singaporean Chinese pop songs as he effortlessly transforms dodgy H3 into yummy A Grade China White Heroin!
I've had a little taste. A few tastes even and darling: Best Batch we've had in ages!
Thank you so much.
And re that $25 million US don't worry. I'm 17 million euros better off thanks to a little scheme I'd better not get too into here. Something to do with an Ecstasy Factory in a former Soviet Republic making an absolute fortune for ME ME ME ME ME!!!
They don't call me Queen of E for nothing (let alone China White!!)
Now I'm off for fucking lunch with 3 bitches who hate me. Something to do with my having gone for one with a certain sawn-off domestic implement and having told the other two they'd wait for later.
The Governor's being Real Nice to me these days since that half mil US in bribe dollars hit her offshore account. Finally the bitch is stressing less. Less stress for her means less stress for me. She's even letting me browse the old WWW from her swivel chair when she's home for the night (which is a sadly late hour, often past 10pm since the sad fucker hasn't a life).
Now Anna post some delicious details of your funky life. For me. For that fucker Gledwood if you have to. For yourself to "say where you've been" as Gledster puts it. (Been in too much counselling that one: know that bullshit when I hear it.)
Now on with the story Sweet Pea. On with the story. On on on.
Diagnose diagnose shove it up your nose. Here's my suggestion to anyone working in mental health apart from Lizzie. Do some coke, read this, get a life http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/146/4/459 Yeah my thoughts are all mixed up. And I know it. They say I have "good insight" "good reality testing" those things. [Well I hope I do!] That's what keeps me out not in. Otherwise I would have been committed to psychocentral long ago. I don't want to be in Braodmoor that is a prison for the criminally insane. I used to think I was gonna get set up falsely accused. Happened to me enough when I was younger. Accuse anybody of anything and yeah they will "look guilty". do me a favour. i was going to come up with a string of links but really cant be bothered now i had osme point i have gone past the point Talking Past the Point. Remember that one from somewhere. Know something about something. PSYCHOLOGY did you know I once wanted to be a psychologist. Not Abnormal Psychology which is half-brained psychiatry (wanna be a psychiatrist BE a psychiatrist, not a psychologist it means you're too thick to do a medical degree, in essence) what I wanted to explore was "individual differences" which means Personality and what distinguishes one person from another person. Their ways. Their means. Their Power. Their powerlessness (learned helplessness is when you torture someone, torture a rat every time it tries to eat and it'll starve itself to death ~ big wow yeah a lot of SYMPATHY goes on in psychology so if you ever think DOCTORS ARE BASTARDS think of what went on to get them where they are today re what they know and where they go. Their attitude to addicts I will not get into. Read Sids blog re him as junkie speaking to medical students. They didn't know fuck all. One TRAINED DOCTOR didn't know what DIAMORPHINE was diamorph as used in actue and chronic pain management, diamorphine as in street heroin, diamorphine as in addictive drug diamorphine as in medicine, diamorphine how the hell can you be a doctor and not understand the difference betweeen [morphine and] acetylated morphine which is diacetylmorphine aka diamorphine (the deacetylation is said to be a lot of the heroin rush) how can you not know that that is utterly inconcievably stupid sorry to say it. Brainy as you get and utterly thick. Typical doctor. In America they're even worse. Anna Gracehas been treated so shockingly I wouldn't want to meet the people who did it to her. I think I'm very self restrained but I don't .... what about Silk Taffeta in an American detox clinic detoxing off benzos watching fellow patients FITTING OUT that's utterly stupid. Let someone have one fit they're likely to have seizures again, to become epileptic. Different drug, parallel situation: CRACK COCAINE. In my day (when I started smoking it) the crack was most definitely better than now, stronger and better and I'm talking about how it vaporizes (should melt easily), how long it smokes (shorter the better) etc etc + fact that we weren't breaking rocks up we piped the whole £10 0.2g rock which gave me chest pains and earringing, echoing noises and one time at least a blinding white light into which i vanished into Crack Land zooming out down a Loony Tunes tunnel with My Big Issue (homeless magazine) selling friend at the end of it that was Proper Crack that's what I thought of as Piping. You can literally KILL YOURSELF smoking like this. That's why my heart flapped against my chest like a trapped pigeon. You can GO INTO SEIZURES which my ex had done. Then, years later, she was seeing a neurologist for fitting out. Petit mal in her case. I remember her just blanking, eyes rolling back. I was high but not too high to be bothered. I yelled look at me and held her head and made a drastic V right to her eyes yes I do have self control to Stop At The Right Point I didn't and had no intention of harming her. Point was she didn't flinch. Wasn't acting. Didn't look there. Wasn't there. BECAUSE OF CRACK. It is evil nasty stuff. The vibe surrounding it is nasty. The people surrounding it are patently nasty and if you don't see that take a step or two back. Part of the process of de-addicting yourself involves perspective. If you have no handle on normality or morality or whatever else you'll have no other seat to sit on bar the Addicts' Chair. Crack is the absolute last thing I want or need that's why I was yelling aobut it down the phone to psycho stone-throwing friend. When he did actually throw a stone at my window even though he'd said he'd do it it was SO LOUD I YELLED AT THE VERY TOP OF MY VOICE YEAH I'M COMING I'M COMING OUT ONE SECOND!!! and i was TRYING to calm down for this magical mystery tour that involved four of us. I was merely passenger. I don't care whether they bought Brown or White (heroin or crack) I didn't ask, didn't even wonder [which is why i note this down: first time ever i've been in a car, someone's got out, i knew it was to score drugs once id got my head round the idea he wasn't running away, and didn't think about, wonder, want what/when/why/any part of it. and if you cannot believe that that's your problem not mine]. This is why NA piss me off, tell a story like that they'll assume it's a tale half told they DON'T GET IT. HIGHER POWER. That's what keeps you off drugs. a Higher Power. They say it themselves. There are 3 Higher Powers: the Power in the Room at an NA meeting, God Almighty, creator of heaven and earth and all of us (I think God is the original meaning of Higher Power but wasn't there so how do I know?) and lastly the POWER IN ME, THE POWER IN YOU. That's my Higher Power and that is more Powerful than Me and more Powerful than You and More Powerful than Heroin or Crack or any other Drug. I find it hard to believe a reforming addict, "Recovering" as they say. How can they not get that. But they don't. And they don't get me. I'll keep coming back but I'm telling the truth next time. Have had enough of being misunderstood.
OK Crack/other rant over. Delightful comments please!
Link click Silk Taffeta above, you get the full Xanax Withdrawal story, click this one and it's to Anna and me re Trainspotting
ukk i only read over this enough to find highlight and do the links no i don't hate America I only hate certain aspects of their legal system and medical system and some aspects of their system re drug addiction, it's not like here and here isn't like other places one reason i wanted to go abroad is because i'm Sick To Death of the British Govt and feel when you're in a foreign country that is Their Government and Their Way of Doing Things you focus on the positives not the negatives. Unless you ARE RANTING ABOUT DRUG ADDICTION where my small irritation becomes explosively relevant. Plus I'm really pissed off at how my friend was abused and mistreated. She is American. She is my friend. Anna. My Best Friend.
AUDIO BULLYS DRUMS (ON WITH THE STORY) Thanks LIzzie i love this tune, it's amazing, this is the best one so far. it doesn't start dancing till about 2 mins in
AS YOU CAN SEE FROM THIS I THINK COCAINE IS SUCH A WONDERFUL GOOD IDEA, TAKING A DRUG THAT FITS YOU OUT, GIVES YOU HEART ATTACKS, ADDICTS, MAKES HOMELESS, RUINS MARRIAGES, LIVES ETC. WHICH IS WHY I WAS SO OBVIOUSLY TOTALLY SERIOUS WHEN i SAID "DO SOME COKE" KKKKKHHHHHHHHHH i have to be so careful
i don't want some kid to read this and think "drugs are a good idea"
yeah right yeah so bang on yeah yeah look what they did to me
i'm so........... (fill in the blank ya self, lazy fucker!)
14:00 ha! i just linked up Broadmoor Hospital should i read not read cant be bothered reading something so boring. imagine that the absolute pits. got nuff of me own mate dont need yours. someone else read it
o AM I MEANT TO GO TO BLOODY SLEEP and why is this thing set to caps all the time
wow the computer just threw an eppie and did lines all over the place. i think the computer and my brain are interwired. why did trisch li go and die? i don't obsess about anything FAR TOO much else going on and on in on around and UP UP UP i spent more time looking at the ceiling where i am going than i ever have + pointing at it unconsciously then thinking "do not point at the ceiling you nutter!"
i am a bit calmer. i went to na
i thought the last post was calm then i read back over it ti doesn't seem that way
i am trying not to spin sideways into the bingbontingtong rhymestimes imes thingsings ya know. I only put that to show you what I mean. Before I just wrote as I thought that is what was happening that is all i could say contrary to popular belief i am not into excessive self analysis the dr nurse person man yesterday forced me to give a life history kept saying "we have 45 mins to give your entire life" as a way of making me focus going fast was not the problem i went ultra ultra fast faster and faster every time i am stressed i go even faster until its a food mixer the sound of a blender going faster and faster and setting UP UP UP spinning faster and faster and louder and louder that is what i do. not just what my head does what i myself do. THAT is my HIGHER POWER.
that is why i am eternally grateful for being mad because being crazy is FAR better than being on drugs. it is FREE for a start free free free 4 me me me he heee!! EXCELLENT STUFF!!
being mad took me away from heroin, heroin had addicted me like nothing else i have ever seen in anybody else except one person my friend lucky she is the only person i ever met or knew who i culd look at and think "that one's got it worse than me". or even as bad as me. she had a 35 yr + habit, was old enough to be my mum, dealing (or sorting out deals) let her home be used as a crack smoking venue (more than a crack house, as such, there was none of the outofcontrolness of a crackhouse as i know a crackhouse (bear in mind if you don't know, these often belong to "vulnerable" people housed by the local council who let in a nasty dealer who pays them in crack and/or smack usually both. feeds their habit. fucks them around they lose the key to the door. the dealer may even leave them sick when there's a house full of peple using using using in every room you cannot get rid of them they live there on and on it gets totally uncontrollable THAT is what often IS a crackhouse ther are other patterns but i won't waste an entire post telling every in and out of every bloody thing i'll never stop.))
wow i remembered 2 brackets not one. and i remember to close them. that means i'm coming down
only i don't WANT TO COME DOWN THAT MEANS BEING DESPERATE MORE DESPERATE THAN EVER I WAS FOR DRUGS ABSOLUTELY ABYSMALLY DEPRESSED AND TOTALLY UNHAPPY AND NOT COPING
(and no professional ever giving any help though i was desperate for somebody to just do a few basic things in my favour. not give me a life. not wave a magic wand. just vouch for me on forms. say this person needs this to person x who arranges y. THAT type of thing)
you see the trouble i have i was very close to taking a shower with clothes on this morning because shower, turning on water door clothes me closed in door shower in doors all at once wet as you can get and my head going oingoingoginoginogingoingoingoingoinngoi like that THAT is why i could would have got in a shower with clothes on i fucking despair of myself no i didn't do that i give you an illustration so if you hear me say i need to do this and i cannot do it that is what i mean, i give an extreme, an extreme day but it goes on has gone on for every day for months on end years on end nothing getting done that needed doing. not properly.
do you see? what i'm trying to say is that i knew i had a problem and i tried to fix it in an adult way and somehow the fixing never came to gether and i feel bitter at professionals who i did tell about this repeatedly as somebody who feels worthless as dirt can insist on anything even though i could smile i can smile when i am depressed it is called smiling depression it is Japanese i am japanese in culture ie: i smile when upset; when i nod my head i mean i hear you not i agree those are the 2 features i recall
this guy yesterday asked me to go through my life in some detail saying when depression, voices, too fast too high and too paranoid all started and all separately it was the voices i remember when when a thought first echoed. prozac 1995. age 23. a mild thought echo as he called it. like i think, another voice echoes it back or the last syllable. in my head. and blah blah blah ting tong
the worst thing i remember because of him is me being in a state where i was hearing voices but they were not like bad not bad i heard them i felt very negative though but not because of the voices i was very very down i went to the railway station a few times one time the driver saw me and waved arms at me don't do it in that split second he saw something in me what? I cannot could not still cant work it out. to be doing that i must have been absolutely fucking desperate. yet he says i was using heroin as a mood muffler. WHAT ON EARTH WOULD I HAVE FELT IF NOT ON THE HEROIN? this bothers me now because i'm not on heroin, terrified to death of being depressed when it gets that bad and went on and on for months into years i cannot think of a single period over 18 years when i haven't had this in some way, no clear time lasting more than a month or so so i think this is my entire life it isn't a question of give up heroin all will be fine i always knew this
I DIDN'T KNOW IT WOULD BE THIS EXTREME
get me now?
this is what i was scared of. i CAN FACE MY FEARS HEAD ON fear is not a big issue for me OTHERWISE I'D BE BACK ON GEAR WOULDN'T I?
what i feel is hacked off, confused and terrified of coming down off this this i'd rather stay crazy than be like that
i know i sound desperate
at least i am surviving.
i am a survivor
never wanted to be, but knew it all along
23:52 I have well am just about to take zopiclone 7.5mg number one. there's a cup of black coffee there why did i make it. wasn't intending on sleeping. i spose i have to be grown up and try and sleepi dont want to sleep i bet this is going to back fire horribly i will end up like i was on sunday not able to face my own house through misery akkikh just swallow the stupid thing swallow it swallow DO IT
throw away the coffee. what am i saying i never throw anything away it's going in the fridge
23:57 coffee in fridge; zopiclone down throat hurrah!
TO ANYONE WHO PERUSED my last-but-one post, "in answer to some comments" I'd first like to point out my rantings were not a personal attack on any friends or commenters. Not a direct attack; not a sideways swipe. Passiveaggression (where you express anger obliquely, then deny you're doing it) is not my style. If I have a problem with someone I tell that person ~ it's the only way of doing it. Some of your comments did touch a raw nerve and that is what I was responding to. The fact that I'm me... not me... who am I?
The crux problem I had with heroin was that, apart from killing my pain, it held me very much together as a person. On gear I felt whole. The way other people seemingly feel.
Without gear I am Consciousness Aware of Passing Impressions. I'm expected to behave like and vouch for being "Somebody" but I do not feel like somebody. I feel many things at many times. I don't add them up. Somebody else might try to. Sometimes I have to account for whoever that person supposedly was, what happened to them. That's when it gets confusing. You see that's outward pressure to account for myself, to explain the inexplicable. It causes untold stress.
People seem to read into my words what they perhaps might feel had the words been their own. You need to be careful of doing this. Oftentimes I am comfortably numb. I never needed heroin to induce this and that puzzles me.
What heroin did do was give a certain confidence and a togetherness I had never in my adult life. That's why gear was so addictive. Whenever I tried to give it up, I (unwittingly) gave up my whole life also.
Far from over-analysing or ponderously dwelling on the issue of my life and feelings and future (the way many have assumed I do, probably due to my question-answering style)~ I realized in rehab that I actually hadn't the faintest clue what on EARTH I was going to do afterwards.
I was jumping blindfold into icewater! No wonder I ran out the door within half a week both times ~ despite immense preparation in the form of regimented drug-reduction, especially the second time. Despite what I'd assumed was motivation enough, I simply was not ready. Not the way I needed to be. I just did not know what I was doing.
You might also bear in mind that when I write, I use a naturally analytical style. This doesn't mean that I spend hours pondering myself in this way too!
People sometimes assume that because I write a certain way I must inevitably spend hours picking over my life in this manner too. That simply is not true. If I say I feel lost, I'm expressing a feeling. I don't wander about telling myself "I'm lost I'm lost I'm lost". I only say "I'm lost" when I talk to you.
At the extremes of experience I've found myself thinking far too quickly to ponder anything much. (That "breakdown" not long ago was like a tornado. Some of you read my words and appeared to assume I was more grounded than I really was. I was whirling a good one hundred times faster than usual ~ literally! It felt fantastic! But is not too conducive to self-examination.)
At the other extreme I slowed down and barely thought at all. My writing style cannot not reflect my minute by minute thinking style, unless I was willing to post near-blank pages or ones full of badddadah-dah-DING! Which is what my mind started doing when I was a little over-"manic". Perhaps that's my problem: if anything I ought to engage my brain MORE, not less!
On Sunday afternoon when I was tripping (on nothing; I've not taken psychedelic drugs in about a decade) and the Scouse of the South came blaring out a broken intercom I finally got fed up of people thinking I had DTs or needed Lithium. I popped some Librium which didn't really do much. My so-called Friend put pressure on me to find heroin. This was impossible, I said: it would be tiny, weak, money down the drain. He didn't care. Eventually to great irritation, which spilled into a dur euphoria (because I'm me and I am dur) heroin arrived. I took heroin. It was rubbish. I scored more that night and that was OK. Then I scored again and again and so I've done a lovely heroin binge.
And do you know what? The voices that were chattering away at night have vanished. (So much for drug-induced psychosis. If you wanna use the dreaded psycho-word this is a drug-REMOVED phenomenon. So the psychiatric industry can shove that in their crack-pipes and smoke it! Suddenly I feel put together and sturdy and strong again. All the reasons I got into gear to start with are revalidated.
Mental health nurses at the clinic will limply coo "ooo you're self-medicating" ~ yet they NEVER offer any alternative course of treatment or action. When I got into telling something particularly involved they crossed legs, leaned forward with a look in their eyes as if something really good was playing out on television. That's all I ever was to those people. Free entertainment.
Though I am supremely annoyed at this "Friend" for pushing me in that direction and will lance hi with expressions like "No ******g respect for MY feelings or MY sobriety," next time we meet, I am not "going back on gear" for anybody's sake. I took what was left tonight. I made sure I used it all. When it's gone ~ that's it.
I got a fantastic practical boost from heroin: it put me together enough to clean and tidy my living space back to the bounds of normality. Without it one disparate aspect of me nags "You've got to clear up" yet the other is not listening. I went on nagging myself this way for days, weeks, months with little-to-no avail. I could tell Mental Health Staff and this would provoke loads of engaged scribbling. With no benefit whatsoever to me. I don't care any more about my convoluted notes. I want RESULTS. Doesn't it come to something when only heroin will fix me?
Yes I could have not taken it. And I'd still be in a mess. I wouldn't have slept (I didn't sleep before). Less than a third as much would have been done (that's what happened last time). And my fractured less-than-self would watch caring-uncaring. Who cares anyhow? All I need do is get this task done. It's done enough now that I never need repeat that pharmaceutical relapse. I'm not offering an excuse for having used. I'm merely telling how using helped me. I only took heroin at all because it helped me a lot.
I was no longer crying. On heroin I was a whole person.
I'm willing to fracture up again, that's the inevitable result of pulling the plug on diamorphine. Please don't assume I'm telling you I suffer horribly. I feel nasty when I'm depressed, that much is true. But did you know, when I'm severely depressed it actually feels, in a paradoxical way, not as bad as moderate depression? Moderate depression, to me, involves constant impulses to suicide. In severe depression the suicidal idea is gone because there is no Life. Life is finished. I'm Finished. It's all over. "Rock Bottom" ~ if you want to use that phrase (personally I detest it). In this state I never even saw myself as depressed until afterwards. To me, I was in spiritual crisis. I'm no longer scared of going there because there are plus-points. While desire has gone, so has any sense of life. So I no longer desired to use. At long last I was free. The blackest stormclouds have a silvery lining. There's something to be gained from everything everything. Severe depression freed me from the constant craving to use ~ and for that I shall for ever be grateful.
Which is why I'm not scared. My life is a journey and I'm not even half done. This I am well aware of.
Just because my life is coloured in different hues to yours doesn't make me ill. I know that doctors could well see some of my experience as a mental sickness, but you need to throw out of your mind the idea that I suffer more than anyone else. I really don't think this is necessarily true. As mentioned earlier, I believe some of what's uniquely me is just a nonstandard coping mechanism. I don't walk about telling myself I'm ill. I only feel ill inasmuch as stuff has needed doing for a long long while, yet hasn't been done. No matter how hard I've tried to engage I've so far failed. The room-cleaning was a big one. If I can get this done, I'll be OK. A pigfull of meat shall slither off my shoulders. Then some other person can bring home the bacon.
You see it's not "feelings" that bother me, it's DOING. There's so very much I need to DO DO DO! Time is running out.
So that's my new question: how do I engage a disengaged person without using heroin in the process...? Surely there's some magical method? Some shortcut. Some effective way?
I very much appreciate the Answers I got back on Happiness. Thanks to Akelamalu and others, I made a decision to take a volunteer position at a Hospice. I have never in my life set foot in a hospice, but I believe passionately in what these organizations do. When people are terminally ill there comes a time when Doctors ought to just leave well alone. Stop their needlesticking, blood-letting, scanning, operating, endless interfering. Stop the painful tests, painful chemo, burning radiotherapy. Stop tormenting the dying and leave them in peace ~ dosed up on painkillers, tranquillized and happy as the chemicals can make them. I'd want this for myself. I'd want it for my friends. I'd want it for my loved ones.
I always donate to the hospice charity first when I'm giving away clothes etc (I find vast amounts of clothing on the street that doesn't fit me, so it's always trotting into that shop). I'd love to see how a hospice is actually run. Surely it's a privilege to spend the last days and hours with people who are dying. There's nothing maudlin or morbid in this. To be able to bring comfort ~ or even joy ~ to anybody's final moments would be a great honour.
So these are my feelings on feeling and not feeling, and on gear. As I said, yesterday's post was not a personal attack on anybody who commented, it was merely inspired by your remarks, so please, Syd and others don't be offended. No offence was ever intended.
PEACE, LOVE AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!
LINKS: HEROIN AND METHADONE AS ANTIPSYCHOTICS AND MOOD STABILIZERS
COLDPLAY: FIX YOU This video and the Madonna Hung Up Video both seem to have been filmed in the same place the Warp Club happened ~ inside the most enormous railway arch club, just round from the London Dungeon and London Bridge Station ...
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
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!!
O why is this happening to me? I am adding this afterwards. I haven't even taken any drugs and yet I feel cracked out of my head. Like when you're on a binge and haven't done a blast for a while but the residual high and all the crazy pacing is there. I couldn't tell you whether this is nasty or nice. I keep hearing voices in the night. Does this mean I am going crazy? E.g. if I shut the door it might say "talk to me" or "f*** off you w****" or nothing at all might trigger the voice. It isn't always exactly like hearing something it's like a very loud impression in my head, coming in from outside. What is this? Should I be worried about it? Do I need a head-shrinker? Ukk! Am I me myself actually going crazy? Doesn't that only happen to other people. It happened to me before when I was homeless I remember staring at the wall of the cavernous squat I slept in. A white shimmering light covered the wall like a cinema screen, then broke apart and something like a black and white movie began to play. One night a ghost came. It shouted I'm gonna f****g slit yout throat. And i heard someone creep acrosss the room. Then the door opened and I saw the shadow of a human form, flowing out light, like manga comic style. I am being absolutely truthful and literal. I know half the people reading this will just hate me and think I am psycho, but this is what happened. Then I got awarded a year's worth of money. Benefits backpay. No apparent diagnosis. Maybe depression/drug addiction. Whatever. I got all this money and went so crazy on crack and heroin that I ended up barefoot at 6am pacing the street waiting for the dealer to deliver more. I remember one coming in, pointing to my chocolate milkshake and saying disparagingly "there's alcohol in that!" before handing over a G of B and a 15W for £40! He always did really good deals this dealer. A weighed gram of proper heroin for £30. I had scales. First thing I bought on day one of the binge. Digital scales. And the half a sixteenth I was getting for £40 (crack) weighed 0.9 o this has degenerated anyway my mental health. Is it bad? Please somebody tell me. I feel like I am going crazy? O fuck. I just heard my ankle whisper are you mentally...? Why is this happening? I fuck off you bastard. Sorry I am talking to the cunt who is talking into my head. Just fuck off OK? What is this? I haven't taken any acid, mushrooms, ketamine, 2CB, 2CT7, MDMA, MDEA, MDA/whatever MDM-else (these are ecstasy-type drugs) or anything for years. Those things used to make me trip. If anything will make anyone hallucinate, I will hallucinate. I cannot smoke cannabis because the effect is so extreme, it's basically like paranoid schizophrenia, no fun thrown in. Just outright paranoia and voices shouting at me in the street. Plus memory loss. And you wonder why I call it "evil cannabis". Really I am surprised I have any of my faculties left at all. Basically uppers do not agree with me. Initially it might take more to set me off (as it does with coke) but once prest, it's like a massive energy switch has been pulled to ON and the drugs don't wear off for days sometimes. Tripping madly 24 hours after the E was supposed to have worn off. All the books dancing. Coloured dots dancing everywhere. I had to take off contact lenses into what looked just like a writhing pot of maggots. I knew I was hallucinating. I said "what is it when you see things like ants and bits of dirt everywhere on speed?" to someone and he said "oh that's the first sign of psychosis." oh thanks a lot. Strangely there is no instruction manual as to what to do once this phenomenon has kicked in, because even though I have not dropped an E (as in ecstasy E) for 8 years. OK I had a bit of meow (mephedrone) the keyboard keeps saying methedrine! Methedrine! The noise of it is setting off words. It's mepherdrone. And it's strong. Like ecstasy and coke, exactly. Though I would say it has far more of a kick to it than E, E is the pure gold of drugs. There is nothing like Ecstasy. Absolute magic. What was I saying even though I have barely taken any uppers or anything liable to make me hallucinate at all and despite some crack I have actually by crackhead standards done fantastically well at dropping (as in giving up, quitting dropping, not dropping an E, which is swallowing one!) I used to love those magic pills so much. Dancing on ecstasy is the only drug that comes close to truly Amazing, Fantastic, Out of This World. Way way higher than crack. Transcendent, man. Like I'd finally found the pot of gold at the rainbow's end. That good. I am writing this with a syringe of my own uncongealed, recooked and filtered lovely black blood between my teeth bc it is the very last dreg of heroin I can find and I have given up trying to find a vein. Voices were distracting me. They have gone now. Thank God! Do you think that was just the tide coming in a bit and now it will go out and I'll be OK? Or am I just slowly losing my mind? I feel like I havven't slept in 20 years. O shit it is 615am I meant to go to bed at midnight? Why am I not sleeping? What is happening to me? I woke up in the late morning/early afternoon (didn't want to wake up) feeling like the biggest party in the world had just come to a crashing close. Terrible comedown. Yet I have not taken anything that takes you up. Heroin does not have a "comedown". The nasty after-effect is withdrawal. That truly did make me feel like I was crazy. Like an off-the scale whirlwind of random nastiness blizzarding through my head in siberian winter. It was absolutely horrible. The experience I went through matched exactly a description of "mixed bipolar state" in some depression book I used to have. But it said at the bottom "not initiated or maintained by an underlying organic disturbance or etiological factor" which means basically you're not on (or withdrawing from) drugs. Well I have this lovely blood hit, which I only mention to disgust someone somewhere into never experimenting with heroin because it will lead to this. All this nutty craziness that is an excuse for an existence. I really should jump in front of an express train. That is what I always wanted to do and I lived just down the road from the main line. I stood there and the trains whooshed by and one driver somehow knew and waved his arms frantically at me. And that truly did my head in because I was not hanging off the edge of the platform or anything. This guy was whooshing past at a good 90 miles an hour, if not more. How on earth could he tell what I was thinking. Another time someone yelled Don't! Another time someone who had seen the expression on my face and maybe the way I stood unnaturally close and didn't flinch and said "yes that would have killed you" the bastard knew me, but he can't save me. No-one can. That's what's so tragic about all this, in the true sense of what tragedy means "a character fault or flaw leading to chaos and desolation". Tragedy. There we go. Me. A living breathing tragedy. Still living, still breathing though. WHY???
OK this is a mess but if I don't press return I will never post it.
1005 (is it relly that late i haven't slept at all) i got 2 comments this reply was too long to fit in one so i'm dropping it here. i don't want people losing sleep over my condition it's not all good but it's not appalling either so don't worry please. this is what i said, i'm not reading through it or it will never go out so someone somewhere can have a good laugh at my lack of editing discretion haha!
yeah i'm ok everything i wrote was bang on true i WAS hearing fucking voices, makes me think i'm going crazy. it didn't used to bother me because nothing did, i was off my head on smack now i'm not and everything seems v real and utterly unreal in a v mixed up kind of way i have to go drs anyhow i was so depressed b4 i don't know whether i'm up down or sideways at the moment don't think i'm actually bipolar surely not. that would be the likely diagnosis, or depression. i have already been told categorically i am not schizophrenic it was mood related. this was before the "it was all crack" theory i think my problems are the sum cause of all i've done. yes some of it is genetic, i have pulled the trigger on a loaded gun. some guns aren't loaded with as much shot as mine, some have a way lot more that's the way i see it. now do i sound crazy now i was just getting a bit desperate it was middle of the night no one to talk to in bed not bothering even faintly to sleep to be frank i would rather stay up all week if i can and crash i know that doesn't sound healthy but why fucking bother sleeping if you don't have to? sorry i am turning into valerie the drug dealing house wife also you know sad as it is, everything i write is true. sometimes i conflate a long story so as not to give every boring twist and turn, the "half gram" of heroin i lost was 0.2 or 0.3 ~ ie half as much 3 days before, just shows what tricks memory plays and i don't trust mine i can't see the point of keeping a blog if its gonna be some stupid fantasy of what i would like my life to be like. i invented valerie for that. not that i want to be her, i just find her hilariously funny in fact i have done far more laughing than crying. no crying at all since... can't remember when. but when you're depressed you don't usually tend to cry (big myth that one, you CAN cry, but you need to feel moved to cry. depressed people usually feel blank at best to desperately negative and suicidal at worst) oh well enough garbling on about my addled brains. as i say who do i have to blame for all that anyhow? i have given up on drs but will see one. at least something happened that they will take seriously bc i get the impression i am just seen as a junkie time waster. why the fuck anyone would want to give medical treatments to addicts, unless it was the real mccoy and other stuff that works i just do not understand. if you're not ready for it methadone is like going from a rolls royce to a rickety old bike. you just ain't gonna do it. i don't actually want to be high any more. might sound weird and strange (it certainly does to me) but all the crazy shit is true true true i don't fucking care who believes what but i know shit i haven't told you that is really dire really horrible really degraded i mean ok here's one: i had a box of needles. A huge cardboard box FULL of used needles nearly all used by me. It took literally days to empty it out into the big type sinbins (not the stupid little ones with 1-way push in crap that take ages) big ones. bc even as a junkie you don't want to prick yourself with an old needle, it hurts and a certain level of concentration is required and i didn't have it so anyway this box is there on the cupboard. landlord who knew full well what i was up to, not the actual man but his honcho knocks the entire fuckinng thing all over the floor. needle city. imagine that i mean that is just one example if you met me in person you wouldn't think i have the personality to take things to such extremes but that's the mistake everybody makes about me. i'm practically opposite to the way most people, who don't know me see me. i love pretending to be naive and stupid and innocent. that has been a favourite game since childhood. obviously most people would rather seem wiser etc than they are, [O SHUT UP YOU BORING FUCKER I DID READ BACK AND SEE WHAT DRUGS DO MAKE YOU BORING strikethrough please! but i knew i had a certain iq to spare so like being v rich or something i don't care if people think i'm poor, bc i know. that's th eonly way i can explain it. and no i'm not one of those people totally up their own backside about their own cleverness i have met that a few times thanks to university and it stinks. nearly always they are of average uni-level intelligence. ie no smarter than most of the rest of us!!! i can't do rocket science, heart or brain surgery or even turn brown into china white, though i do know the recipe for that one, ha! ether (explosive, do NOT smoke near this), hydrochloric acid and ethyl alcohol. Valerie in Aus is desperately looking for this for her refinery in the Burmese hills but that's another story! Well like I say that's just me so take it or leave it. I'm sure more will want to leave than take, har har. oh what am i ranting on about here i have no idea. it was some boring aspect of my life i expect but i can't even remember why i know it probably sounds and looks like i'm off my tits on drugs but i'm honestly clean as a whistle (apart from dregs that I was NOT going to throw away). No scoring for a good 2 days. no drink. Well I gotta go thanks you 2 for the comments please nobody don't worrry 2 much i'm just a bit lost that's all lost where! that's what i'd love to know!!
To anyone who wants to know what Valerie has to say it's quite a lot, mostly here at Anna's blog
This is a v good post explaining how heroin works. ie that almost no crime is caused BY heroin itself (unlike alcohol, crack) but in order to GET heroin etc etc. Valerie is real! Some old bitch in Melbourne already WAS supplying half the country. Or a tiny fraction of the country, nobody knows...
1351 most horrific chemist trip ever spent entire time writing plea for help note to dr/worker ni head but it was full of expletives. Everyone is looking and talking about me I would have started a huge fight if I had challenged 2 black boys for swearing at me. Yeah I know it is paranoiia but it is still happening I feel totally fucking out of it I am not going to even try to sleep though I know this is what I should do my head is going about 5000 miles an hour hey i'm not hearing voices. music stopped it. i cannot walk, open anything, do anything without the fucking object talking at me e.g. the shower saying paradise paradise what the fuck am i meant to do i am not going down the fuckign nuthouse no way, if i go there i will go on monday i don't know if i can last till then i feel fucking terrible/desperate/weird/up cracked out of my head have had no crack except £5 on Sun/Mon early hours. Before that nothing for weeks unless i have such bad amnesia i do not know what i am doing. and i don't know what i am doing what am i doing ?? what? ?? ? im still posting this what teh fuck
everything sounds so LOUD i have to sleep maybe it will all be gone by whenever it is nearly 2pm i have not bothered to sleep i cannot sleep i cannot sleep i migt die if i sleep
o just shuttup you crazy fucker
you see now i don't want to post this. bc people reading this. i[m ok im ok im not ok i dont know what am i supposed to do???
i need to sleep i need to sleep that is what i need to do
I KNOW THIS MIGHT HURT SOME OF YOU, my old friends. But I HAVE TO BE FRANK, BECAUSE RELAPSING IS WHAT I'M DOING. Going backwards.
My normal dealer would not serve me tonight, said he had something to do, not back till MONDAY AFTERNOON... Junkie Horror!
So I rang a distant 2nd choice who normally comes good in a drought. First called around 00:40 hrs. Couldn't understand what on earth he was trying to say. Went in a phonebox to call back on my mobile. Still no sense. I assumed I was messing me about (no mutual respect. He thinks I'm soft or stupid or// whatever he thinks. I think he thinks junkies are idiots who will pay anything, wait any time for rubbish. I've known him since he was 16. His original "boss man" is doing life for a shooting. What lovely people.
First he says come to one tube station. Then he says go to flats far nearer another. Giving benefit of the doubt I thought, well maybe he's cabbing for what Anna Grace calls a "booty call" (I would call it casual sex of a friend fck). I stood about under some freezing, shadowy trees well after 1:30am, for a good half hour, on the verge of hypothermia.
2 calls later and my phone credit is down to 22p. Not at all good.
Then I check my calls and realize my MAIN MAN II rang me at 1:45am. I sent an urgent text.
Told Mr Disrespect I'm not waiting any more. Main man said he has the same B as Mr Disrespect, he did me 2 for £15 + one white, which was pink. Pink crack is nearly always good. It was only little because he wanted £25 and I specified, "big darks please and a little white, you'll do THAT for £20, won't you?" (Big crack tiny B I cannot stand. I'm a B-punter, as they call it.) I got da stuff around 2:30.
So I've lapsed back onto crack. Even my lighter wouldn't play ball until I got wrapping paper from a 1 ml syringe, set fire to that and my pink crack piped beautifully.
I love drugs. I know a lot of you, who are my true friends, with cats and gardens and lives and hopes for me will be really upset. I'm despairing now that I will ever attain your kind of normality. As I told my Mum, you KNOW why I went on heroin. "Yes it's because the antidepressants didn't work," she likes to think. Truth being I have been unhappy and I mean desperately unhappy sincd age 8. At 10 I had what a counsellor called "the childhood form of a breakdown" (thought I was dying, washed hands obsessively. In winter they chapped and bled.)
Lots of people have had far worse lives than me. Some never took heroin or crack or drink. Others did and still came off. There is hope. As I've said before I do have willpower. I might seem a bit soft sometimes and people mistake kindness for weakness. I try to be kind, despite everything. TRY. I don't always succeed. I have been called "hard" a few times (always by women), always with a note of disappointment. Who is nasty? Who is nice anyhow? We're all a mixture, by degrees.
I have tried to put in a good word for people who could do with some support. I am not a saint. I'm just an addict trying to be the best person I can be despite it all.
I often feel badly misunderstood.
My biggest revelation in counselling, about 12 years ago was SO WHAT?! So what if the world doesn't understand. People will always think what they please. Live your own life.
I still wish that life could be drug free, even though I have a fully loaded pipe right by me. Night night everyone.
Please, my deepest fear is that some impressionable kid will read this and think drugs are cool. They have inflicted more misery than you could ever imagine. If you're miserable without heroin/crack/crystal/drink/whatever your life will only get ten, twenty, a hundred times more intolerable, more chaotic. And if and when you do finally kick those chemicals (and it's not like giving up smoking, it takes a lot of motivation + professional help) whatever made you so unahppy to start with will still need addressing.
I'm writing for everyone, everywhere. Perhaps I over-explain some slang or aspects of the life but this is so that any English-speaker, however far-flung their location, and addicted or not, will read this and hopefully learn something. I only "preach" in terror that some vulnerable person might think I'm condoning this life. I condone nothing. I try only to describe.
ROLL UP ROLL UP FOR A GOOD LAUGH! Eastenders is prime time soap here in the UK.It's probably unique in that it attracts (or used to in its heyday) a roughly 50:50 male-female demographic. In these scenes Phil Mitchell, moody bullying alcoholic "hardman" of Albert Square gets trashed on crack for the very first time. He is with Rainie Cross, the addict sister of Tanya Branning. This is my first time watching somebody on a drug I (used to) love without it setting off some sort of craving. In fact it made me feel a bit sick. I would say the unrealistic thing about this scene is that people on crack don't generally laugh hysterically. In fact, they don't laugh at all...*
And here's Phil just on the lovely old drink... Shouldn't laugh, but this is hilarious:
AMY WINEHOUSE AND PETE DOHERTY WASTED If this ain't them, it's too v accurate lookielykies... And yes that's baby mice they're picking up and playing with. Which you shouldn't do, because the mother might refuse to feed them if they smell of human
*By the way the last thing you want to do is exercise someone whose heart is going haywire on crack. Walking people round is a supposed antidote to heroin overdose. What you should actually do is make sure they are breathing and that the airways are clear. If they stop breathing you'll need to recussitate mouth-to-mouth. Call an ambulance, say somebody has fallen unconscious and cannot be roused. Don't mention drugs. British police are highly unlikely to take an interest in drug overdoses. In fact I've never even heard of anyone getting "busted" for "going over". What I have heard of is people dying because their mates were too scared to call an ambulance in case they got into trouble ....
I HAD DRUGS ON THE BRAIN this morning. Specifically heroin (of course). For several hours my thoughts and actions centred on nothing else except using a teeny tiny residue I had left ~ and rushing out for more. This involved the biggest flap-about. I would gladly have changed places with Flapper the pigeon to have got down da area more quickly than I did. Because I got to what I thought was the right place, only for da man to inform me he had no wheels and could I come right down to him. Which, being already half way there I did. I took the bus fare out of the scoring money (too right!) Went on a massive excursion. Half an hour later I was there. I had to wait in a park with suspicious mothers throwing sticks at dogs. And workmen (for some reason) poking at holes in the tarmac. Then a random black man floats past. I had to double-take as I've only ever seen him in the front seat of a car before. People look different in plain air. Through the railings £14 exchanged hands for a third of a gram of B. He says they're half grams, but I think they're 0.4s or thirds. With this in hand I went skipping merrily away. A tubby black woman gave me a queer look from her front step. On the corner of the bus-stop I found a side entrance to a huge local park which I power-walked through to the scrub at the back. Here I could have done my hit, but it didn't feel private enough. About three or four years ago I found myself in the company of two mentally ill junkies ~ one was an American girl. Americans in London are not that common (apart from rich international financier types). American addicts are even rarer. On that day we ended up in a huge bush needlepoking all together. I was determined to find this bush. Crossing over a bridge at the back I found myself in a leafy walkland. I'm sure I was in the right area. Families with grandchildren rambling far too slowly. Well I couldn't exactly say would you hurry up and go away I have a bag of heroin I wish to bang up in these bushes? could I? Lacking the patience to go any further I delved into the first huge bush I saw. It was like a tardis-bush. It went on and on with miniature paths, trodden, so it appeared, by tiny Norwich terriers on dandelion-sniffing rambles. Eventually I stumbled upon (and nearly down) a sharp drop with piles and piles of piss-stained newspapers, used drug works, cooking spoons (not the sort you eat Ben & Jerry's ice cream with, these are for drugs), and old pipes and packets and sachets of citric acid everywhere. In a corner was a seething fly-ridden splat of dripping diarrhoea. The whole place stank and looking up I saw some industrial window glaring emptily down on me. I shifted a yard to the left and the window was obscured by blackberry bushes. Preparing the hit was stressful. Voices from the nearby pathway rang out disconcertingly near. I cooked up one hit. Looked yellow and weak. I shoved half as much powder again in the spoon. Now it looked dark brown. This dealer sells strange gear that looks the colour of beach sand, yet goes very dark when prepared. I'm not sure why. Once I'd done the hit I carefully sealed up the gear with a cellophane bag purloined from a nearby greengrocer's just for this purpose. Then I bared my bloodstained, gnarled trackmarked leg, slotted the works straight in and remarkably had the vein at once. In the hazy poppy-juice disappeared. I held my leg up in the air to let it flush down. If I don't do this, my circulation is so bad there's a good chance the hit will sink to my foot and go nowhere fast, so I have to use gravity rather than my own heartbeats to pour the juice to my heart. Then I felt OK. And I could face the day. It was nearly two o'clock. I had been up for seven hours.
THE PHONE RANG yesterday afternoon. "Do you wanna hit?" I have never literally said no to that so I said yes. Then they explained what was entailed and it involved driving round in a car with a Scottish guy I know who I have to keep saying WHAT??!? to every second sentence because he sounds like he's speaking Dutch (Dutch and Scots do sound quite similar). Anyway I had to listen to hours of paranoia. This person is always in trouble with at least two other people who have wronged him quite viciously. Never is he at fault for basically having zero character judgement. I tried to tell him: I don't have these problems with my neighbours because I only ever say hello to them. The problems I have had were all pushed by them making judgement on me. I never wanted anything to do with any of them. But too late for that. And then he wants crack. And I told him coke is rubbish now. Apparently there is such massive demand in Britain the average cocaine powder is a mere 15% purity (against 40 or more for heroin (supposedly )). And it's just a waste of time. I'd been thinking of crack more and more recently and feeling sick at the thought of it and telling myself I didn't want to do it ever again. So I thought "one last shout". The two £20s weren't even rocks they were like damp Lux soap flakes. I learnt long ago the difference between good and bad crack before the high hits you ~ the good stuff melts under a flame and is a white smoke or vapour before you know it. This went on and on and on smoking and was like inhaling burning polystyrene with a goodly hint of car exhaust. Then you feel sick and your head spins and you're "high". Lovely. To pay for this I had to put up with more than three hours of his multiple troubles. Then the first person rang me wanting a cut ~ which I'd banged on and on about he had better give them something because I'm not getting blamed. And he didn't want to do it. So I made him ring and say no. And then he finally vanished in the rainy night and I just felt ill by this time. Good riddance to bad rubbish!
* I looked up the supposed purity of heroin and crack in the UK; I have, after all, been taking the rubbish... In 2007 when heroin was much the same the "mean retail purity" in the UK was supposedly 49.8%; crack, which I still used then was 52.3%, probably higher than today, I'm sure... This means the British street heroin has one of the highest purities in the western world ~ which surprised me ~ against e.g. 36.1% in New York City...
MADONNA YOU'LL SEE She didn't sound too sure of herself singing in Spanish; this is how it's meant to sound ~ which I think sounds quite good.
mirtazapine belong in the same category. Difference: mirtazapine (ironically) = more manic-depressive (I went DOWN on mirtazapine after going UP how crappy is that from something that's supposed to level you out?!) crack makes more paranoid. Extreme paranoia. I once thought people were climbing up the walls of the house and hid inside a home-made tent... the one you use once you're fed up of flashing at hidden cameras. That's nutnut for you. I never thougt I was a nutter despite all this. If I'd been a bit more naive I'd have blurted loads of this to psych staff years ago but I knew what paranoid/suicidal ideation meant. Knew what implied what and what they might eventually diagnose from what pattern. Because it's like joining dots. Akh I hate doctors. All I'm trying to do today is join dots of happiness. I have what they call a rapid cycle. That means I confuse myself because I don't know when Im up or down except when it's so extreme... I mean yesterday despite the nerves I was dunking biscuits while I shared at NA. All casual-like. (Manic-casual.) Not one person said anything except someone laughed knowingly. I'm not offended by THAT if I was I'd not have shared to start with. I didn't expect Absolution. Hey it would be funny if that person thought I was lying, would give me something to play up to. Sometimes I annoy myself by doing this; if somebody gets an idea of me that I don't agree with I'll show them the idea is true in the most ridiculous, eventually pantomimic way. When another person is there I never break eye contact with the first to shoot a look over. That gives you away. I do it like a professional actor, never once breaking stride, despite the ridiculousness. Usually I am pretending to be naive or stupid, my 2 favourite things I love to show people. I wear soft on the outside! Just like a tiger. All furry and cute. Nobody sees my teeth unless they rile me to it.%20(1887).jpeg)
thought 50% sounded ridiculously small. I would estimate the true figure to be around 85 or 90%. 50% was supposed to be the number of bipolars who ever used drugs. Type 2 bipolar means mostly depressed with manic blips that never amount to full mania. I never got full mania until this year it's the only "up" I would recognize as illness because my head starts saying "power hour shower power shower" that's literally what I think and I say a mixture of things (incoherently, so I'm told that is with the topic jumping all over the place). I have every single diagnostic category among the 7 or so including reckless buying sprees (DVDs) I have so many they fill an armchair and they were bought mostly in 4 days. Great thing is EVERY SINGLE ONE is one I'd ring in the TV guide, so they're shit I WANT. Ben Hur I might not be in the mood for every day. Or Cleopatra. Or Dr Zhivago (a triple £5 pack) but they're there for when I do feel like watching lots of beautiful music and snow (Dr Zhivago) or Burton-Taylor (Cleopatra) or ancient stuff (Ben Hur). Shit no Gone with the Wind was the third in the treble pack, I hate that one but it came essentially free.
