Psychological Fly-Eyes

I KEEP GETTING MOOD SWINGS. I thought I was depressed earlier. I scored Valium, popped one blue one (10mg) and went to bed. Slept most of the afternoon. My risperidone is giving horrible side-effects you could describe as drowsiness except I can't sleep and Valium makes me feel way better. Alcohol does not. I'm telling the doc-doc.

From now on, until he tells me otherwise on my appointment on the 24th I'm taking both 2mg pills at midnight. Hopefully he'll change me to something else. Isn't quetiapine any good? Reading between the lines, and bearing in mind that the negative reports about quetiapine come from prison. American prison, which sounds crap as far as drugs go.

Not like British jail where gear is pretty widely used. In American jails of my grandparents' generation NUTMEGS were used as drugs. Nutmegs contain an MDA-like trippy E type substance. Apart from the nausea, vomting and diarrhoea it sounds like a really good trip, man. I mean if nutmegs are attractive in prison, quetiapine must be super-attractive. Reading between the lines I assume this means it doesn't give the bashed on the head with a frying pan feeling. People in jail were accused of drug-seeking behaviour when an antipsychotic was withdrawn. Quetiapine gives really good sleep. One thing you want in prison is sleep. And these people are accused of drug-seeking for wanting what we all want: a good night's sleep. America is one messed up country. (Of course Britain is not messed up at all (joke)). I know my dr. won't prescribe it. I knew when I came in I was destined whatever move I made to land rapidly in a checkmate situation. This is so obvious I probably didn't even post it. The Worst Is Bound To Happen.

The very nice lady psychiatrist in the Emergency Clinic mentioned LITHIUM which I REALLY DO NOT WANT. I'd do Valproate before lithium. Lithium requires blood-level testing. It makes you feel cold. It is toxic. It causes problems in focus, visual and mental. NOT what I want. Only good thing about lithium from what I hear is it's good with vinegar on fish and chips (tastes of salt).

My friend Mother Hubbs says she was on lithium before she switched to heroin. I noticed heroin was a fantastic mood-stabilizer. First thing I noticed (and this was before I knew Mother Hubbs) was that my previously tide-like moodswings had gone flat. I'd turned from the North Sea into an inland lake.

Now I'm like the Atlantic Ocean. if they do put me on stabilization crap I'd rather be like the Pacific. Still with tides and storms just not as bad. I'd hate to live on a flat line. That's what I hated most about heroin in the early to mid years. I never EVER woke up feeling happy, as I used to in my late 20s. My late 20s were the only time in my life when I got buzzing highs without drugs. Never happened in childhood, never happened as a young young adult. Only as I say in my late 20s.

Then later in my gear-using "career" I realized I felt hyped up without crack and crack was the only stimulant I used. I still felt hyped up after giving it up! Not all the time, episodically. I also got mildly depressed and horribly depressed on different occasions. I'm fed up of fighting my own moods they have become a real huge issue and have got bad enough that I hear voices, get paranoia, look like I've been dragged through a hedge backwards and live in a dump during the worst parts. Now I have to clean up the dump (again). I'm FAR cleaner and more put together washing-wise. I wash my hair 3 times a week now. Before that it was about once every 2 months. Yeah I know it's all sad sad sad I'm not exactly keeping a blog to show y'all how cool I am. This is the truth about drug addiction and "mental health". Mental ill-health more like.

So I'm depressed earlier, feel like I've had a line of speed on one cup of tea later. Had another cup to make the speed a bit more full-on. Caffeine has the effect on me it only has on TV characters. Caffeine doesn't really make people rush about babbling does it. Never did that to me before. Only time I ever got high on tea was when I was on Prozac in my early 20s. Even then I was being told to calm down, and told I was acting "manic". The person who said this had two relatives with bipolar disorder, which kind of did my head in. I scrupulously hid anything "manic" from my doctors for years. Then I fessed up. Was a junkie by this time. Wasn't believed. Not really. Then it got so bad I was literally falling to pieces, going incoherent, acting like I was pretending to be a racing car (I wasn't "pretending to be" anything, I was saying what I was thinking, to myself. Luckily when I did this in the nuthouse I wasn't under assessment. The assessment happened in an interview where I was told I kept changing topics. I don't know about that. What I do remember is trying to answer everything ultra-precisely. So "how long?" to me meant on what precise day and what time did you first feel the way you feel now. I got totally lost in the multiplicity of eventualities inherent in any situation. My thoughts went up like a starburst. Mentally I felt like a fly. Viewing the world through endless angles through compound eyes.

So I'm not up or down or left or right. I'm still all over the place!

Does anyone know anything about old films? Are these any good. I got 'em on impulse for a tenner. Old war films remind me of sleepy Sundays smoking cigarettes and drinking tea. (Or white cyder.)

• The Desert Rats
• A Farewell to Arms
• The Longest Day
• Sink the Bismarck
• Twelve O'Clock High

Twelve O'Clock High is playing.



Illustrated: when I'm "ill" I think in starbursts and think in psychological compound eyes, seeing everything from every conceivable angle all at once. This gives overload, exhilarating overload or irritating overload, depending on the mood of the moment. I'd quite like to be a fly. Or better still a hornet. I'd have quite some fun being a wasp...

EVA CASSIDY: FIELDS OF GOLD



ANDREA BOCELLI, SARAH BRIGHTMAN: TIME TO SAY GOODBYE
At the Dubai Fountain
I've never been to Dubai, but I've been through Bahrain airport and Bahrain through the plane window looked amazing. All water-gardens and glittering glass towers. And their duty-free shop was perfume, alcohol and cigarettes paradise. I went into the squiggly-writing men's toilets which had hosepipes in the cubicles (to blast your arse). All these Yasser-Arafat men breezing in and out in robes. If I were an Arab I'd wear robes too. I hate a lot of western dress.

Too much to drink at 3am

AKH! ALCOHOL. Alcohol alcohol. I've drunk past a week's worth of alcoholic units in the past 24 hours. Her Majesty's Chief Medical Officer suggests I may safely drink 28 units, that's 280mls neat alcohol, in the course of a week. (Never a day.) Today I've had past 30, that's 300mls neat alcohol. 4 litres of white cyder. Akh. I am not proud.

In my youth drink was the most boring drug known to man. (That is: known to me.) Never in a million years was I tempted to knock back spirits (or even beer) in the day. Even down the bar I was as happy with lemonade as beer. Alcohol-free beer was good for me. Strangely, the student bar didn't stock that one...

My point being: I was never much of a drinker. Yeah: I got drunk a couple of times. Cross-eyed and unable to walk drunk. Stomach scrubbed out with a Brillo pad because you haven't eaten all day and don't know how to take care of yourself drunk.

The worst hangover I ever had didn't correct itself for three days. I drank a lot of cyder that night.

(Cyder becomes a recurring theme.)

I only got into drink because I thought I needed Dutch courage to beg passers-by for money. My sign said "HUNGRY PLEASE HELP." I made sure I never ate before I went begging, so my sign was in every way true. I never ate in those days until last thing at night. One meal a day. I thought skeletal looked good. Looking back at nasty snapshots I looked like crap.

Of course I was begging because I was broke. I was broke because I was on heroin. Drink and heroin made ready partners. Right from the beginning my Big Complaint about gear was that it was no longer doing it for me.

That was a big reason I put myself into rehab. I didn't appreciate just how much gear actually did until I took it away. Then I started to fall apart in an ugly way. Then I ran screaming back to the gear and all its fluffy cosiness.

And that was why I could never tolerate methadone. A friend once told me 60mg was equivalent to a £10 bag IV. At the time I thought: Nah, 60mg's worth way more than that. The druggieclinic give out 10mg to equate £10 gear (0.2g) as standard. But that's ridiculous. All these years later I can accept: my friend was right. When the gear was good, I could barely hold myself on 100mg. That was without a script ie I had no double habit. I would sweat heavily, even go into cramps on methadone at "high doses".

The methadone I bought came in the form of Physeptone pills. There was no question of anybody interfering with it. (Street-bought "juice" is very often watered, if only slightly.)

It wasn't until this Great Heroin Drought that methadone ever held me properly. Certainly better than the crap-arse gear going around a few weeks ago. Way better.

So as heroin's hold has faded, alcohol's has tightened. And I want out. I need out. I've had enough of intoxicating substances. It's time to go it alone.

I don't know how I'll do it, but it's time.

After the cyder ...

THIS MORNING... oh I am sorry; this AFTERNOON when I eventually woke up I was aching all over as if I'd fallen off a galloping horse the night before. What happened to me? I wondered. Then it came back to me: cyder happened!
I went to the chemist's and got my methadone.
Before that, I bought some more cyder: hair of the dog. (And it worked!)
After the chemist's, I went to the cheapest supermarket in England, Iceland, and purchased frozen Chinese takeaway ~ satay chicken (in spicy sauce, not mingy stringy bits of chicken on glorified toothpicks) plus chicken fried rice ~ £3 the pair. Back at home I slammed 'em in the oven. And with a couple of generous pinches of MSG on each they tasted wonderful. Worthy of my local Chinese but at half price!

Very moving: Trainspotting overdose scene ~ Soundtrack: Lou Reed ~ Perfect Day.
Yesterday, while my two friends were arguing, this tune came on television. They were talking about dead friends. And this tune and the subject matter and Tanisha's overwrought voice made me so emotional I nearly cried ...
The Susan Boyle version you can see beneath my yesterday's post. This is the Lou Reed 1972 original (from the year of my birth!) ~ as introduced to a whole new generation in the film Trainspotting.

LOU REED ~ PERFECT DAY ~ TRAINSPOTTING OVERDOSE SCENE...



The heroin in this clip is too cloudy, there's far too much water in the hit and he's blowing the vein and/or partially missing it ~ you can see that. He shouldn't be bruising up so quickly.

Trainspotting: full scene from the film "visiting Mother Superior":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgCprJPSlpA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgCprJPSlpA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgCprJPSlpA

Perfect Sunday!

I SPENT the entire day with my Irish friend Patrick and a black girl I'd never met before who at first was lots of fun. We drank and drank white cyder. I bought Chinese sweet chili chicken pizza and cheese-and-onion-baked rolls. Tanisha bought the cyder. She grew more and more aggressive as we all got more drunk...

... in the end I had to go home before a full-on row broke out.

Oh, what a perfect day!

THIS is one of my favourite songs. Written and originally recorded by Lou Reed, the following versions, I think, are two of the best:

SUSAN BOYLE: PERFECT DAY



"BBC & STARS" (Lou Reed, Bono, Skye Edwards (Morcheeba), David Bowie, Suzanna Vega, Elton John, Sir Andrew Davies, Boyzone, Lesley Garrett, Burning Spear, Sir Thomas Allen, Brodsky Quartet, Heather Small (M People), Emmylou Harris, Tammy Wynett, Shane McGowan, Sheona White, Dr John, Robert Cray, Huey (Fun Lovin' Criminals), Gabrielle, Evan Dando, Courtney Pine, Brett Anderson (Suede), Visual Ministry Choir, Joan Armatrading, Laurie Anderson, Tom Jones, BBC Symphony Orchestra): PERFECT DAY