I THINK I TOOK 2 ANTIPSYCHO PILLS LAST NIGHT INSTEAD OF ONE. I feel like I have severe concussion and ought really to go back to bed.

Thank y'all for all the links I looked at them all. When I had some energ earlier. Now the energy has dwindled.

Heroin: there seems no point. A waste of time (like most things in life).

I am only on one medication as I think the dr wanted to see what that one did before confusing the issue with mood stabilizers. If I'm cycling I'm mostly going up. Except this past week when I've mostly been down. But even then I get a mood swing going UP every day. The UP is to do with the antipsychotics being taken at night so I feel them wearing off every day.

How the hell I was idiot enough to take 2 I've no idea. It most certainly was not deliberate. I only ever deliberately take NONE not 2. Maybe I should give them up they're a waste of time, like a lot of things.

I was supposed to be going to the nutnut club but I think that one's on ice I can't be doing anything I feel too done in to do anything at all. I can barely remember what day it is. My sense of time has gone haywire since I got "ill".

And that's that. I'm wading thorugh treacle today I have to go. If it wasn't immoral I'd suggest we all do a suicide pact but I cannot suggest that it is immoral (who gives a fuck about illegal, it's immoral I'm worried about. I think petty criminals should get death, then I'd take up petty crime bigtime. Well Im burbling don't take me seriously this is the shit that is in my mind I just have sleep deprivation I slept about 11 hours and still need more.

Well I'm off sorry I cannot say anything more socially acceptable.

Ideas and/or Advice, Please!

I'VE BEEN TRYING TO SORT OUT MY BENEFITS STUFF TODAY. They paid me the grand total of £21 this week; I've no idea why. So now I know the correct number I have to ring back tomorrow when they're open. I also am meant to tell them I have schizoaffective disorder. I got a letter a while back that seemed irrelevant but it said underneath that any change in your medical condition must be notified. I don't think the name makes any difference but it might mean I get treated a bit different (if anything, better). They don't seem to quibble so much with severe mental illness whereas depression they subject you to a test to see how depressed you actually are. With this I don't see what test they can do, I just feel too confused a lot of the time to do a lot of basic things. Sad but true. I don't know how I'm going to rise above this one. Depression I fought against but mania you can't fight against it's too intense and also feels nice most of the time, so I don't know what to do. And the schizo-bit in schizo-affective just feels too weird for words so I don't know how to dea with it. Not very good I know but true. They might push me down a pit with people sword fighting like people on television now but I don't know how I'll survive. See I feel confused these thoughts come in my head and I push them out but I push out everything else too so I dont know what to keep in there. This is why I get ill, because I don't understand. I try. I do try. But I feel confused.

Does anybody out there know about schizoaffective disorder and what things I can do self-help wise? PLEASE. Anybody? If you can direct me to a good website or just a forum I'd be ever so grateful. I'm floundering about knowing I have "symptoms" of this "tripolar disorder" (because there are 3 things I get: mania, depression and schizophrenia) and knowing broadly which symptom and experience is flavoured with what, but I don't know what to DO. I want to know what to DO. And why I should do it? And what I might achieve... Please anybody who knows please answer. You don't need to be a fellow sufferer or an expert I'm just after ideas. Remember I have had depression for years and am glad I followed my inkling not to indulge in books that didn't mention Seasonal Affective (SAD) or bipolar. Because I've always thought my depression was partly psychological and partly biological. Even though I hadn't a clue I was schizoaffective until the dr told me so, I've followed the right path, where you accept your illness has a biological component. Purely herbal tea and counselling based stuff just ain't gonna cut it with my illness. I accept I need to take meds. I can feel when I haven't taken them, usually. Apart from Saturday night when I honestly forgot my pill (I'm on one pill now; 1x4mg risperidone rather than 2x2mg, which are too easy to get confused over) I wasn't messing about I really did forget to take it. And for once didn't get "a free coke binge" I just felt nothing bar a sluggish depression I've been in for days. Depression which now has a slight excited tinge in the background. I'm hoping this means a mood switch is occurring.

Yes I used HEROIN today but it did nothing. It was so weak. I wish I wouldn't do it. It doesn't take away "psychotic" things (which I don't really have today) and it doesn't dampen down my bad moods any more so I wish I'd get it THROUGH MY THICK HEAD THAT I'M WASTING MY TIME.

Im pissed off with NA because I shared even though it fucking hurt to do so I still shared something that is personal that I don't have to share and not one fucking person gave any response except the kind of response you get when they know you're using drugs still. I mean I told them I had bipolar mood swings and not one person could think of one faintly constructive thing to say about that.

I don't know what I was expecting. Certainly not "there there" type crap but something. I expected something and I don't think my expectations were unreasonable. Considering nearly ALL bipolar people use drugs which means there must be a lot of manic depression "in the rooms" as they say I expected more. So I was right when I realized NA was NOT for me. They cannot help me, they do not help me. Only seductive thing about NA is the attitude that taking medication is wrong, so I can "not use" my antipsychotics and have "a free coke binge" on them. That is a free manic episode, even a short one for a couple of days. But I'm trying to be grown up and responsible, I don't know why, but I am. Am trying.

I felt misunderstood by them when I took up going again and I still feel misunderstood and unappreciated.

Bear in mind I have been coming to NA for over 10 years, since I very first saw a problem developing, so I know NA, know their philosophy and their ways and feel let down, now that I genuinely want to be clean and serene I feel nobody has made any effort towards me, not genuine effort. All I get is "do a detox" (ie have a psychotic episode) and likeminded stuff in other words they're telling me to go crazy. I'm willing to go crazy as long as I can do it IN THEIR HOUSE. That will teach them to throw out platitude-ridden advice, when they see what happens when I "detox" and "go clean" as they believe clean is.

TIESTO/RALPH FRIDGE: PARADISE
when i went mad that time my shower kept saying "paradise paradise" after this song!



I'm not getting too wound up by Narcotics Anonymous and I refuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But I'm only doing one meeting per week at the moment. You have to bear in mind I have bad memories of coming to NA having heard voices all the way there on the bus, then locking myself up in a dark room with them in a psychotic state only for them all to believe I was high on crack when I was "high" yes, but on nothing! Just like you I have only a certain tolerance for such bullshit and then I start feeling genuinely upset. You see I know the name of my disorder now and it's not a good one. Now I have to tell the Social Security this crap, which I don't want to, but they need to know. They do say any change in your condition should be notified to us so fuckit I'll notify them. What on earth they'll do with that information I hesitate to think. You see I had symptoms and knew I wasn't right. Then this doctor tells me in these same words "I think you have a mental illness". I have never thought of myself as "mentally ill" before. Depression is supposedly a mental illness but it didn't make me feel mentally ill. Only the crash from mania into depression has truly made me feel injured and ill. Very very sick and ill. The crash I had in December counts as one of five all time worsts. The fact that there are FIVE not one probably says a lot but I'm not dwelling on that one. Do you understand why I disengage rather than wallow? If I wallowed I would never get out of self pity and it would destroy me. I'd rather pretend nothing is wrong than wallow in the wrongness. I don't care if I'm doing the wrong thing; life is so very difficult I don't know what else to do.

TRANCE VISIONS: PARADISE (KOMAKINO REMIX)



Well I hope I've been grown-up enough today I don't feel grown up. I feel like the parent of a 3 year old child ~ as per usual ~ saying "DO THIS! DON'T DO THAT!" and the recalcitrant child barely listens..!

And how was YOUR DAY? rsvp!


RALPH FRIDGE: PARADISE (PUSH MIX)

I love a Pakistani

I HAVE SWITCHED OVER MY FAVOURITE FOOD from Chinese to Pakistani. I'm on chicken saag masala and pilau rice tonight and chicken tikka pilau now. Like I say I sept a long time in th night. I don't know why except that it's supposed to be wrong to do such a thing. So I'm hiding indoors. Michael Jackson is singing to me off a siver disc.

I know I shouldn't talk about suicidal ideation when I have it. I don't mean to upset anyone. I don't care whether I irritate anyone. If yoou want me to xxxx you I'll do that for you. I have a wound up feeling so I really should xxxxxx xxxxxxx. I know it's offensive to say that but I should. I can't believe I have to sensor mysef but I do I have to have to xxxx mysef. That's how I feel. Have to xxxx xxxxxx.

Yes I am not happy. I am deeply unhappy so I have ot be proactive not reactive. That means taking action preemptigvely not beinga pussy and caving in or doing what someone else wants.

I know a blog is supposed to be full of bullshit to make people read it but I don't know what bullshit to put in it. There are no bullshit and my hamsters are dead. I still have their bodeis there in Mother Hubbs's garden but I can dig them up for you/

O rea;;u ;ole Omdoam fppd tjat#s wjat O a eatomg tpdau/

[I'm sorry: no glasses and poor concentration let that through; it wasn't deliberate whackiness. My fingers were on the wrong home keys it means I reaally like Indian food that's what I am eating today]

Whatever else that's just bullshit.

*******

SORRY i'VE LOST MY GLASSES BC I WAS MENTALLY ILL HENCE THE GOBBLEDYGOOK IN THE LAST SENTENCE ITS NOT DEIBERATE YOU CAN WORK IT OUT BY TAPPING OUT THE SAME WITH FINGERS ONE KEY ALONG ...

Sleep Deprivation

I MUST HAVE HAD IT because I slept all day then all night. Waking at midday. If I told you I had 3 Valiums (1 by day; 2 at night) you'd think "ah! It was the Valium!" but that doesn't normally happen on Valium. I only bought them for nutter club later in the week to stop me having panic in there. I nearly had panic attacks that is I did have bad anxiety 2 days last week and I AM NOT going into anxiety territory. I really will kill myself if I get anxiety it is worse than depression. It is like a mild mania without the fun. I have to watch what I say here else fate will get me then I'll have to die. If I have anxiety I can never go in a nuthouse as they never treat anxiety in there. Violence, suicidal ideation, yes. Paranoid ideation they make a game out of.

When I go in the post office I don't get why the woman behind the counter wants to live. I don't get why people on the streets laugh. I don't get why anybody wants to be alive.

Antidepressants

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

Flight of the Blue Tits

DOES ANY OF MY WRITING ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE? Or is it just me reading it back wonky? It seems to be all biddybangingbong: all over the place. I don't judge other people's writing as good or bad; I just read it. Also, my attention span is all over the place. I'm having a bash at reading a fictionalized biog later on; it's in short sections with rotating perspective (ie one person speaks, then another does, so it's easier to stick with). I need to get my attention span back.

And what was I on about earlier? Akh, I was a bit hyper. I was playing the music you see in youtube screens below today's earlier post which brought back memories of love doves and mitsubishi ecstasy. My mood was up so the music took me higher into full-blown "euphoric recall". It was more than the tingly neck you get from dance music once you get into it, it was a reliving of the E-state. I think that's why I'm now called "bipolar".

Akh, how did me and words like bipolar and schizophrenia ever get together? I always knew there was something wrong and that it wasn't plain depression. Those nauseatingly repeated dsm diagnostic criteria that pop up whenever you google "depression" somehow never described me even when I felt hopeless and suicidal. Partly this was depression deluding me, partly it was having got so used to being in a negative mind-state I couldn't see the positive one required to make sense of diagnostic criteria.

I fit the manic ones far more easily than the depressed ones. Ukh. Me? Manic?? A maniac is a crazy person and crazy people are Somebody Else.

I have been trying to read up on my medical condition because apart from knowing what it is I didn't know anything about it. Now I know a little bit about it. The European and American versions of schizoaffective differ. I have the European version that is, in the language of psychiatrists, mood episodes with mood-incongruent psychotic features. I also do have symptoms of schizophrenia but didn't even know it. I never delved into schizophrenia before: you can't know if you've got it. Stuff like obsessive-compulsive or bipolar you could know about because the patterns are really clear. Schizophrenia just feels like extreme dissociation with everything taking huge effort, even simple things. That's schizophrenia. That's why schizophrenics seem lazy, they're actually stressed. It's a big thing to do a little thing. That's why things don't get done. That's why I'm in chaos. Now I get all these people helping me.

Ukh. People helping me. I just want to crawl away and hide.

I want a bird feeder for all these blue tits. I haven't actually seen a blue tit around here. They're so tiny, they're like blue sparrows only slightly smaller (more wren-like) and highly agile. They hang out more at bird-tables and are frequently seen feeding upside down. They form mixed flocks with great tits, according to Wikipedia.

I can't wait for tomorrow because tomorrow I can get some paints. Whether I actually will get them is anyone's guess. Usually I don't do anything I actually plan to. I know I should do it but get lost in the detail. There is too much gory detail in life. There is too much gore. That is why I hate life. That is why I have to win the euromillions lottery. It's £50 million next week. I need enough to get a house with high prison walls to keep the world OUT.

Well I don't feel depressed any more. I felt depressed last night so I took a load of methadone and slept deeply. Then I woke up feeling fine. There are FAR worse things you can get diagnosed with than "elevated mood" (and my mood is elevated far more than it is low) so I'm not complaining. As Serious Illnesses go I think I got just about the best one. I keep hearing about, thinking about, seeing all sorts of physical injury and disease that scares the living shit out of me. Then I'm really glad I don't have to deal with that. I might be thinking that because I'm ill, but at least I am just thinking it not being it. (And I could get lost from here on in, as I get lost in what I think... ukkkk is that why my Dr thinks I'm crazy?)

O I have to go I don't know where I'm going now. Blue tits! There ya go. Left it on a positive note didn't I!!


Illustrated: tiny tits in various positions in British gardens

7:07 Entertainment

WOW IT'S ONLY 7 in the morning. It feels later. I slept for hours and hours because I took a whole load of methadone that was full of sugar (someone else's). It doesn't make me feel stoned at high doses, but it does make me sleep at night (not even during the day though, as heroin would).

Which is the crux of the methadone issue (because it's not like heroin) but Governments love it. (Because it gives outward signs of improvement.) Most addicts aren't willing or ready to improve that much and so methadone therapy is a waste of time. E.g. on the man who was willing to sell me £40 worth! His house is like a crackhouse. That's the place where everyone was rude. Everyone but him. He's OK. Gruff. But OK. Someone once said he was trying to intimidate me, but I don't feel intimidated by people like that. Who express how they are feeling. All they are doing is laying cards you already knew they had on the table. So dealing with them is easier.

Anyway I know a story about this one certain person that makes him out to be a Paper Tiger. I had another friend who was genuinely Hard and they came into conflict...

I don't particularly like the word Hard, when Strong and Tough describes somebody better. There's someone else I know like that and I respect him for it. Then people get to know me and call me "Hard" which annoys me. I also used to get called Cynical when I'm just normal in that respect. So people can be self-centred and nasty and I can see that. Ain't cynical: that's being realistic. It was when a heroin addict was banging on about how you "have to do stuff for your grandkids" and I was like "yeah once you've had a hit first" ~ and we all know that is the reality of heroin addiction. Once you've had your gear you're ready to Engage. Before that, no engagement can or will take place. And what little does comes with a whole slew of resentment. Forcing a heroin addict into meaningful activity before their heroin is like forcing a starving man to work before giving him any food. It won't make him like you.

Last night I put on Meet the Fockers again. My mood had fallen at about 7pm and I was pissed off. No longer manic but depressed. Manic depression. Doncha just hate it! I was particularly offended when my shrinko used those 2 words together in that phrase as if manic and depressed have to be 2 components of the same thing (but they are: I just hate it).

I was also very bothered and pissed off that I have schizophrenia. That is what schizoaffective MEANS. It means bipolar + schizophrenia and I know the schizzy bits in me. They are the bits that don't add up that I couldn't explain to another person. Like rooms in a house divided by bullet proof glass walls. Just because you can see into doesn't mean you're GETTING into or that anything gets out. What comes out is a report of that which is viewed not experienced. The experience takes place in that impregnable fortress of an experience-bubble. One day, to those of you who are interested, I will try and explain what is schizzy in me. Because I do think I grasp it. Just can't do it at 8 o'clock (as it is now) in the morning.

My roses are opening beautifully in their pint glass, especially one. The other has gone limp. I just cut the stem again. Now they look like Little and Large. Tomorrow I'm getting some Art Stuff to make my trotterdonkey Acrylic Paintings for my wall.

So this is now; that is then. I've got to go. Pizza and tea ready.


FRANTIC
i used to go to this club, it was nuts
and this is the sort of music i used to go eeeeeeing to: psychedelic hardhouse



these ones all have that unmixed compilation cd quality. a good dj would flash the next tune over the old one and dijjydit through so you're bouncing on the old one and then the E!-E!-E!-E!-E!-E!-E! energy of the new one takes you flying off....

HARDHOUSE MIX
stonkinstompin
but why the words? hardhouse = no words! CMON!!! i love the choon tho



CLASSIC HARDHOUSE 2 i love this one
what does this say to you, that squeaky word says all different words
squeakymunchtime diginmymind it's like a musical pill-dispenser
this one has words but the words are in the tune not outside of, that's what works better



this is what i've got. i have symptoms of bipolar schizoaffective disorder

Racy Brain (not down the drain)

I FEEL I'VE BEEN LIFTED UP!
I SLEPT A LONG TIME lats night because I had the antipsychotics, antihistamines and alcohol. The antihistamine was to make me sleep because despite the other stuff I just couldn't do it. And now I feel woozy and my head is racing and spinning. I feel in a much better mood. I'm not "high" but the same stuff is going on as when I'm going there. In the chemist and the post office I kept seeing visions in the floor. The chemist was a girl in a beautiful egg-shaped water drop with drops like rain behind her. In the post office I saw a slavering wolf in chalk-white on the brown floor. Then I looked away and there were just shadows where wolfie's features had been. I really am getting paranoid today I can't tell when people are and aren't talking about me and I hear weird noises. Whether or not this is the risperidone pills I don't know. If it carries on like this I know I'll go back on a manic whoooosh uppp-p-p-P-PPPP!! Least I'm not depressed right now all is fine with me. I'm stressed about seeing the doctor on Thursday and I don't like the way thes pills make me feel wibblywobbly. I can't deal with change and buying things in shops I just have to give money and get the girl to sort it out it caused a massive headfuck when all I wanted was an Oyster top up that's an e-bus ticket. Sorry if this doesn't hang together well my head has a distinct lack of focus and my memory is shot to pieces these days. I forget people's names, everything. Have a nice day everyone. Mine's going well. My racy brain has elevated me way above yesterday's dreary misery-schmizzery so I'm good. Good health to all!

PS ANNA GRACE: a lot of your comments got dumped in spam and I just found them. They're in their proper places now

Clean Clothes

BY TOMORROW MORNING I shall have an entire set of clean dry clothes. The present ones I have on smell like they've been through a well seasoned sandwich toaster. I put a load of smalls through the sink with three doses of lemon washing up liquid. It's on the radiator as we speak. The other stuff was there anyhow; I just didn't know.

I get money tomorrow. I need to buy a charger and a chip to phone my Dad free of charge. I lost the old chip when I wasn't even on drugs (I remember that bit clearly; neither was I drunk but I spilled water on my phone and went so mental trying to dry it out that the SIM lept out and installed itself between a pane of glass and my seat on the bus. The pane of glass is there because the bus is British and they want to cause more serious injuries in the event of a crash. Well why else would glass be on a bus; not on a window?)

And I have to buy socks. Dark ones without heels and toes busted through.

I just spoke to my Dad and his side of the family. That worked better than antipsychotics. But I've taken the antipsychos again to be a good boy in time for Dr NutNut on Thursday. I need to look all responsible. I stopped taking them because I had side-effects that were drastically horrible. Something like a drowsy brain-fog where lights glared into my head making me want to lie in a darkened room (yet not sleepy-drowsy so you just suffer it out till the pill wears off). So I canned the pills and was so high (on "life", not any drug) by the time I had confirmation that I should take the entire dose at once, as in week one that I took no antipsychotics. Then I got tired but was still on a high. Then the high just wore off, just under a week ago, on Monday afternoon. And ever since then I've been pissed off. I'd rather say pissed off then depressed. I hate the word depression. I never know when I do or don't have it except afterwards (when I usually did have it) somehow some sort of denial confuses me. Henceforth I shall attempt not to be confused.

I'm not taking heroin because heroin stops me being high (might as well be frank). I'm dreading going to the doctor because the doctor will also want to stop me being high. Last time I really started going high on antipsychotics I felt really weird, so maybe I'd better get used to feeling weird (I got used to being weird long ago, I just didn't feel it).

I cured my depression with drink. It antidepressed me enough to pick the phone up for social reasons and to get clothes washed. I think my doctor should prescribe cherry flavour 4.7% ABV cyder for medicinal reasons (joke).

Meet the Fockers has been on at least four times today. They keep talking about something called a Jimmy Changa. What the hell is that? I thought it was a cocktail but it gives Bernie Focker (Dustin Hoffman) most terrible wind. Roz Focker (Barbra Streisand) said so by accident on their answerphone message.

And now I'm vanishing into the night like a tired moth that's just taken 2x2mgs of chemical cosh. Sleep well. Or GET OUT OF BED (if you're in Australia).


Illustrated: Indonesian owl moth

5pm Sour

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

9pm to 9am

I SLEPT FROM ABOUT 9PM TO 9AM. I never made note of the precise times. Could have been 7pm, I don't recall. I must have had at least 10 hours' sleep. I took 2x 50mg Boots Sleep Aid (diphenhydramine: same as Nytol). That's double the recommended dose but I took 50mg last night and was awake all night long.

I wrote out a whole load of stuff just now but I'll save it until I can think of nothing to say, then it can be a space-filler.

I had to reset my sleep to nighttimes only, else I wouldn't make these 3 appointments I have in the coming week. I like sleeping all day because I can avoid the world then be awake on my own all night. I much prefer living this way.

I'm trying to avoid going into an anti-methadone rant. I don't know whether it really gave me a problem. The long post (coming later) names some people we knew who were heroin addicts who ended up in mental hospitals with bipolar or severe depression after getting clean. Point being, I always knew heroin was a psychic blocker. When you suddenly leave your psyche wide open you go crazy because you no longer have the medicine to make you feel better. I think that's the truth of what goes on rather than methadone literally poisoning me. I'm asking this doctor what he thinks. He's a consultant psychiatrist who spends a lot of time at the methadone clinic so if anybody understands the issues surrounding taking or not taking drugs and going cuckoo he does.

I now have FIVE professionals on my case. And am probably getting one more, making six. Normally you have a methadone key worker and that's it. If everybody saw five or six professionals the system would collapse. It doesn't make me special it makes me a drain on resources. I still think there's some way I could put myself back together on my own. Or to put it another way, this is how I feel, not what I think.

I don't really care about what's what any more. I only did care because it was a way of being responsible (I thought) and anchoring myself to reality (I thought). Whatever it was I cared about before I don't care about now. Every time I get depressed my head convinces me it's not real, certainly not a medical condition. This is why no help ever occurred. It's not my job as patient to name what treatment I need. If this were the case there would be radiotherapy machines in supermarkets and people who thought they had cancer could blast away.

Anyway I see this doctor on the 24th and I refuse to put on a depressed act for him. I realized over time that psychiatrists probably get a lot of that, but I'm not doing it. If I have got depression it's only mild anyway. I don't want antidepressants because I've never had one that worked without putting me on a high, which feels wonderful once it kicks off, but the last time was such a disaster I don't know I'd ever go near such poison again. The antidepressants made me so depressed I had trouble moving my body and didn't even want heroin any more. Anybody who doesn't want heroin, in my opinion is completely crazy or just the kind of strong person who doesn't need drugs to function. I only found heroin easy to give up because I got higher off it (WAY higher) than I ever was on it. I'm no longer willing to give some ignorant bastard, who only deals cheap Afghan crud, my money to feel OK. I took heroin twice last week. The first dose was so powerful it knocked me unconscious for several hours. Yet I still felt miserable. Ergo: heroin no longer works. So there is no answer that I currently know of. (Except God.)

God is one of the higher powers NA talk about. I'm not happy with Narcotics Anonymous. Until I see my doctor I'm probably not going. I'm fed up of the obsession with drugs you get in there. I want to think of other things. The Nutter Club is OK and it says a lot that you find more reality in a room full of mentally ill people than a room full of addicts who ascribe their every problem to addiction. The most ridiculous one I've heard was "I was an addict before I was using".

Well not me: I only lost control of drugs when the drug was heroin and anybody who takes heroin long enough becomes an addict. I'm an addict because I took heroin. Just because somebody has speed or some other rubbish I don't want or need doesn't mean I'll take it, yet NA seem to think I'll do that one too. Just take anything going no matter of time or place or company. That's not behaviour of a drug-addict. That's a drugs dustbin. If you take uppers when you're addicted to heroin, and don't take heroin with them and after them, you're going to feel worse than you ever believed possible.

When I told somebody I couldn't use any drug I got the pat response "of course you can't" but this person meant "because you're an addict". No. I can't use most drugs because they either disagree instantaneously or produce such drastic after-effects, it's not worth taking them again. That's the precise opposite of an addiction or compulsion to use. It's an aversion. But they will not listen. I get very little understanding from NA so I'm putting them on ice until I'm ready to come back. Otherwise I'll just get so pissed off with them, I'll never come back.

O I've got to go this thing has been glaring at me for 4 hours. If I don't press "publish" I'll never post it.


ANCIENT MADONNA: WHITE HEAT; WHO'S THAT GIRL TOUR, MITSUBISHI JAPANESE TV SPECIAL 1988

Ecstasy and Heroin

IT'S 5PM AND I STILL HAVEN'T BEEN TO BED since last night. This was partially deliberate, to reset my sleep cycle. Though sleeping all day avoiding the world is attractive, I'm meant to see Dr Shrinko next week and I'm meant to go to the Nutter Club and I'm meant to go to the Methadone Clinic and I can't be dragging myself there in a state of depressed sleep deprivation. If I get depressed and especially if I sleep twice, when I wake up the second time I feel really lousy. I don't know why that is. Usually when I'm down I sleep for hours and hours, at least 12 hours a day, sometimes a lot longer. If I go a day without sleep I can do 19 hours or longer. The Patronizers at the clinic liked to blame opiates for this. How come it was happening when I worked, a good 6 years before I was addicted to heroin? They never listened. They're actually more obsessed with drugs than most junkies. In fact I have a theory that some of the staff who work in such places are mere junkies by proxy. They want to be around the stuff. The outrageousness and despair. But they're too scared to commit to the needle (or the foil, if you insist). I kind of understand this. But the only thing that kept me taking heroin was what heroin did for me. Nothing to do with being with any group of people. I noticed heroin addicts seemed a lot more open-minded than ordinary folk. Far more accepting of people for who they were with all their faults. The nightclub crowd coudln't tolerate negativity; it killed their buzz. Their negativity happened when the party was over and they were washed up alone in a meaningless world of comedown that magically restored itself by Thursday night. So by Friday or Saturday they were ready to blitz their brains yet again on MDMA. Though I've raved about MDMA, it was, in the end, just a very seductive lie. People who aren't nice except on E just aren't nice people. They might dearly desire to be nice and use that annoying word "fluffy" which to me always meant lacking in substance and many of them appeared to have a complete personality change on E. Suddenly becoming caring, outgoing, considerate and full of time for others. In real life they were sour, grouchy and very sad. The worst cases I met on the club scene were actually more messed up than the heroin addicts. Perhaps heroin was soothing those addicts' ills in a way that Ecstasy cannot. Ecstasy opens up; heroin closes down. Is there any meaning in chemical meaninglessnes? Or are they just two opposing lies?


EIGHTH WONDER: I'M NOT SCARED
Patsy Kensit apparently used to go to Shoom club in a gym in south London. Shoom was the first Acid House party in the UK. She wanted to be "the biggest star in the world". Then she married Liam Gallagher from Oasis and turned down a part in Friends. Now she's in Holby City...



Illustrated: modern-looking ecstasy pills. The "love dove" bird is totally different from the doves I remember in the early 90s, that sat more upright and were stamped deeper. And they were really beautiful ...

MADONNA TRACKS: The following are the best tracks from their respective albums. And neither one was ever released as a single!

MADONNA: THIEF OF HEARTS (Erotica album)



MADONNA: SKIN (Ray of Light album)

6:41 calm

I DO RECALL A TIME not too long ago when I posted "X o'clock calm" a few times, meaning a lot calmer than I was a couple of hours ago (when I had been in a manic frenzy). Well I'm not exactly feeling wonderful but I am trying to bring myself up or at least distract myself with nice music. I don't handle depression very well I'm afraid and yes I feel depressed and have done since almost precisely 3:30pm last Monday. That is the time that I crashed down from my high and I've been feeling increasingly bad since then. I recall the time because I was supposed to meet Valium Marilyn down the library at 4 and by the time I got there I felt so dire I couldn't even distract myself with the books. I gave her 14 minutes then disappeared into HMV the record/DVD shop where I bought stuff I didn't even want (Michael Jackson) in a forlorn attempt to cheer myself. Now the cheer has vanished and I don't know what to do, how to handle this crisis, what I'm supposed to be doing next, what I'm doing wrong. I'm doing something wrong else I wouldn't be suffering like this. And I want an explanation off that doctor I don't think he realizes how much he does my head in just listening then saying nothing when everyone around him is saying "bipolar" and I feel in sore need of a word to YELL IN THE FACES OF NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS for judging me, looking down on me, thinking me a fantasist and a liar because maybe THEY manage to shower, wear clean clothes and put themselevs together on methadone but I don't. I get more lost, more fucked up and frankly more ill the longer I take that stuff. I turn up to most meetings looking like I've been dragged through a hedge backwards and people wonder why I don't want to engage in the weirdo group hug! Would you want to hug anyone if you hadn't showered for the best part of a week?

Yes I could shower. But it takes me an hour and I've no clean clothes to change into. So I either shower and don't go. Or do go and go dirty. That's the limit of my coping skills and we've gone way past "cannot be bothered" into "it never happens".

I have a desperate desperate problem I have to sort out somehow and I don't even know where to begin. Y'all need to bear in mind I've had troubles with my moods going back arguably to childhood and most certainly since my late teens. I had symptoms of bipolar intermittently from my early 20s though these were originally triggered by antidepressants, so I thought they didn't count. You have to bear in mind the label "manic depressive" while sounding very much more interesting than plain depression also scares the living shit out of me so I decided to hide anything that could possibly be construed as manic from prying doctors until a couple of years ago. By which time I was taken as a deadbeat junkie looking for an excuse to justify my using. Now I get into the mess you all know about. Well, the bits I told you about, and suddenly the doctors are listening. I know doctors and I know human nature and I know when I'm being taken seriously and I'm taken seriously now. Now that I find out if I am actually bipolar I'm not just type one but "severe" with it. Which makes me very bitter, because I asked for help repeatedly and was nodded at and ignored. I told the doctors when I was in the shared care scheme which is a methadone programme for junkies who are doing "really well" (ie ones the ordinary clinic hasn't time for any more) that unless I addressed my long-running problems with moods I wasn't going to make much progress tackling the addiction side of things and got lots of nods and no action whatsoever. THEY are the professionals. It's up to THEM to help ME when I ASK FOR IT. AND I GOT NO HELP WHATSOEVER UNTIL I WAS SO CUCKOO THE WALLS WERE SPEAKING TO ME AND I HAD TO RESTRAIN MYSELF FROM SETTING MY HOUSE ON FIRE AND JUMPING THROUGH AN UPSTAIRS WINDOW. This is the shit I have been trying to deal with. Me going so badly off on one I just don't know what I'm doing any more. You can put whatever interpretation you please as I'm sure you will do. Self-indulgence, hypochondria, whatever. The fact is I was not drug-taking, I wasn't drunk and you get the most watered down version acceptable. I cannot post in full detail, I just can't.

I mean, I realized at one point I had probably been yelling and screaming to myself in my thin-walled room far more frequently than I'd realized. And it suddenly makes sense why my housemates who used to treat me like a junkie but mumble hello now scurry away and hide completely at the first sign of me.

Yes we're back to THIS yet again, because THIS is a whacking great huge unresolved issue that I'm frankly tired of dealing with on my own. I don't know what to do. I feel suicidal or I feel so high I just cannot be bothered with the most basic social niceties. At the extreme I stopped being a human being and had a tiger in my head who ROARED my thoughts for me. I was amping with energy like a nuclear power station (this was a couple of weeks or so ago). And I wondered why people backed away from me in the street!

All this is incredible fun in the high phase but I crashed down and now I'm suffering for it. I'm writing in a lovely clear window of peace, serenity and calm that pragmatism tells me probably won't last. I'm not being negative I'm merely being realistic and if you were like this you'd have to be realistic too. I'm not asking anyone for an answer. I know you can't give one. I see my doctor next Thursday and I only hope I am in a good enough mood to bother leaving my house because I've been so hacked off of late, if I didn't want to go, I just wouldn't. I have been sorely let down by the medical profession when I did all I could to ask for their help. Now that they're willing to give it I really need to do what I have to and just get to appointments in time. But the way things are going I can't get my head round sorting out one set of clean clothes and a clean me by next Thursday. Yeah, it's like that.

This doctor knows exactly what's going on, what drugs I took when, how much, how I felt and when, what happened, how intense it was when and for how long, when x started, when y started happening and when I turned into a living bunch of ZZZZZs. So don't worry on that score. I was so desperate when I saw him last December I could only give unvarnished, unedited truth. I had no idea what he wanted to know or see, so he just saw me. No pretence, no cover-ups, no acting, no "showing what he needs to see". I felt broken, confused, injured and very, very raw. I was in such a mess I had to remind myself to move my arms down when I put them up. My head was rushing but my body was frozen. What I recall most was how shocked he looked at the state of me. Psychiatrists have to be poker-faced for their job, but this one gave himself right away. Nothing I have seen or heard or read, and I did avoid excessive reading about "symptoms" ~ no attention span for one thing ~ but nothing that I did hear did anything to put me at ease. Words like "serious" "severe" and even "lifelong" crop up an awful lot. This pinning it on drugs I gave up months and years ago stuff ... I don't think that's going to wash. This guy seems to think I'm mentally diseased. So apart from trying to cheer myself up with films like Meet the Fockers and mugs of hot chocolate I don't know what else to do.

And I'm leaving it there. Sorry to rant yet again on the same old same old shit. It's just every time I think of what to post it's this issue eating away at me. Originally when y'all said I was thinking too much you probably were assuming I think about what I post all day long, which I don't. But now, because I'm down down down and out, I do think about my failings a lot. And I don't know what the hell to do about them.

Peace and best wishes to y'all. Have a cheery weekend. And if it ain't cheery, may it at least be tolerable.


SEAL: CRAZY
i love this tune



SONIQUE: PUT A SPELL ON YOU



SONIQUE: FEELS SO GOOD



12:33 THIS actually cheered me up: "how did you get diagnosed?" stories....

A handful of nothing

I ONCE SAW A NEWBORN BABY IN ACUTE HEROIN WITHDRAWAL. The poor little mite was reaching out with one hand then the other, grasping for something that just wasn't there, never would be there ever again. Until this poor kid grew up and wondered why it liked heroin so much.

In Britain, newborn opiate-addicted babies are titrated with IV morphine and the dose is dropped over a week or two to nothing. Because babies don't act or lie the signs they give out are more easily read by a doctor than those of a full-grown addict who has learned in the process of growing up not to show suffering, yet is suffering intensely and undermedicated. That's what they do to addicts. Undermedicate. Or as my friend Rebs said "they leave you right on the edge".

I won't go into this story more I only brought it up because like that baby, I'm grasping at nothing. Every straw I grasp at gives way.

I have food in the oven. I don't want to eat. A film is playing. I don't want to watch it. I took a Nytol pill (which I loathe) but I don't want to sleep. I have methadone which I also don't want.

I remember the day the doctor said, not entirely seriously (I hope) that he'd up my dose to 300mg a day if it helped me. That's like telling a starving man "I'll give you a tanker load of pigswill". Barking up the wrong tree entirely. I took heroin because I liked heroin and heroin made me OK. Methadone never made me any better than physically OK and when I had a habit going not even 150mg would do that on day one. I never found a dose I could get onto from constant heroin (no methadone) to just methadone where I didn't have periodic hot and cold sweats and no appetite.

In the end I gave up trying to do anything important on methadone. It was just undoable. I went to Windsor to see my Mum. Arrived 2 hours late. Felt intermittently ill despite a "huge" methadone dose. Had to take God knows how many trains to get there. Every time one whooshed past at the station I had this urge to jump... And that's what methadone does to me.

A life on methadone is no life at all. I need to get off it as quick as I can. Even if that involves going back to heroin I'd rather do that and pop filters every eight hours. A filter of good B is stronger than 50mg methadone. So three filters: one £10 bag, 0.2g heroin. That holds me way better than 150mg methadone. Which tells me that their equivalence tables are nonsense. 0.2g of good heroin could be 100mg diamorphine. And it's stronger than methadone. It works. Methadone doesn't work. Methadone drove me so crazy I could no longer think, let alone speak coherent English.

I'm taking the clinic to court. I'm fed up of this bullshit. I don't think I have any right to happiness or any right to morphine or diamorphine but surely I have a right to die, so why won't they kill me? You know what they're doing. They want me to kill myself. I will never kill myself for the sake of another person, so that one won't happen.

All our days are numbered. That's the best thing about life. Life ends.


SONYA: END OF THE WORLD

Moulin Rouge

I WAS ASKING SOMEONE ABOUT A FILM with Kylie Minogue as the Absynthe Fairy, and Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman singing I couldn't for the life of me remember its name. I need films with constant music and this is a good one. I found it for £4 tonight. The idiot self service machine demanded an assistant, as I knew it would, to confirm I'm over 12 years old. And I bought a pile of tex mex pizzas as the other Morrisons have seen fit to clear their frozen pizza shelves empty. I chucked my basket on the frozen peas and stalked out.

I slept all day till 8pm. Got my methadone at 8:30am. Opening time. So I can avoid the world. Now with cherry flavoured alcohol and cigarettes and and ultra thin and crispy mexican pizza in the oven I feel OK.

All this clean shit can go hang. I just don't care any more. More you use, quicker you die. It's all good. Heroin can go take a hike. Crack is as relevant to me as weather patterns on Jupiter. Speed no way. Ecstasy ditto. I don't need uppers. They give a vastly inferior high to my own Natural One (I mean most of these substances last 4 hours maximum full-on, I was high for about four weeks straight on NOTHING, see what I mean?) Some people do use on top of mania but I think they're either truly cracked up or just have a piss-weak version of it. Stephen Fry said cocaine "evened him out" when hypomanic. LIAR! He means it intensified his high and THAT felt even. Uppers are way too jagged for my taste. The only drug that ever did it for me in an anytime anyplace anywhere way was heroin and heroin is unnecessary. From now on I will only consider taking multigram hits. Ie to use heroin as suicide. A Muslim once told me if you do yourself in eg by stabbing yourself, you'll spend eternity in hell stabbing yourself with a knife. I want to spend eternity hitting up the strongest hit of heroin I've ever taken. So I opt for that method. To die on heroin I need a low tolerance. To get a low tolerance I need reducing methadone. I'm already on methadone. So it's all good.

Sorry to post negative things. I'm forever stuck between telling the truth and telling a sanitized acceptable version that's basically a lie. So what you wanna hear?

No I'm not depressed. I'm nothing. I'm psychologically nothing. I'm NORMAL! PERFECT! OK! FINE!

I got a message yesterday about someone who had been through EXACTLY the same shit as me. Mood disorders. Personality Disorders. Strongly implied abused as a kid. I told them I WAS abused but only emotionally and not by my parents but this didn't seem enough. Then I told them some pervert who knew my name (but I didn't know him) said he'd come to pick me up when I was waving a flag at trains to make them go honk-honk from a railway bridge aged 9. But I just said "no that's not me". And I went away. I don't know what he did, because I didn't look. And this is all true. So no hidden trauma. Only trauma I remember.

Nursey only brought this up when dissociation rose it's head. Dissociation is cool it means you wander about and you're not real and/or the world is not real. A prissy weak person would let this bother them. What you do is go as deep into it as you can. It's a free drug after all. So vanish into it and don't come out. Same with mania but not depression. You don't go into depression unless you want it to kill you. The suicide rate in bipolar is 20%; in straight depression 9%. Schizophrenia is about 15%. So don't go into negativity, only positivity. The meaning of life is what life is. So make it meaningless or full of entertainment or both. But don't make it negative or you will die. If you do die bear in mind what that Headfucker said and use a delicious method of death. This is advice to self not you. If you want to kill yourself do yourself a favour. Fuck off and go elsewhere. I'm not into giving suicide tips.

Only thing that does my head in. I can't even say what I mean without the risk of some silly probably young and lost fucker trying to take my ideas which I will never spell out in sufficient detail for anyone else to know the Method and doing Something Stupid. You wanna kill yourself? Ring the Samaritans in the UK, ring the national suicide lines in whatever other place you may be. You're online. Google the numbers.

OK this has burnt itself out I'm going. I feel shit now I was OK before. I have a certain amount of happiness and it just goes, like a butterfly disappearing into the gloom of the evening.


Illustrated: sublime and trash. Says everything

MOULIN ROUGE: ONE DAY I'LL FLY AWAY
if i can find this i'll post it up, but my broadband will jam for the next hour so let's hope it plays
it plays. i like nicole kidman's voice
ONE DAY I'LL FLY AWAY
LEAVE ALL THIS TO YESTERDAY...

Bye bye Heroin

OK I feel OK now. Coasting down from heroin might have something to do with this.

I don't feel "addicted" to heroin, not the way I was. The compulsion to acquire more is not eating away at me. In days gone by I'd have been chomping at the bit to get more money tomorrow morning to go direct to the dealer for more. This lot was a 0.4g for £15. I rang 2 separate dealers. One wanted £15; the other £20. Mr £15 sells 2x tiddly £10 bags for this money. Mr £20 sells fat bags. When I finally met them by Argos they were both together so I gave Mr £20 £15 which he seemed to be cool with, and took a big chunk of dark brown heroin home. I had alcohol and cigarettes so I was in the best mood I could be in, considering how sour I was yesterday (pretty sour, to be honest).

A lot of people say I'm still in detox from the heroin I gave up in early December (though that gear was so weak, I really gave up proper heroin at some point last November). But I did ask Naomi about this again at Nutter Club (where I was in a foul mood) and she says no. If quitting heroin in favour of methadone causes problems as severe and persistent as mine it's "underlying" stuff. Not a "reaction". Well I don't know. I'm asking the doctor. But I noticed he barely mentioned drugs last time and finished with the words "at last..." meaning at last you've found someone, at last you've found acceptance, at last treatment, at last, after all this time this is being addressed. Which doesn't sound like he means a state of temporary detoxification.

Maybe the methadone has permanently damaged my brain. We all know they only prescribe it because it's ineffectual. And so was thalidomide.

I rang my former friend Mother Hubbard who didn't want to be bothered engaging in very much talk. She says she's down to 10mls methadone and thinking of going back to lithium. She always said she was on lithium before heroin. But on heroin she didn't need it, as heroin evens her out better. She said of lithium: it's "very helpful". Yeah and it's the all-time last drug that I want. Anyway she said she didn't have time for me and I said yeah I know our frienship fizzled out years ago. I don't think she liked my directness so I said "bye!" in a cheery voice and blip-p-p-ppp, I hung up.

Then, half an hour later, Pinky rings. I don't think they'd been comparing notes. I only know Pinks through Hubbs but Hubbs talks to no-one these days. I think Pinks was hoping me to be all manic and babbly and entertaining like I was last time. She rang twice. The second time I had heroin in my system so I was far more amenable to conversation. She talked about her borderline personality disorder (the mildest of her three diagnoses). She said she had googled herself and thought I was borderline too. (She's told me that one before.) I've only met two borderlines and both told me I was one too. I don't actually believe that but when Nursey wanted me to google myself about a year ago prior to an "engagement" with the local Personality Disorders Clinic that never happened, the borderline personality disorder was the only one I matched up ding ding ding ding ding! I don't actually think I'm "borderline" at all. I don't believe I have any personality disorder. The dr. thought I might have one... that was until the last couple of times when I came in all hyped up and confused (and drugs-negative). Personality disorders are out the window at this moment in time. Mood disorders are in, so far as I can tell.

Then Pinky said something I'd never heard: that the first time she met me she thought I looked manic. She said the second time I was a bit less manic, then I was depressed. And she asked Mother Hubbs whether I was a manic-depressive and Mother Hubbs said yeah. Mother Hubbard has had that theory about me for years and frankly I thought it was bullshit. I wasn't in the mood for talk of what I might have been nearly ten years ago. I'm down now. Nothing feels real to me any more. I only feel real when I feel high. (Natural or drugged.) The difference between drugged and non-drugged high is that the opiate version makes me ultra-focused so I can do stuff like spend hours doodling Chinese characters or I tell myself I'm being constructive, because I'm learning something. I can read novels. I can plough through books in German, dictionary in hand, consulting every single unfamiliar word. Heroin always gave me this focus.

The natural high gets more and more scattered the higher it goes, so I get into far more of a mess on that than I ever got on depression. I got into terrible troubles through these mood swings so if it is methadone causing it all I'm demanding a change of medication on clinical grounds. It's more than negligence; it's profound negligence to prescribe something that disagrees that vehemently. I got asked twice whether I wanted to go straight into the psychiatric hospital when these moods weren't even peaking. I was an absolute mess. Physically and mentally I was all over the place. How on earth they can justify prescribing medication that does that to me I just do not understand. If they refuse to change it I'll sue. In Britain you have a right to appropriate medical care, no matter what your condition. It's interesting y'all seem to think what's wrong fits my own original theory: that methadone does not suit me at all. I'm lobbying for MSTs ~ morphine sulphate pills.

I just glanced over what I wrote off heroin.

Shamanic Heaven? Very shamanic. Not heaven.

And if you think that's screwy, have a look at some of the nut-nut forums online. The bipolar one did my head in the most because if I'm that I've get manic a lot more intensely than anyone who posted on the board. Schizophrenia: that was really screwy. Page after page of ranting about how the US Government had implanted a chip in this guy's head and that's how they read his every thought. Drug addiction: that's me! I only stumbled over the criteria once and I fulfill every single one beautifully. As beautiful as a flower opening at dawn. If only addiction wasn't the ugliest illness going I'd be junkie-proud. What am I saying. No I wouldn't. I'm not 16 anymore. And I never got an addiction until I was 28 years old. Problem with me was I was already sicked off with depression. So once the seed of Heroin Addiction came along, it flourished in highly fertile ground.

A nice man came to see me this morning. He works for a charity that gives support to living train wrecks like me. Thankfully no psychiatric history was demanded (now giving that in a "highly hightened state of awareness" put me in touch with all manner of horrors safely stashed in the Forget Me For Ever box. I don't usually find memories traumatic. Because I choose not to remember. In that Mentalist Reception Centre I was forced to relive the most depraved and horrible episode of depression of my entire life. And I suddenly realized, if it hadn't been for Heroin, I might never have survived it. Now that was a headfucker. Usually I like headfucker things. But this stuff I hated. Most things couldn't harm me if they wanted to. Nothing is real. I don't need heroin to tell me that. That's the feeling I have, that disengages me. That's why there's chaos on the outside; and a diffuse white light on the inside. Peace. If only I wasn't so unhappy, I would be a beautiful place to be.

It's only the world that is ugly and I thought I needed heroin to cope with the world. When all I really needed was to be harder than it. I try not to care, but in a way I care very much. But I'm able not to do it. And that's what counts. So you see this supposed "illness" of mine. What Naomi calls illness. What the doctors think of illness, because it's they who speak of antipsychotics and lithium, not me. I wouldn't know what to ask for, except quetiapine. It's meant to be better than risperidone and you can dose once nightly. So I'm asking for that. But even my fellow "clients" at the Nutter Club label me ill. Which I found crazy. Because I wasn't ill that time I came in laughing hysterically and babbling. I was just a bit excited and I had gone into a 48-hour cycle. 43 hours awake; 5 hours asleep. Makes ya feel lovely.

When I said to Naomi, who wants more people to join our club, why don't you let everybody in? Most addicts, after all, have some anxiety and depression. We all want to die during detox: that's par for the course. She said no it doesn't work like that. You need serious mental illness just to get in the door. I didn't know this when I started attending. Naomi knows my issues. I was complaining of mood swings for months (when I attended infrequently). Moods that nobody else seemed to notice. I didn't dispute the point in case she chucked me out because I don't really even really get depression. I just get in a mood where I see Truth. Same as being on a high. What you see is Truth. It's the in-betweens where lies flourish. Nowadays the tables are turned on me. It's me saying I'm perfectly all right and Naomi banging away at me to take medication. If I do, it'll stop me getting high again and that's what I want; another high, man. I feel the sea swelling as we speak, but I couldn't tell you which way the current's taking me. Heroin is the only thing that calms those tides. I'm neither up nor down nor left nor right on heroin. Just a wuzzy version of OK.

I'm afraid of not taking heroin again because I feel desperate and lost and confused without it and I've never survived without heroin except when I was so hyped up I didn't know what day it was. Hell, when I really got going I rushed so far ahead I honestly thought we were living in next year. None of this is bad. Don't pin suffering on my description. What would you rather be? High on nothing free of charge? Or "high" on heroin and paying every penny you have to be little better than OK? Only advantage heroin confers is a modicum of focus and concentration that I just don't have without it. Methadone gives nothing and that's why the Government give it. They want me to get confused enough that I wander out and get hit by a truck. That's what they want. They want rid of me.

So this nice man named Deshane had to come in and endure my house. I knocked back one cherry cyder. Found a full can on the side I'd forgotten about, knocked that down on top of it. Only felt depressed. I kept glancing at the time thinking, "I'll give him 15 mins, no more," and he turned up bang on time.

He tried not to look shocked at the state of my house. I have two carrier bags full of 50 Nigerian DVDs that I thought he might be interested in, but he's from St Lucia, so he doesn't speak Yoruba. Shame. I don't want to throw these films away. Now if you want an illness, that's my illness: hoarding. I have five televisions, three surplus chairs, three or four toasters, four or more radios, five or six duvets (I use them all at once to make a giant futon)... and I have sackfulls of clothes fished from bus stops and rubbish bins full of tears and holes that don't even fit me. It was the psychotic guy downstairs who pointed out that I dress like a homeless and I looked at what I was wearing and realized he's telling the truth. Nothing I wear was bought. It was all salvaged from the streets or given to me. I wouldn't wear anything nice. I burn cigarette holes in anything nice, because ... because I am inattentive.

So we had to go through my care needs which I don't recall. I honestly don't remember what he said. I was so stressed I just wanted the interview over. What he did say was that they can get me DLA, the benefit for Mental Fuck Ups that I had twice and let run out twice because I was too fucked up to claim it (sad but true). And he can get me my own place. I said my neighbours all hate me and with good reason, the amount of rubbish I collect, I don't blame them. But he says I can have my own front door and a bedroom and a separate kitchen. It sounds good and as long as I can paint my walls blue I'll be happy. I'm buying superglue and handcuffs so when intruders break in I can place the under citizens arrest. People will victimize you badly in London if you let them. Anyone dares break into my place and I'll lie in wait and stick them to the floor. And you think I'm joking. I intend to be a proud home owner.

Deshane thinks it's a really good idea that I ought to pack what I DO want in boxes, giant tartan bags etc (I have many a spare hammy cage and fish tank that I can fill with books to save space). Anything not packed up I can safely throw away.

Akh why does this have to happen? I feel heroin wearing off and my usual sourness creeping on. I feel as sour as a month-old pint of milk. Well you have to laugh at it. If I did't have dissociative mechanisms I'd have died long ago. Dissociation means nothing is actually real. If my life really was as bad as it was I'd never have survived it. I just cannot see how I would survive. And all this is down to that methadone they are poisoning me with. I found out a bit about how you appeal to the head of the local health authority when methadone is an inappropriate treatment so that's what I'm doing. Taking my complaint right to the top. It's not normal to have symptoms of a severe mood disorder just because you're taking that Mean Green the government force on me.

I've seen how other heroin addicts and crack addicts live. They all look well put together and they live in clean houses. My house looks like a hurricane has hit it. My life is post-nuclear. Everything is a mess. If only this meant I could motivate myself to change it would be a useful insight but it's not. Because the reality of life is hopeless and pointless. I know you probably want to laugh but this is how I feel.

Well I'm going now. I've banged on enough about my boring self. If anyone actually reads to the end, I'll give you a gold medal with "I AM A METHADONE SURVIVOR" engraved across it. How does that sound?

OK I just read back over this and it's farcical. I can't even tell whether I'm being sarcastic or real or not real I'm just fed up. Better to make y'all laugh at me than to make y'all upset. I've had enough; it's 7:30; my chemist opens in an hour so I'll get that one done and hopefully sleep all day. I hope you have a good day. Does anybody know a magic cure for unhappiness where I can be drug free. I don't care how long it takes to work. I have the rest of my life. And I'm going now, before I say something I regret.

Have a nice day y'all!

I'm sorry :-(

SORRY FOR UPSETTING YOU ANNA GRACE. And anyone else. Anna is my best friend and the last person I want upset or crying over me. I'm truly sorry.

Now I'm upset because I was only trying to say how I feel. Yet how I feel is unacceptable. What can I do?

Baino who is one of my very best and most supportive friends online said to me something to do with not believing my experience is real and she's put me into confusion. Finally I am telling the doctors the truth instead of some sanitized version that goes "I become slightly depressed"; I'm telling them what really happens and this is complicated and embarrassing enough without people messing with my head telling me I'm lying or I'm not real. Whatever it is it feels like an accusation. All I have ever tried to do is report accurately however much it shames me however much of an idiot I know I will look I just put it down. Baino is only trying to be helpful. From where I'm sitting she tells me "don't disappear up your own arse; it's just mild drug switchover that everyone goes through".

If I thought this was right I could accept it but none of the professionals I work with takes this view. The psychiatrist is being cagey by not diagnosing. It's unprofessional to give a name to an inherently unreal condition within 6 months of clear cut shamanic weird experience emerging. And that's what it is in some of its facets.

My totem animals are the Syrian hammy, which will beat the shit out of any critter or person who dares mess with it. And the tigress. I relate to the tigress better than the tiger; tigresses are fiercer and have pet baby tigers to play with. Can you imagine going to bed with six baby tigers all purring and being furry? That's why I want to be a tigress. Because of the baby furry entertainers.

I'm sorry I upset y'all I didn't mean to I only was trying to report how I feel. This doesn't upset me. Problem is, none of the professionals I "work" with have ever expressed this view. To them I am cuckoo. To me I am fantastic and unreal. Far superior to most of you. Effortlessly when I'm hyper and high I feel natural. When I'm low I don't feel clinically depressed, which is where this "personality disorders" idea came from. I'm fed up with it all.

Yes I took heroin. To be frank I didn't care about my life or my future any more, which is blurry to me. I just cannot think straight.

Sorry I have to go I keep falling asleep with fingers on the L or D key and I'm not posting the rubbish I put up 2 nights ago. That was purely to make a point.

I hope this isn't too much of a mess and makes my point. I don't have a problem with anyone I'm confused by my friends, my good friends who I know are genuinely trying to help me and in my heart this makes me sad because I know I can't understand and you're not helping me the way your words should help.

How on earth will I ever deal with these skyscraper-high issues? I honestly don't know.

Now I'll have to leave it there, else this shall never get posted. Sorry again for the mess. Much love to everyone. Baino please forgive me for bringing you up so many times. I know you are only saying what many people probably think and I'm just really upset because I can't do it. Whatever it is I'm meant to do I can't do it. Am I ill? should I lie in bed then? What should I do?

And how can I ever cope without heroin. I cannot handle feeling as bad as I do. I feel too bad for words. I won't use melodramatic language, but I don't feel good at all now. What is happening to me.

Take care everybody. Thank you for all your support. I appreciate it more than you will ever know, even though we end up at cross-purposes so many times. Please don't give up on me.


Illustrated: a beautifully kept room is a sign of a well-kept mind; my totem animal having a furry nap; the naughty stuff, trademarked by Bayer Pharmaceuticals in the late 19th century...


Some music

Lots of talking

I WAS SURE I posted something else but whatever I said got lost. My memory is poor these days. Chemist says I missed a methadone pick-up Monday but I'm not sure I did. I'm pretty hot at methadone and making sure I have enough. I need to be as I'm fully considering dropping the State Controlled Prescription and merely buying methadone on the strreet. Which is my option for when they start messing my head even more than presently.

Earlier today I was in the bad mood I've been in for three days. I crashed down. So this afternoon I took heroin therapy and feel far better for it. Frankly I don't care about myself or my life or whether anything is good or bad. Gear is the same as suicide so I'm self-medicating with slow suicide and it works. Doesn't stop me feeling manic and/or over the top, doesn't stop me being depressed and/or mood swinging. Stops the worst of it though. Which implies if I'm in withdrawal as y'all want to tell me I'm still withdrawing when "high" enough on gear to be in near-unconsciousness. So shove that in your expert pipes and toke it.

Baino can you please explain something what do you mean the dr says I'm psychotic? But I'm not? How so? I don't get this you're really confusing me. You think I'm exaggerating? Then you're wasting your time here if I write a ficiton blog it would be WAY less sad thatn this one come on. So what do you think is real? I don't get it. As I said I'm not a psychotic what really happens is psychic, that's how I hear other people's thoughts. Telepathy. If you can't hear the reason is simple YOU'RE DEAF.

The shrinko is the only one I trust and even him I think he is trying to kill me when I go to an NA meeting. So I trust no-one. I wouldn't post anything if you knew who I was so THAT, ANNA GRACE IS WHY I'M "HIDING BEHIND MY BLOG" as you put it
when you try and push me gently into behaviour I'm not comfortable with. You might want people to look at you; I don't need my neighbours reading my blog. That might be a buzz for you; to me it's a buzz-killer. I want to be read, not stared at. Leave a comment Anna I leave them for you and you won't even leave a single one when I specifically ask you.

Baino, Anna, Gattina, please answer in comments I cannot do email it's a total headfucker. Unless it really is confidential please everyone use COMMENTS. Comments I can do; email I just do not do. I just do not do it; ask my family. I get your point Gattina: your blog is a shiny happy blog where you don't want my heroin-talk so I'll email that from hammynutter@lycos.com. Please anyone who emails, no matter what the subject LEAVE A COMMENT SAYING YOU EMAILED or I won't be able to find it. There are no rules chez moi that anyone needs to comment on the post they answer under. If you want to tell me anything, relevant or not to anything else, just slap it under today's load of Gledwood-drivel and I'll get it. Don't email me unless you really do need to use email. OK?

I am going to ask this Consultant Psychiatrist yes/no am I in detox on methadone? Yes or no; tell me. Methadone is a substitution therapy and should leave you in no withdrawals. I certainly don't withdraw physically so how can I "withdrawl mentally" without craving? I only want heroin in depression. Depression I had for DECADES before I ever tried heroin. Question number 2 will rear its head: that being so, why on earth are you giving it to me KNOWING it turns me into a psychdedelic shaman who's not taking psychedelics? And can you please make the psychedelia stronger? Thankyouverymuch!

I can't go on I'm too sleepy to focus. Things I cannot say are seeping out of my mind so I'm leaving it here. Nutter Club report comes later.



MADONNA: HUNG UP
time goes by so slowly for those who wait; no need to hesitate...

Morning Horror

I SLEPT LIKE A BABY again. I took a nasty diphenhydramine* 50 pill which are antihistamines that i've had for months and hate them so much it never ordinarily crosses my mind to pop one no matter how desperate i am.

This person is coming in 90 minutes so i have to rush out and get alcohol then clear a space on the floor. That's all i can do in 90 minutes. i wasn't staying up all night. if he sees a zombie at least it's one who's slept.


its 1125 if he's not here by 1145 i'm out of here and to the heroin dealer

maybe i should be "coping" but i'm not coping like THIS

*diphenhydramine is Nytol but I'm on Boots' own (cheaper) and I think Nytols are usually 25mgs

After The Real Good Sleep

O I FEEL STRANGE. I wouldn't mind being depressed. Well actually I would. I would mind it very much. I specially wouldn't mind being UPUPUPUP UPPPP!!! But I'm neither thing. I slept somewhere up to 18 hours last night. The smoke alarm is going crazy and I'm thoroughly enjoying it + pissing off my neighbours. It's off now.

I HAD to go get methadone as I slept so late they were about to close. So I got it. In the foulest of moods. Got ONE pizza in Morrisons where some idiotic foreigner was trying to feed a £50 note into the self-service machine. If I'd been a little more whateveristic I'd have told her "darling nobody in this country accepts a fifty. They're either faked or they think you're trying to pass off a fake. Take 20s. Or use 500 euro notes." Then I had to buy cherry cyder and some Pole who was even more averse to showering than me (and that's saying something) seemed to spend half an hour buying about 7 items of weird unclean porkfilled Polish food.

Then I got home. No cigarette papers and frankly I'd rather look behind my bottom drawer for a stray one than go outside again.

My oven is going nuts as there's still burnt tost in there from yesterday (that I forgot about till it was past incinerated) along with the tex mex pizza.

So I'm buzzing in a vague "just been on coke" type way. No it's not the heroin. Heroin doesn't make you buzz; it's a downer ~ it just helped me sleep not far off an entire 24 hours.

And I feel shit. So what's that? I'm not going to any appointments. Oh shit some bastard is coming round my house tomorrow well he can see it as it is I ain't doing shit for no-one.

What is it Baino you don't believe I'm psychic? I'll try and get you next week's lottery numbers? OK??

Right i gotta go I've only had 2.5 cigarettes today. I don't want any heroin it didn't make me "high" (does anyone get a high off heroin? What's it like? Feels like normality to me...) anyway the PO was shut by the time I woke up.

Shit I suppose I'd better clear the worst for this support worker git. Sure he's NOT on my side. All they do is try and con you these people. Right I'm off.


MADONNA: FROZEN