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
I SLEPT LIKE A BABY last night I don't remember how long maybe 6 or 8 hours i don't recall what time i went to bed (maybe around 4am) I got up after 10. Next thing I knew the stupid alarm was going off. All I wanted was access to my own money from that ridiculous Second Class Citizen Card (ie not a shiny one with Visa Wings you pay money INto because you're rich; one you take Govt money OUT OF because you're poor that rubbishy post office card I had to get because I withdrew £700 I didn't have from my former bank account. I had a real nice heroin/crack binge on that £700 it has to be said. Unlike America you won't get arrested for that over here. In fact I'm considering suing THEM for negligence. They allowed me to overdraw. No fraud was involved. I only went into supermarkets, bought cheapest sparkling wine and asked for £50 a day in cashback (cashpoints wouldn't give this money, neither would over-the-bank-counter) once I realized this was a ready sauce of unending cash I spend away. Shit only hit the fan quite a while later and now they're one of some number of people trying to sue me over these debts. I'm not exactly losing sleep over it. Why do you think I enjoy being crazy so much? Nothing to come back TO.
Well this nonbipolar thing is still going nicely when I get walking I hear lovely voices saying "fuck up" "call a doctor" "oo that's mental" etc. This does have something to do with having watched Angelina Joelie being Mentalist Chic in Girl Interrupted this morning. Those voices don't upset me. Takes far more than THAT to get me upset (no heroin used to do it big time). The drs think I have a real healthy attiude by considering "auditory hallucinations" (ie Reality Plus) as "free entertainment" (which it is) the best one happened yesterday after Valium Marilyn who wasn't half banging on about her problems poor woman anyway I heard my own voice doubled and out of sync in my own head. It was really poetic. [Hearing 2 of me thinking. That was cool.] And the cars on the street start doing this thing where they either speak random words (not so much nowadays as it's piss weak nowadays) but they also sound really whoosh-oosh-oooohhh!! rather than just boring like cars normally do. A bit like a car sounds after a nightspent at a particularly funky hardcore rave.
So I'm sleeping for ages. Oh yeah! My bowel problems! I knew y'all would want to hear this. I feel like I've swallowed a giant jellyfish whole and it's blocked me up. Terrible inconvenience. How will I ever shit again? I'm eating a breakfast cereal wtih cocolate hazelnut inside called Kraves. The kind of stuff us Brits used to look down at Americans years ago over "how CAN you eat marshmallow for BREAKFAST"? Mcdonalds have it all wrong the number of times I've been refused Big Macs before 10:30 or whatever ridiculously late hour a HAMBURGER JOINT actually starts serving up HAMBURGERS I hesitate to recall.
Well I must go I feel fine now. I was all dull, drab, dysphoric etc a couple of minutes ago. I wanted to cry earlier. I had Better Not be coming down. If I am I can just feel it, I'm going to feel really SHIT. Well best not consider that option. Also Naomi will really love it if I'm down next Nutter Club she'll think it serves me right for having had a Personality last week. Well I'm off have fun!
ps i'm watching the aviator or did i say that? very slow moving but quite good. i want voices talking about aeroplanes and hollywood movies, not boring psychiatric crap. i hate psychiatry why did this have to happen to me? only good thing about psychiatry is the other patients they're really funny
oh yeah i had some nutter links but they are somewhere else, here's one that proves a desperate person is capable of speaking plain english (do nurses really believe you have to get to the jib-jib-jib phase before you need help? oh yeah they call that "acting" so just ignore 'em. that's what i do. except when you wanna go outside in which case it's first name terms and lots of flirting. best nurses are always female so be male or a lesbian if you want to go outside
I MIGHT AS WELL CUT STRAIGHT TO THE CHASE: I AM MENTALLY ILL. Naomi, the Dual Diagnosis lady thinks I’m getting too hyper. My Key Worker seems to think this too. Naomi went and spoke to a psychiatrist for me to find out what I’m to do about these meds that disagree with me. Answer: do as I suggested and take all 4mgs risperidone at night.
Thing is I’ve not taken any for 2 days and felt wonderful this morning. Speeding on my own neurotransmitters (and NO SPEED) and going on a DVD shopping spree. I now have 28 films on 27 discs. Meet the Parents and Meet the Fuckers, which I got for £5 is a double movie.
I also got the Incredible Journey 1 and 2, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which is on now, Bounty Hunter starring Jennifer Anniston (love Jennifer Anniston); Gladiator; Cleopatra which I nearly had an argument over at the till over how boring it was. I said it’s moving wallpaper: you put it on silent and listen to music, eat Chinese takeaway and smoke cigarettes nobody WATCHES Cleopatra. I put it on for a bit but had to keep fast forwarding when Elizabeth Taylor was off screen that lady has some beautiful Bulgari jewellery by the way ~ thumbnail sized emeralds; The Queen (Helen Mirren); The Last King of Scotland, which I saw last night and is brilliant; Bucket List which isn’t a rude misogynistic sexual gibe at worn out women it means “a list of things to do before you kick the bucket” starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman; The Good The Bad and The Ugly which is by FAR my favourite western (I’m not into westerns unless they star Audy Murphy); Wall Street 2 disc version (what on earth is on disc 2 I’ve no idea); Silver City which is some spoof about politics (£2 from a charity shop); and The Devil’s Arithmetic which was £1 and is about a New York Jewish girl from the 21st century transported back into the holocaust. I’ll have to be in the mood for that one. Well that’s the main stuff. O yeah and Breakfast At Tiffany’s has soundtrack in German!
Pinky, my schizophrenic friend phoned me today. She thinks I sound really hyper and says I ought to be in hospital. Hospital shmospital. No way! And I’m not taking my meds for at least another week. I want some free Natural full-on Ecstasy high. I LOVE being high.
I asked Naomi whether she thought I had substance-induced mood disorder and she said no, because that’s directly phased in with a substance like crack and loses steam pretty rapidly when the crack is dropped (or whatever: nearly always an upper or a withdrawal state and I’m not on uppers and not withdrawing and she knows my heroin/methadone situation). My illness waxes and wanes and is currently getting stronger. I am going back into a 48-hour day. No sleep at all last night, I was buzzing too much to be bothered sleeping and did recline in bed in a position I’d usually sleep in. No sleep came so ten minutes later (waste no time, that’s my philiosophy!) I was up and pottering about. By early morning I felt pretty high. Mid morning I felt wonderful. I’m tired and a bit ragged now but still hyped up and it feels brilliant to be high not on drugs. Like I’m finally coming home to a Perfect State of Being. I don’t care whether it’s called mentally ill or not. I did point out that hypomania is NOT an illness, but neither Naomi nor my Worker seemed convinced. I was rabbitting so much they had to just tell me to stop talking and start talking about their own boring matters which I’ve forgotten anyway. Also I called the Mental Health Nurse a c**t which made both of them laugh uproariously then have to compose themselves and be all professional.
I also googled substance induced mood disorder and substance induced b-----r and was shocked to find nothing matching me at all. And I checked the American Journal of Psychiatry and everything. “Substance induced” should not be confused with the so-called “kindling” phenomenon, where antidepressants and illicit drugs intensify mood episodes, possibly triggering bipolarity and making the illness more severe. After “kindling” you get mood swings anyhow whether or not you go on taking drugs. Substance induced means DIRECTLY induced by a substance or substance withdrawal. I checked carefully and what Naomi said seems true. Unfortunately. Because if this is so I’m really going to have trouble convincing this psychiatrist I’m not mental.
So this means I have to find ingenious ways to wriggle out of what I knew was wrong with me anyhow. It has ALL the major symptoms of a certain condition with 2 phases. In one you get depressed, in the other you get hyper. A third state exists where you have aspects of both at the same time. I’m not naming it as I don’t want to curse my happiness. This condition is labelled a “severe mental illness” which made me blow my top and rant loudly about the Mental Health C**t who suggested I might have a personality disorder an an anxious-avoidant one at that! This certain condition which I decline to name which I might well have is pretty much DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE to anxious avoidant personality disorder, though avoidant behaviour is common in the depressed phase. This disorder is associated with artists, business tycoons and high achievers and it is NOT schizophrenia. It is a mood disorder. And if you can’t work out what I mean look up bipolar.
I still have no official diagnosis. If I do get diagnosed as a pie-bowler I shall be intensely upset I can tell you that for nothing. Because that will mean I’m a manic-depressive junkie. I mean what greater Loser title can you get? And if I do have that one I’ll probably be on psych meds for LIFE. The fact that I go UP not down off meds is yet another sign that this nasty thing is probably me.
That is all I want to say on the subject. Until I hear more news I’m going to try and steer off this issue because it doesn’t make me happy. It makes me feel very upset and angry because I suspected I had this disorder more than ten years ago and nobody listened. The people who said I acted like I had it (on selected occasions) had ALL seen it first-hand and knew the behaviour. Behaviour I was displaying by being hyped up, impatient, irritable and euphoric. As years went by these symptoms were initially squashed by heroin, then they started emerging again. Weird symptoms like a racing brain accompanied by a very nice buzzing feeling, buzzing so much I remember on one occasion about three years ago having to restrain myself from yelling obscenities out the window into the street. I just felt really really hyped up that day. And I thought I was depressed!
Well I’m going now I refuse to muse on this issue but I’m warning y’all this is what everyone seems to think is wrong with me. Mental health professionals, mental health sufferers ~ and me. And they’re not picking up the idea from me, they’re TELLING me, you see. I have been scrupulously avoiding using any vocabulary associated with this condition, yet they still seem to recognize it in me.
I won’t despair until the Consultant Headshrinker (yeah I have a consultant psychiatrist, not a trainee one) tells me my life is over. Until then I’m thoroughly enjoying yet another free high!
Take care everyone and don’t worry about me. I’m not worried. You shouldn’t be either.
L8Rs xx
PS sorry if this doesn't flow nicely. I'm not reading back over stuff I don't want to know about. I have to put this down for the record. Naomi's sayso will be confirmed or overturned in due course but only my Consultant can do that. My Consultant is on leave. I have an appointment in two weeks' time ... perhaps I'll know more then ...
PPS Nutter Club tomorrow. I hope we talk about little fluffy clouds and other nice things. I'm not in the mood for ANY MORE talk about ANYONE being mentally ill. It's starting to do my head in
HEY I FOUND MYSELF A PROPER NUT-CRACKER DOCTOR!! AT LAST. MY OWN PERSONAL ONE.
Before that he was a dr. I had seen who works there. Now he's my dr.
I'm on antipsychotics. Respiradone or risperadone, I don't know what it's called (I'm not looking it up) 2mg x2 daily. That's not supposed to be very much.
He said it's for schizophrenia and mood problems and it should stop my moods being so extreme. I don't think he was telling me I had schizophrenia. The S word terrifies me even though the other words are probably worse. I don't mean to mystify by not giving other words I just don't want to.
Obviously I had to say how I felt today. Which is less hyperhigh than yesterday, which was less than the day before. Saturday in particular, Saturday morning and early afternoon I was off my rocker. That's when I had to do a car journey. "Had to" meaning chose to and forced self into it. I am a little toddler and a horrible parent.
When I was using heroin the brat was in charge. Strangely even though I was going crazy and knew it (most of the time) ... even then the parent kept charge. If he hadn't I'd have got myself in tremendous trouble. My ideas included 1. walking to Paris (through the channel tunnel) and 2. giving up methadone (all part of the same scheme) and 3. throw all my possessions out of the window and set fire to them on the street (again, part of the same scheme) which was inspired by paranoia and "grandiosity" as they might call it. Feeling I don't need anything or anyone because I'm above it and "turning into pure energy anyway"... ahem. Well I told ya everything else, might as well shove this lovely lot in ya crack pipe and smoke it. Yeah I was going crazy yeah yeah I know. Maybe at that precise moment in time I didn't have quite the same view on things, but I must have had some view as I didn't do it. Also you have to bear in mind my attention was so fractured I sometimes literally could not follow what people were saying. So my hopes of actually chucking everything out of a window and locating lighters and kindling and fuel and walking to Paris were slightly slim, to say the least.
I hope someone somewhere has been really entertained by that revelation as I don't know whether to laugh or... what?! I don't feel depressed. (Thank God.) I just feel less hyperdiaper. The dr. wanting to know how I felt I was I could only say "well I think I'm absolutely fine and would willingly stay the way I am today for ever" (that is less hyper than before but still hyped up a bit)... "but you will probably think I'm still gone"...
... then I had to answer a string of questions about whether some outside agency was controlling my body (no) could other people read my thoughts (no) did I hear my thoughts aloud (yes)... then voices voices. I don't even wanna talk about voices. No I don't hear voices telling me to do stupid things. When I was out of it everything I heard whether or not it was "real" sounded mighty peculiar. Just the noise of a car going past sounded like an inverted SWOO-OO-SHHHHHHHH-H-H-H through a cosmic sound vortex. I kept forgetting I wasn't actually at a hardcore rave. It was like a party all the time. A fantastic nonending over a week long party. Which is not a bad way to feel.
So now I'm on antipsychotics. I hope this is followable and rational and all. I am trying to be boring and grounded. I don't want to be boring. Maybe I'll try just the grounded (one foot only).
I'm looking for a life. Have yet to find one. Did find my DSS Money Card! Wow! Bought cyder and a pie with it.
Oh and stopping drinking isn't my biggest priority, that's official, from the dr's mouth. He wasn't condoning drinking. Just said it's not as hugely bad as ... I dunno. I can do it. I don't WANT to be an old drinker so I'm stopping anyway. Don't need a dr. to tell me to do that.
OK I'm off. Take it easy.
ps of course i'm looking up what crap i'm on, just not today, not now can't believe i'm about to take that stuff. ukkk. has it really got this bad that i'm "severe"... o man... o shuttup gledwood shuttup i'm off
i had to take my psycho-script down my normal chemist. wasn't in mood for sniffy other pharmacist to give me "you're a nutter" looks
illustrated: nutcracker suite. some ballet. i like the picture because it has people flying through the air. and because it is blue
19:50hrs OK I just double-dropped 2x 2mg Risperidone. Might as well get it over and done with. I bosh it all back at night to start with; then one nightly one daily from next week. I have x3 zopiclone 7.5s (as required) which he told me was today, tomorrow the next day. I'd rather save them... That's it
MESSED UP DR APPOINTMENT: something went wrong re the dr's appointment between me, my family, my worker, the dr, and the time but I've got another for later today so no harm done. I had to pick up a methadone script for next week anyhow. And I saw some nutters I know. And some junkies I know. Nutter-junkies are the best. Only type I truly understand.
Where me and normal junkies go off at tangents is in lifestyle as there was no way I was barging into shops every single day, multiple shops per day, stocking up, hiding it all in alleys and bins and hoping no other bastard shoplifter or tramp runs off with it all, then when all that's done having to sell the crap, probably feeling tired and your lovely customers being able to read how desperate you are (not that I've ever "sold stolen goods" but say, hypothetically, that I did it as a favour for someone else; then that someone would have been really surprised at how much cash I got, as I came in daisy-fresh and got money for their toothpaste and shampoo (when I didn't know it shocked me just how humdrum these shoplifted items are! I thought addicts nicked nice stuff. Not coffee, headache pills and razors! Another thing that shocked me was realizing that stuff on sale in small shops was often shoplifted from bigger shops, sold on at less than wholesale. The kind of shop that would go nuts if you got caught nicking from THEM, the hypocrites!) anyway shoplift thing over... what was I on about. O yeah
here's a point (at last)
how can I possibly know how much another person suffers? How good or bad they feel? That's (part of) what stopped me thinking I was clinically depressed when I was. Not having a point of comparison, even among people I hung out with and/or knew very well. As everyone's personal hell is their own, y'know...
Well I SLEPT 8 HOURS which was lovely. From about 6:30 to 2AM. OK probably 7 and a bit all told, and that... does it make up for last night's hardly any sleep? I dunno. I got up at 2am last night after taking the zopiclone late so I can't have got much more than an hour and a half sleep. I write down my sleep for this diary thing I WAS doing properly. Or going to to. You ALL won't remember; someone will.
O I hate going to doctors to describe how I am not how some physical ailment is affecting me. That's a headfucker if you think about it. Doesn't psychiatry mean "care for the soul". Does my soul need caring for? Shouldn't I myself do the caring? What can a headshrinker actually do for me? Apart from write down their medicalized version of how and who I am and think about prescribing drugs of their own. While telling me not to take ones obtained for FAR TOO MUCH MONEY from bastards on mountain bikes.
My phone is full of desperate text messages telling how THEIR gear is the best how one "runs" amazingly even though I'd never in a zillion years SMOKE THE CRAP. Unless it's H4 [for injection] I'm not in the remotest bit interested. H4 is pure white heroin hydrochloride. China White is still heroin. Heroin is shit. I wouldn't actually take heroin. But enjoy the oblique "your wares are shit" dig. Plus being way more knowledgeable than the idiot selling it. Surely if you're retailing you wanna know your product? But they don't. Hence the absolute SKANK sold during the worst part of this ongoing drought....
Khhh. My worker listened very closely when I described having once given up caffeine and cigarettes. Caffeine for more than a year. Cigs for at least 6 possibly as long as 9 months. And the mental persuasion entailed in dumping nicotine. My point was I was so intensely addicted to heroin none of that ever worked on me. Heroin was as intertwined round my soul as anything ever has been. Total and utter addiction. Never again!
And yes I do need to remember this. I'm the sort of bastard who doesn't recognize the same landscape in summer and winter. Message to self:~ Seasons change. No heroin in any season. Thank you.
I was so knackered today. I actually came down to the ground in the morning. Like coming home after a wild an whacky holiday (Vacation you Americans! Not Xmas hols)... yeah an adventurous holiday. Imagine sunning yourself on a beach on Ko Phi Phi, which is said to be sublime, somehow the walls of your own living room impinge into this scene and a sun-lounger turns into your own chair. Wow! Then I had a bit of coffee to get me through both these appointments and I was flying yummily again. On less coffee than most people take to get to Work!!! How amazing is that. Free illegal drugs in my coffee. Wow. Anyway I was so tired I was zombified on the outside, bizzy-buzzing on the inside. Which meant whenever anybody asked me a question I suddenly sprang to life and wouldn't stop rabbitting. Then stared into space again: wearied close to exhaustion. That's why I slept so very long, and it did feel like 18 hours, not just under 8... like when you wring out a sponge and wring and wring more and more water so I got all the sleep out of me I could. A nice good long lie in. Getting up early AM. Yeah I know it's stupid. It's also fantastic not to be addicted to sleep any more. Not the way I was. Not struggling to function on 10, 12, 14, 16 and even more hours. Get my attitude to sleep now? It hits me like a disease and I can't function through exhaustion, depression and sheer ukkhhh-ness. THIS is why I have a rave, an ongoing party when suddenly I'm OK, don't need DAYS of sleep don't need don't want get rid of my old shitty life... ukk. Live on fresh air! That's the ideal. Like a sky blue flower aginst a blue sky. Blue into infinite sunny blue and cool fresh air. I'd love to live in Switzerland, wouldn't you? OK I'm gonna leave it there else this will never get finished.
RESTFUL CLASSICAL MUSIC. OK the restful is sarcasm. Sometimes I am sarcastic you know. E.g. when I asked would a caramel cadbury's creme egg set me off hyper. I'm not the kind to get high off a red smartie you know. And as for caffeine... all it used to do was give insomnia and anxiety. Never got high off that cept when I was on Prozac or naturally high anyway (not drug high).
MOZART: REQUIEM TRANCED UP
MOZART: LACRIMOSA (IE SAME PIEC) TECHNOD DIFFERENTLY oh man: well you might like it, I'm saying nothing about this one
EVANESCE: (MOZART'S) LACRIMOSA OK we're starting to go down a blind alley with this one but here: 05:04 finally got this to play properly: what an oppressive dirge! doesn't suit my mood at all. I far prefer that On With the Story Higher than the Eiffel track (look for a tiny little box, shrunken youtube screen last Sunday) for clish-clashing waves of music. Does anybody like this?:~~~~~
Illustrated: I was trying to find bindweed to illustrate heroin and me and that's the flower ~ WHAT AN AMAZING COLOUR BLUE! The bottom shows what bindweed actually does, view from a beach, Ko Phi Phi (Thailand) which is pronounced "pea pea"
Diagnose diagnose shove it up your nose. Here's my suggestion to anyone working in mental health apart from Lizzie. Do some coke, read this, get a life http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/146/4/459 Yeah my thoughts are all mixed up. And I know it. They say I have "good insight" "good reality testing" those things. [Well I hope I do!] That's what keeps me out not in. Otherwise I would have been committed to psychocentral long ago. I don't want to be in Braodmoor that is a prison for the criminally insane. I used to think I was gonna get set up falsely accused. Happened to me enough when I was younger. Accuse anybody of anything and yeah they will "look guilty". do me a favour. i was going to come up with a string of links but really cant be bothered now i had osme point i have gone past the point Talking Past the Point. Remember that one from somewhere. Know something about something. PSYCHOLOGY did you know I once wanted to be a psychologist. Not Abnormal Psychology which is half-brained psychiatry (wanna be a psychiatrist BE a psychiatrist, not a psychologist it means you're too thick to do a medical degree, in essence) what I wanted to explore was "individual differences" which means Personality and what distinguishes one person from another person. Their ways. Their means. Their Power. Their powerlessness (learned helplessness is when you torture someone, torture a rat every time it tries to eat and it'll starve itself to death ~ big wow yeah a lot of SYMPATHY goes on in psychology so if you ever think DOCTORS ARE BASTARDS think of what went on to get them where they are today re what they know and where they go. Their attitude to addicts I will not get into. Read Sids blog re him as junkie speaking to medical students. They didn't know fuck all. One TRAINED DOCTOR didn't know what DIAMORPHINE was diamorph as used in actue and chronic pain management, diamorphine as in street heroin, diamorphine as in addictive drug diamorphine as in medicine, diamorphine how the hell can you be a doctor and not understand the difference betweeen [morphine and] acetylated morphine which is diacetylmorphine aka diamorphine (the deacetylation is said to be a lot of the heroin rush) how can you not know that that is utterly inconcievably stupid sorry to say it. Brainy as you get and utterly thick. Typical doctor. In America they're even worse. Anna Gracehas been treated so shockingly I wouldn't want to meet the people who did it to her. I think I'm very self restrained but I don't .... what about Silk Taffeta in an American detox clinic detoxing off benzos watching fellow patients FITTING OUT that's utterly stupid. Let someone have one fit they're likely to have seizures again, to become epileptic. Different drug, parallel situation: CRACK COCAINE. In my day (when I started smoking it) the crack was most definitely better than now, stronger and better and I'm talking about how it vaporizes (should melt easily), how long it smokes (shorter the better) etc etc + fact that we weren't breaking rocks up we piped the whole £10 0.2g rock which gave me chest pains and earringing, echoing noises and one time at least a blinding white light into which i vanished into Crack Land zooming out down a Loony Tunes tunnel with My Big Issue (homeless magazine) selling friend at the end of it that was Proper Crack that's what I thought of as Piping. You can literally KILL YOURSELF smoking like this. That's why my heart flapped against my chest like a trapped pigeon. You can GO INTO SEIZURES which my ex had done. Then, years later, she was seeing a neurologist for fitting out. Petit mal in her case. I remember her just blanking, eyes rolling back. I was high but not too high to be bothered. I yelled look at me and held her head and made a drastic V right to her eyes yes I do have self control to Stop At The Right Point I didn't and had no intention of harming her. Point was she didn't flinch. Wasn't acting. Didn't look there. Wasn't there. BECAUSE OF CRACK. It is evil nasty stuff. The vibe surrounding it is nasty. The people surrounding it are patently nasty and if you don't see that take a step or two back. Part of the process of de-addicting yourself involves perspective. If you have no handle on normality or morality or whatever else you'll have no other seat to sit on bar the Addicts' Chair. Crack is the absolute last thing I want or need that's why I was yelling aobut it down the phone to psycho stone-throwing friend. When he did actually throw a stone at my window even though he'd said he'd do it it was SO LOUD I YELLED AT THE VERY TOP OF MY VOICE YEAH I'M COMING I'M COMING OUT ONE SECOND!!! and i was TRYING to calm down for this magical mystery tour that involved four of us. I was merely passenger. I don't care whether they bought Brown or White (heroin or crack) I didn't ask, didn't even wonder [which is why i note this down: first time ever i've been in a car, someone's got out, i knew it was to score drugs once id got my head round the idea he wasn't running away, and didn't think about, wonder, want what/when/why/any part of it. and if you cannot believe that that's your problem not mine]. This is why NA piss me off, tell a story like that they'll assume it's a tale half told they DON'T GET IT. HIGHER POWER. That's what keeps you off drugs. a Higher Power. They say it themselves. There are 3 Higher Powers: the Power in the Room at an NA meeting, God Almighty, creator of heaven and earth and all of us (I think God is the original meaning of Higher Power but wasn't there so how do I know?) and lastly the POWER IN ME, THE POWER IN YOU. That's my Higher Power and that is more Powerful than Me and more Powerful than You and More Powerful than Heroin or Crack or any other Drug. I find it hard to believe a reforming addict, "Recovering" as they say. How can they not get that. But they don't. And they don't get me. I'll keep coming back but I'm telling the truth next time. Have had enough of being misunderstood.
OK Crack/other rant over. Delightful comments please!
Link click Silk Taffeta above, you get the full Xanax Withdrawal story, click this one and it's to Anna and me re Trainspotting
ukk i only read over this enough to find highlight and do the links no i don't hate America I only hate certain aspects of their legal system and medical system and some aspects of their system re drug addiction, it's not like here and here isn't like other places one reason i wanted to go abroad is because i'm Sick To Death of the British Govt and feel when you're in a foreign country that is Their Government and Their Way of Doing Things you focus on the positives not the negatives. Unless you ARE RANTING ABOUT DRUG ADDICTION where my small irritation becomes explosively relevant. Plus I'm really pissed off at how my friend was abused and mistreated. She is American. She is my friend. Anna. My Best Friend.
AUDIO BULLYS DRUMS (ON WITH THE STORY) Thanks LIzzie i love this tune, it's amazing, this is the best one so far. it doesn't start dancing till about 2 mins in
AS YOU CAN SEE FROM THIS I THINK COCAINE IS SUCH A WONDERFUL GOOD IDEA, TAKING A DRUG THAT FITS YOU OUT, GIVES YOU HEART ATTACKS, ADDICTS, MAKES HOMELESS, RUINS MARRIAGES, LIVES ETC. WHICH IS WHY I WAS SO OBVIOUSLY TOTALLY SERIOUS WHEN i SAID "DO SOME COKE" KKKKKHHHHHHHHHH i have to be so careful
i don't want some kid to read this and think "drugs are a good idea"
yeah right yeah so bang on yeah yeah look what they did to me
i'm so........... (fill in the blank ya self, lazy fucker!)
14:00 ha! i just linked up Broadmoor Hospital should i read not read cant be bothered reading something so boring. imagine that the absolute pits. got nuff of me own mate dont need yours. someone else read it
I WENT TO A THING CALLED NUTTER CLUB EARLIER. Well that's what I call it. You go to the building opposite where people are punished for shoplifting by having to attend group therapy each morning. Instead of court-imposed group therapy for tea leaves, we had voluntary group therapy for the mentally deranged and confused. I fitted right in!
I'm not mad any more by the way. Just my normal self, so if that's crazy I'm still barking. I'm not into excessive self-analysis, which is why I hated counselling so much last time I tried it. I did OK at the sessions; what I couldn't do was link what I said to the real world and effect changes. Counselling is about changing yourself, otherwise it's hot air. Well that was my approach. Whatever it was I said stayed in the room, I barely considered any of it. I think I was meant to practise Positive Navel Gazing.
Interestingly the counselling style that worked best for me was Psychodynamic, the deepest and least problem-centric type. I thought I needed one that finds a solution to a problem, not one that turned over stones to see what psychological woodlice went scurrying back to the shadows. But this psychodynamic psychotherapy actually worked. I learned to think outside the tiny little box that is my head. What I didn't like was that my counsellor and my GP independently both suggested repeatedly that I see a psychiatrist because in the counsellor's words "you need more help than I can give you".
This was just before I launched full-tilt down into that decade-long morass of heroin adddiction. In this period, just before addiction sucked me into the Poppy Void, I was miserable and lost. Physically sick: that was called post-viral fatigue. What the virus actually was, I never found out. It cannot be HIV or Hep C. I tried to put a life together as I wanted to live it, but could never be well enough to both put it together and do all that lovely living!
I had ideas. Things got started. But nothing got seen through. I even got myself on a part-time uni course. I forced myself into this. Originally I really wanted to do it, but a chill wind was howling. I had found something that would help me. so I forced myself to go through with it. Forced myself into a breakdown. Still forced myself on and signed in and did the first year. I did lots of forcing. But very quickly I was too addicted to heroin to go on.
I thought this was what Grown Ups did: push themselves through situations that are supposed to be to their benefit no matter how much they don't like it at the time.
I query why this never worked for me. "Feel the fear and do it anyway" only pushed me to despair. Maybe it's because it wasn't fear as such I was facing. Fear is easy. This was a sense of hopelessness, impossibility. The only fear I couldn't face was that of living without drugs. But we have despair behind that one again. Life without drugs (specifically heroin) is utterly meaningless, empty, bleak beyond imagination. I'd like to say "was" not "is" but I'm a methadone addict. I'm still on a drug. Still a drug addict.
The Nutter Club invigilator says I've done really well. Maybe I'm meant to give attention to that, but I can't. She picked up on my use of past tenses. Heroin does feel past. I always had a sense that if I gave up I would never go back. I would feel too stupid to do that. Conventional wisdom claims getting off is easy; staying off's the hard work. I've found getting off impossible. I'm not surprised giving up heroin coincided with a kind of mental breakdown. My sanity depended on heroin, literally. And you have to be crazy to quit a drug as good as heroin, the only thing that made me feel together. So far I've not had any of the difficulty I might have expected steering myself to stay away.
There's no point wondering about the future, something I have a huge hand in. (I wouldn't say I alone can make my own future; I do not live in a bubble.) But I can make a very large contribution. I can steer my ship. I can alter my attitude. In my experience turning a corner can get you to wondrous places you never dreamed possible... I just cannot see anything wondrous yet...
I'm coming back to Nutter Club next week. I'll let you know how I get on.
I ACTUALLY FOUND MYSELF entertaining the idea of taking heroin earlier on. With a longish history of heroin addiction this is hardly a surprise, it just hasn't happened so far (this time). On previous attempts at coming off, it's just about ALL that happened. Apart from wanting to die.
My deepest fear as a heroin addict wasn't dying, it was living. Something I had little-to-no idea of how to do.
I had been all day at a friend's house where we were drinking. First just me and him. Then a knock at the door. Someone I haven't seen in maybe 8 years. He remembers me when heroin addiction was all new and still felt (to be honest) like Xmas every day. Xmas with a lot of desperation and despair and puking on the doorstep waiting for our terminally slow dealer to show up, it has to be said. But the good atill far outweighed the bad...
Nobody drank very much. There was a lot of talking. It was boys' talk. After 3 drinks (I know how much I had, only three!) I started feeling sick from lack of food. So I bought a cheese and red peppers bread in Morrisons (79p). That made me feel better. I tried to go to NA. I went right there, but the meeting that used to be there wasn't on so that was annoying. But I felt let off the hook. Really I wanted to get home.
On the way back I felt empty without heroin to come home to. Very empty and desolate. Even though I was tired and knew what heroin would do: just make me sleep, I still wanted it. In days gone by I would have wasted no time in scoring. Despite being tired and cold and pissed off, I would have ensured lovely heroin was in my hand, then in my veins, making everything all right.
Which is annoying as I was saying only an hour before how much I loathed everything to do with drugs. Mostly the people. I told a story of where I used to live. I would get up at 2 or 3am to buy drink (24-hour shopping, doncha love it!) very often I'd get accosted by a crackhead I knew. There were two in particular, who I knew pretty well, who begged money off passers-by. If I had £4, £4.50 or so, I'd sometimes go in halves on a £10 rock, which we smoked on the mid-level bathroom in my house. One particular night we found ourselves a few streets away, in a downstairs room full of black men who I didn't know. Both of these addicts were black, I suppose I point this out to say it made me feel the odd one out. Being White Boy in this room full of crack smokers where the atmosphere was like something from a lower circle of Crack Hell.
There was a white girl on the couch by the window. Long blonde hair. Sour expression. The archetypal "crack whore". And one on whom the tables have been turned, as they often are. One of the men said to her will you stay here and watch the door/my phone. Something like that. She said yeah yeah. they left, after telling us they had no drugs. One had at least 3x£10 clingfilm crack wraps in his hand. The girl rolled her eyes and said in a quieter voice "As if I have any choice."
I think we left before any more crack returned. Outside I said, "Don't you think there was a bad atmosphere in there?" and he just stared at me, blankly. He was far more interested in his pipe. This is just one event that convinced me I was no true crackhead. Heroin I would have been more than happy to bang up, if only there's been a decent light somewhere in that gloom. Heroin insulates from sensation, like being wrapped in furry blankets inside a bulletproof bubble. I never cared very much what went on elsewhere, as long as I was stoked up on gear. Of course most of the time I never had enough gear and that seemed to be the problem.
When I did have "enough" it got to the point of heroin just not "working" on not much more than 2g a day (speedballed*, with coke extra). In my one proper crack binge, my body said NO NO NO to coke, quite early on. Maybe within a week or so of 24-7 snowballing and piping. (When I slept I don't know. I think I just conked out at various points round the clock. woke up and carried on hitting up, drinking and piping.) Heroin my drug-saturated body said MORE MORE MORE to. But just could not feel it. Yes I was blowing way way too much money on drugs. And of course I'm not proud of it. A friend of mine smoked a house. He inherited a bundle of money and put £100,000 or more on the pipe in a single year. This stuff didn't make me happy (certainly not impressed) then. Now it makes me feel sick.
I know I need to drink less. Thanks for all the comments. Caeser I'm sorry I seem to have missed answering you. I'm answering every point in a second. I want to say to everybody I do read all comments. Not necessarily precisely when they come. The only reason I wouldn't specifically answer one is when I'm upset about something or when lots of people are saying lots of things and I feel deluged but in a good way. I would rather be deluged than left alone, I think any blogger who says they don't want comments must truly live in la-la land.
When I got home, by the way, I slept for five hours, till 1am. Without heroin. See what I mean..?
Re my drug history, so it doesn't sound contradictory the timings are this. All drugs: about 20 years (started age 19). In the 1st 10 years there were long spaces when I just did not use them. I did experiment with everything that came my way so the list is long. I also took acid and other drugs (especially speed) when I really shouldn't have. I was clinically depressed, on high dose antidepressants, seeing a psychiatrist. Me on acid then was not pretty, and I probably caused damage. Full-on heroin (+ heroin/methadone) addiction dates back almost exactly 10 years, though even it is hard to pin down a precise start date. Heroin experimentation began in any "meaningful" way about 2-3 years before that. So that's why I mention 20 years and 10 years. It's not a typo and it's not lies.
Methadone is the only drug I'm on now. The dose is far too high for my liking. I want to cut down and come off as soon as I can. Me detoxing is not a beautiful sight at all. I have had a "nervous breakdown" to some degree every single time I tried and it would be really foolish to try and achieve detox too quickly. Some of these "breakdowns" (I use the word losely) involved symptoms of bipolar** and more serious conditions than ordinary anxiety/depression. This is not to say I think it is bipolar or anything else. I'm trying not to think too much about that particular issue. Probably any inpatient detox would be too fast for me. The standard would go from around 60mg to zero in about 2 weeks. The longest I know of goes from about 120mg to zero in 6. Staying off drugs and cutting down slowly in the outside world, if I can do it, is probably the most sensible route FOR ME. Perhaps for many other people the opposite would be true.
Drink is still an issue. I know I drink too much. I drink about 3 x half litres of 7.5% ABV cheap cyder. Yesterday I managed one litre, by buying it in a bottle not cans, and drinking three smaller drinks. I think I'm going to try the 1-litre bottle from now on, cut down from there to one can. There's no great hurry and this isn't me making excuses. Bear in mind this addiction is 10 years old. To break it overnight may well put me in a Fool's Paradise. The progress may not be real. I need reality now.
I am supposed to be "taking care" of myself. So I'm trying to be responsible. I have to be consistent on the one hand (not breaking resolutions) and not get over-enthusiastic go too quick on the other. Bearing in mind I lost my marbles just transferring to methadone, I cannot see that rapidly cutting out anything would (in my own situation) be wise.
To anyone in a similar condition, my best advice is find yourself a good doctor (not easy). Or a good drugs worker. Or a good drugs/mental health professional. Drugs come under mental health anyway. I say this because what's good for me and what works for me may not be best for you. If you've had specific problems detoxing/switching meds/taking any psychiatric or other meds you need to explain this clearly. The problem could be mental or physical or both. Here in the UK if you need special treaetment due to a co-existing condition, you should get a programme tailored to you. I have tried to explain how a methadone detox would be tailored to me. In a way it's good the dr saw me as I was. Now they know I'm not just exaggerating or fantasizing when I talk about going cuckoo. I was bouncing off the walls in that there office!
Better leave it there. I hope I will look back one day and be able to stand by this when I say: CONGRATULATIONS DRUG DEALERS, THANKS FOR THAT DROUGHT. YOU'VE LOST YOURSELF A LONGSTANDING CUSTOMER.
*speedballing or snowballing means mixing heroin and crack (or cocaine) in the same IV shot. It's v strong and v dangerous
**bipolar disorder is what used to be called manic depression; it differs from ordinary depression in that bipolar involves swings from feeling slow, sleeping a lot, eating a lot and pretty down to going very fast, being irritable and angry and/or euphoric and high and barely sleeping at all. The moods can become mixed up and don't necessarily come in clear-cut "episodes".
Anna's description of bipolar depression (yesterday) is here
THE PSYCH DOCTOR APPTOINTMENT has been done. I think I got out of hospital by a narrow margin. He asked me if I wanted to go in. I said I had a toothbrush on me, nothing else was fixed, ready. Windows could have been wide open for all I knew or cared. Well I rabbitted on. Feeling anxious and then trying to cure the anxiety by pacing might not have helped. He asked is this me? I hope that question didn't get me too confused. I said yeah. Then asked who I was meant to be then (after room being barged into by script-wielding worker). Then tried not to get real upset about a certain person I know who supposedly hits the drs for a schiz sign-off when he's actually well. 'Because then there's me saddled with all this shit not being listened to, when I intermittently tried to be, not knowing what's going on or what to do. I am supposed to "take care" of myself. I don't think this dr was being as half-arsed as that might sound. He seems real cautious and intelligent even as shrinks go. And wisse. And I trust him, even as shrinks go. The other main one there I do not trust. Mind Game Playing is the absolute last thing I need. No diagnosis. He did mention the all time pits NASTY WORD 8888888 fill in the stars with more letters. Everything is doing my head in. I have to change clinics. Same staff. Old clinic. He says he thinks I am not myself. He also said he thought I'd been real helpful. That's all I can do is, 1. try and explain; 2. leave matter in professionals' hands; 3. try not to think about. Forget worry. Even think. No antithinking pills were offered. No pills. Did ask about ones I'd had complete with names. Antipsychotics. Marvellous. Gotta run. Got to close eyes. Go to bed. Something.
HERE'S MY IMPRESSION of what a Psycho Dr Really Is And Does... Sorry for the ambiguous picture. The others I looked up REALLY DID MY HEAD IN.I seem to have got distinctly thin-skinned recently.
O man. How did I get here (I ponder, not!) Too confused for too much pondering, me!
CAVE IN (scrupulously avoided, with heroin-like horror going anywhere near any "mental" write up since declared self (or world) mental): Ended up manically checking diagnostic criteria in order to cut short "manic episode" ideas by a good day or two. (Because I didn't get hospitalized after 3 days but before 7 and... o getting confused. Basically it's gotta last 3 days then you get hospitalized, or at least 7 days and to clear it all up I'm not at all sure I've... been so badly out of my right mind for that much more than a week at most. Bloody psycho dcotors. Forcing me to second guess myself!! Hate 'em. Hate it (thinking about self). Obviously love spouting off crap on blog as y'all see. But not really into serious self-analysis. Or serious anything.
Re Psycho Doc Situations: I know I shouldn't talk like that, but the way I see it, it's my job to be severely Confused and/or Desperate; theirs to shove me away, or lock me up and never let out; or mistreat (severely); or prescribe dangerous medication to (would rather have a bit of that fun back than risk going near Physical Hospital, partly because I've seen what happens to people in need of both physical and psychiatric attention, but deemed on the psych side. Nutnut nurses don't know HOW to care.
O no no no no no. What you will have read, if you didn't skip right down here, will be an edited version that tries to clarify mud basically. So if anybody gets a Clear Idea of anything: I Don't.
I am v fed up and annoyed. And was surprised that last night, when I thought I was OK but just tired, annoyed, avoiding people, I should kind of go off rocker in car. "Mental health person" in post below is kind of friend of friend type person I came to by accident yesterday night and wasn't expecting to be there. Otherwise makes it look like this wonderful supportive network is all there when I need it when actually it barely is. I thought it wasn't there at all, that I had no friends. Then I realized (by having to explain away bad behaviour, to put it bluntly) that I did.
I just had to bang out some more crap as I'm terrified of being sectioned under the nasty mental health act (don't think even the lawyers know what year ~ some time in the dark ages). I don't think I'm going anywhere. Unless I end up being "hostile" to a dr. (Ie going off on one a step too far.) Bitter experience has shown me that these people ... are just annoying people, like most people. That's why I don't trust them.
Well I'm sure this has been a rivetting read. Gone way past wondering whether anything might interest anyone. Too tired, jaded, uncared-for/uncaring/unUN for that.
Is it Distinctly Unwise to just click Post and run off? When blog is only meant to be non-fascinating stream of consciousness?
IN A NUTSHELL: I JUST HOPE I SLEEP.
As no sleep means ragged and insomniac-feeling at best, likely to go off like a dingbats fire-alarm from hell at worst.
Please please please stay calm. I need to come across as calm. (Don't care what ACTUALlY AM, long as it appears Calm). Hopefully to make confused account of what supposedly Brings Me Here utter lies. Because what things seem and what they are are precisely the same thing. So if I'm seen to have concocted a story you'd have to be utterly cracko to come in and tell to a psycho doc ~ then I'm lying. When actually I just did a real nice job of keeping still and Behaving. And not being inappropriate.
I used to think I was dead grown up, in some little ways. I wouldn't be presumptuous enough to think I was anything good at all now.
Akh!! I'm off. Hope this has captured some icy terror in face of Dingbats Doc stuff. Then when I'm 84 and have a Printed Copy (bc the internet won't exist then) I can have a real good laugh. If I ever live till 84 and if I am actually able to laugh at that age. I wouldn't put anything past myself now. True lack, utter lack of any sense of self worth. I mean how would you feel if you knew you had got to a pretty short space from being sectioned, just 5 days ago?
Well I'm fully intending to come home after this appointment. Sorry for going on. I mean if you wanted something really boring I should have committed to internet the thought process that went on after I realized I might actually get diagnosed Schizophrenic. That was a good one!! Excepting Jumpf Off Bridge crap (see below: thought had missed methadone chemist (well what other way is there of dealing with a situation like that??)) that was the last time I seriously had a nasty urge to do myself in. This morning.
O that sounds sad. Ho-hum. Well I STOPPED HEROIN didn't I. Anyone having a real good laugh at this, look in the mirror and ask yourself, what's your poison? Or are you just poisonous?? Hope y'all realize this is only meant to be stream of consciousness and not to be picked over for hidden meaning. Otherwise I would never post, never cease second guessing myself... and NEVER SLEEP!!
PS just looked all this crap over after posting. no i didn't "edit" anything. just kind of randomly added chaos to confusion.
pps sorry i probably should/said i would check emails but if i get through that needle's eye at this hour i truly never will SLEEP
I KNOW THESE aren't exactly my legs pictured, but mine are as clean as this woman's jeans are white and tight fitting.
The abscess on the right leg is going down nicely. No longer does the calf look like a red bowling pin with an erupting volcano upon it. It looks mildly pink with a post-eruption Mount Saint Helens (minus flattened pine trees for miles around...)
I'm feeling much better in some ways. But of course I'm still depressed, so I'm really enjoying that. Drinking lots of hot cups of tea in front of morning television, dreading going outside and pigging out on Mr Kiplings mixed fruit selection cakes and vanilla ice cream...
I really miss not having internet at home (thank you, cable-nibbling goblin) and I miss y'all. Sorry to make everyone worry. (What's new.) I really am better...
... BUT I have a medical question. This is serious and real:
Does anybody know what it means if you have splitting migraine-style headaches for weeks on end, accompanied by severe double vision and one of your eyes becomes mis-aligned, so instead of looking directly at me, it's looking down and to the right. While the other eye functions as normal.
This isn't my problem, but a 65 year old friend of mine has it and I keep telling her to go to the doctor, not to waste her time at Opticians (the optician she did see deserves to be shot). As far as I know she STILL hasn't been to her doctor or to Moorfields Eye Hospital, which is quite easy to get too from here (remember I had to go a few months ago when I had a smut in my eye all night and all the next morning and it just would not wash out...)
I have tried not to mention things like "brain tumour", but I'm dead worried about her. And she's one of these people who the more she worries the LESS she's likely actually to go in and get it looked at (who does that remind you of?)
I'M OFF to the doctor's in a moment (and dreading it). But I have to go...
The abscess on my other leg (did I mention that one?) exploded with the help of a pair of sterilized nail scissors. Strawberry milkshake pus blobbering out. In the middle was a snotty green "eye". Now it's just running with a bit of fluid and closed over. It doesn't hurt nearly as bad as it did when it was full to bursting...
... ukh. I know I might sometimes give the impression that I love pus and abscesses, but I don't. What I love about them is squeezing them dry and cleaning them out. I don't like pus at all. Especially blocked-drain-stenching dribbles ~ as were running out of my left leg.
My left leg has healed very well after I "accidentally" picked the old scab #2 off, which had repeatedly been stuck back down (by me). Then I'd have a good peer into the pustulating catacombs of near-death that lay beneath... I noticed it always had a drop of something that looked like snot on the reverse side, which I was assuming was necessary in order to get the thing to re-stick to my leg. The scab really reeked of rotten chicken fillets that have been a week too long in the fridge...
Then I realized the focus of the infection might actually BE on this scab, so I got rid of it and ... TADAAA! Thank you God. It has eventually sealed and dried over and no longer stinks bad and is getting smaller. So I'm on the road to recovery.
My back is also better. I can walk more than 10 paces without having to rest on a garden wall or street railings. When I found myself in places with nothing to lean upon I was utterly helpless and stuck. I wasn't so much in terrible pain as the utter exhaustion of my muscles pulled all out of shape...
I'm gonna have to run, else I get terminated again, but thanks for all your good wishes. I would have gone hospital if it had got really bad, but I started feeling better and am clearly over the worst.
(Found the picture online, my wounds are a bit like those ...)
BUT I STILL HAVEN'T GOT THE POWER CABLE. I've not been well enough to go anywhere. I can barely walk the length of my own road. It hurts to do anything. I feel 105. I take rests on neighbours' garden walls with their moggie circling my legs and purring. I don't know what I've done but I've done my back in and I feel like an old pensioner. One of these days I'm going to drop and not be able to get up... that day is closer and closer. On a brighter note that wound on my leg is healing, having pussed up every pair of jeans I own. I cannot cover it as it's impossible to remove any kind of dressing without ripping it open. Blood and pus and the reek of dead flesh are everywhere. I am exhausted. The only good thing is I lost my appetite, which is saving money on food. I have a dr's appointment on Monday. Hopefully I will make it out alive again..(!) Akh! I've got to do, else I will get terminated yet again...
A NEW COSTUME DRAMA hit our screens tonight. Downtown Abbey on ITV.In common with the BBC's dreary, bourgeois Larkrise to Candleford, it's an original, not based on any classic novel.* But it's quite good. A modern Upstairs Downstairs. And it stars Dame Maggie Smith. If you're reading this on foreign shores, keep a look out for it. If you like historical drama, you'll probably like this. I think historical is the only stuff produced for British TV that's in the same league as the best American telly.
My one gripe with the genre is its tendency to reinterpret the past in the light of modern (politically correct) outlooks. For example the master of the house objects to a war-wounded servant being referred to as a cripple. "I hate that word." But in those days that was the expression; nothing condescending or insulting was meant by it. Here's the trailer. Perhaps someone'll load a longer extract to Youtube by next week ...
*that statement isn't quite true: according to the BBC's website, Lark Rise is based on Flora Thompson's memoir of her Oxfordshire childhood...
THE WOUND ON MY LEG is less manky since I stopped covering it up and have been cleaning it with alcoholic ("pre-injection") swabs every few hours. It isn't oozing chocolate sauce, just a hint of strawberry. It still smells like a drain, just not as strong. My wound and I are off to hospital tomorrow to see what the emergency doctors think of it...
I hope y'all had a cheery weekend. What are you doing next week? I'm making a start cleaning my life up in a literal sense. My house is a mess. I have that festering sore on my leg. Not a clean stitch to wear. I have to wash my jeans as they've absorbed pus down the leg. So I'm starting by laundering my clothes so I can skulk into casualty (that's the ER to you Americans) looking at least vaguely respectable. Then I'll get the wound seen to and hopefully dressed. Then I can set about cleaning my house. It was cleaning my house that set it off last time, with things knocking into it making it bleed. It's been itching lately. Itching is a good sign with these things; in my experience it tends to mean they're healing.
I FOUND OUT that I suffer from something called "Racing thoughts". Now this is why self-diagnosis is such a minefield. Because if I didn't know better, I'd assume "racing" thoughts are ones that appear quickly one after the other. Not so. My experience is the same as the wikipedia definition, where the head becomes full of music, voices, snippets, logos and mottos and swirling about. Like a radio tuned to several channels at once. Wikipedia:~ Racing thoughts may be experienced as background or take over a person's consciousness. Thoughts, music, and voices might be zooming through one's mind. There also might be a repetitive pattern of voice or of pressure without any associated "sound". It is a very overwhelming and irritating feeling, and can result in losing track of time. Sometimes racing thoughts are accompanied by an elevated pulse, including drumming in the ears. Generally, racing thoughts are described by an individual who has had an episode as an event where the mind uncontrollably brings up random thoughts and memories and switches between them very quickly. Sometimes they are related, as one thought leads to another; other times they are completely random. A person suffering from an episode of racing thoughts has no control over his or her train of thought and it stops them from focusing on one topic or prevents sleeping. They don't make me feel anxious or irritable. To me, they're like free entertainment. They can even be exhilarating. I also relate to the statement about a repetative pattern of voice... without associated sound. That's the milder version. These are a symptom of bipolar disorder, anxiety and supposedly some obsessive-compulsive conditions and in their severe form are said to be exceedingly oppressive. I mention these because they came back to me lately. The other night I actually lost track and thought my mobile phone was on speaker, because someone was blar blar blar-ing away at me. I'm glad I actually know the name of this phenomenon, which, incidentally I'm sure is mostly not drug-induced. I like the kind of drugs that block things out. And those are the only kind I take now. Not psychedelics. Not crack. And certainly not that nasty cannabis stuff. Last time I toked on that rubbish I was hearing paranoid voices for several hours, which was highly inconvenient. I was reading over personality disorder criteria. I am not flattered that the nut-nut nurse implied I might be on the anxious-avoidant or dependent "axis". I am diametrically opposite in many ways to such people. For example, I would never pass over to somebody else a decision affecting the course of my life. My family, who know me best, would frequently call me stubborn. That is the exact opposite of a dependent personality, who would give in to others' wishes as a matter of course. The only personality disorder you could bundle on to me is the borderline type. (And the least flattering diagnosis, apart from "psychopathic" or antisocial personality disorder.) I've been told I have this twice, and what sets off alarm bells is the fact that both these individuals also have (actually, had, such a diagnosis ~ one committed suicide in January. Here are the criteria: 1.Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Note: Do not include suicidal or self-injuring behavior covered in Criterion 5 [I don't think so.] 2.A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation. [I wouldn't put it this way; but I have had a pattern of getting into over-intense frienships, and having read further, yes you could say this "criterion" applies. Though I wouldn't word my experience this way. You could say many if not most people feel such ambivalence.] 3.Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self. [Absolutely. When I was younger I had almost no concept of who I was.] 4.Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving). Note: Do not include suicidal or self-injuring behavior covered in Criterion 5 [Drugs; food. Used to eat under 1500 cals a day as matter of course.] 5.Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars (excoriation) or picking at oneself. [There was a period when I used to cut up with broken glass, but it only lasted a year and I don't do it now.] 6.Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days). [Definitely some mood disturbance, sometimes to suicidal extremes. And often it is highly "reactive". Isn't everyone prone to be put in a bad mood when things mess up? Not all my moods are as brief as this criterion suggests.] 7.Chronic feelings of emptiness [Absolutely.] 8.Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights). [I frequently feel irritated, but try to keep it under my hat.] 9.Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms [I don't think I'm anything like as para as I used to be. Some of those "racing thoughts" experiences have a dissociative quality, because they are heard rather than thought. I still suffer depersonalization and derealization, that is feelings that self and world are unreal, but not as hallucinatorily intense as in former years. ] Personally I don't think I have any personality disorder. I know something is "wrong" with me. (Well, I don't feel "right".) Further to yesterday's post, I feel an uncanny need for self-protection and care. Sorting myself out might be a nice place to start. I have access to doctors, so I may as well use them. But I think psychiatry is a religion, involving its own world view and set of values. Doctors function as priests with nurses in roles parallel to monks and nuns. Psychiatry's holy trinity is pharmacology, counselling and the DSM IV-R diagnostic criteria. I don't think I'm mad. But I'm absolutely sure that the world is.
Illustration: bubble reads "are we confused?"
MAD WORLD: TEARS FOR FEARS VERSION
EAMMON: DON'T WANT YOU BACK I like this tune
OK just a very quick post ~ and no little birdies either! I've spent most of today asleep with the usual exhaustion. I was asked whether I think it's just a question of lost sleep catch-up or whether I feel ill. Really, I feel ill. It doesn't feel right. I get the patronizing response from druggieservice and healthcare professionals that this is some kind of inertia manifesting (ie "if you don't use it you lose it" and I'm tired bc I never do anything) ~ well how do they know? As I said, I'm just as likely to sleep in a public place as at home. I only get to a public place by exerting myself. It makes no difference how much "effort" I put into life. Whatever I do, I end up paying the for it. My body goes "no. Too much!" There's no great mystery to all this. I'll tell you what it is. It's depression with chronic fatigue syndrome/CFS traces on top. Plus of course opiates prescribed and otherwise only exaggerate things... So that's what it is and I'm not too worried about it. If I had a fatal illness, I would have died years ago. Wherever you are, I hope your weekends were more restorative!
No German today. I'm too erschöpft. If you are reading this somewhere German-speaking these are the keywords/Schlüsselwörter: to patronize sb jdm gönnerhaft behandeln; druggieservice (mein eigene umg) die Drogensuchtklinik; inertia Trägheit; to exert oneself sich anstrengen; effort die Mühe; CFS=chronisches Erschöpfungssyndrom; traces die Spur; to exaggerate übertreiben; fatal lebensgefährlich; restorative stärkend
Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye. Luke 6:42
I HAVE JUST GOT OUT OF MOORFIELDS EYE HOSPITAL, where a kindly Filipino nurse removed a dot that has been bugging me since last night.
Bugging is hardly the word. Out on the street, around midnight, something blew into my eye. I looked and looked and could not see it. No amount of washing seemed to get it out. So I closed my eyes and slept with it in... woke up crying. Cried all morning. It was a bright sunshiny day. I nearly got run over as I could not see in the bright light.
The situation was so bad I could barely keep my eyes open.
At midday I took a bus to Old Street. You cannot get there by tube so a bus it had to be. Because I had to close my eyes, I slept most of the journey.
At Accident & Emergency I was told it was a two-to-three hour wait but I was seen in under an hour.
I was hoping they would use some sort of contraption rather than get you to tilt the head back, and they did. The Asian lady put in three types of drops ~ the best were the anaesthetic ones because they made me feel cured. She looked at my eye under various coloured lights. Got out the speck, which was the tiniest thing ever ~ a dot of dust. Checked my eye again and said it was scratched. So now I'm taking antibiotic drops and my eye looks like the incredible hulk's.
I have to go as it still hurts to keep it open, but at least it's no longer crying. It doesn't feel that much better than this morning, but the "smote" or whatever it's called hss barely been out for a couple of hours.
I CAN'T really have an 秋田犬 Akita-inu where I am now (nor in most rented accommodation). Plus the cost of jabs and microchipping, bowls and leads or leashes and other incidentals mounts up exceedingly high (though I would really love one) ... so I've set my sights on chinchillas instead. These only cost £25 or so each. Maybe £50. But I don't want a fancy one I want a grey one... The cage is the biggest expense as to house a rabbit-sized creature it has to be massive, with a huge ratty-style wheel for them to ramble on plus dustbath to play in. Chinchillas (so the books say) require a certain type of obscure volcanic sand from the high Andes to brush their fur on... otherwise it will go all sweaty-looking and greasy...
Chinchilla dustbath ~ isn't this entertaining? Look how he gets right in..!
And don't they have South American alpaca/emu/llama-style faces..?
... And don't they look sweet!!
As for the "mental health" comments yesterday:
Thank you y'all!
I tried pretending nothing was wrong for so long and it never worked, so does it mean "embracing" a label?... or just ploughing through therapy to get the hell out as quickly as possible..?
All I know about therapy and counselling is that the more you put into these things, the more you get out. You can (and I'm sure lots of people do) use these sessions merely as an outlet to complain about people, things and circumstances that have occurred during the week. You sound off in the session and do nothing about anything between sessions and the time in the room becomes an emotional outlet. You can also look deep within yourself, like the character described yesterday staring into his own eyes saying "aren't I amazing" (and in counselling ~ complexicated ~ and contradictory and deep and fascinating. (But so is everyone else!!) OR you can use such sessions as a means to throw up insights you can hold on to and use as a means of change. And though it might sound a bit snotty-nosed, that's what I would hope I might do with these "therapeutic" experiences.
I hate counselling, in a way. Because it is an inherently one-sided relationship. They know all these things about you, yet you are talking to a human whitewashed wall. What's "healthy" about that?
The blankness of such a relationship is its freedom, because you should be able to say anything you like without fear of emotional fallout (as might happen if you confided in a family member, who is inextricably tied to the same web of interconnected conflicts as you are)... so it all gets deep and meaningful and whatever. But every time I turn up I look at the watch and see 50 minutes of blank time ... and wish I could somehow fast forward it over!
And every time, somehow the minutes go too quickly!!
Right I gotta go find me a chinchilla. Have a nice day, y'all...
I SAW A NUTNUT DOCTOR. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
He read the long, convoluted (& contradictory) history of all the things that have happened to me, all the things I have done...
He said giving out meds is probably not going to be the best line of treatment (hurrah! because I wouldn't take them anyway!!)
Then he said all these problems are probably down to some personality warping of mine (of course he didn't use the word warping)... I was wondering what on earth he meant....
Then my mind turned to Mr Man (the one who gave me the mephedrone) who chucked himself in front of a tube train some months ago. This man, I suspect, probably "presented" (as they like to say) in quite a similar way to me. Ie he was able to put on a convincing act of happiness, or at least personability (he was very personable and likeable) ~ while at the same time taking meds (in the end) for bipolar disorder.
Now his diagnosis was not "bipolar" at all, but borderline personality disorder and what did stick in my mind was that he said that he thought I had this thing as well.
The "borderline" of borderline personality disorder refers to a supposed border (in 1950s thinking) between "neurosis" and "psychosis". People who have this condition tend to be very neurotic, but are apt to flip over into (usually brief) psychotic states in times of extreme stress or crisis...
So I wonder, in trepidational fear, whether this is what the nutnut doctor had in mind.
I certainly hope not!
If anyone wants to read so-called diagnostic criteria of this "condition" you can click on the wikipedia link I gave earlier... I couldn't help but notice "impulsivity" was given as a hallmark feature ~ I would say no I'm not impulsive at all. Quite the opposite. But substance abuse counts as one mark against and binge eating/starving as another 2 marks and I've done all 3. And I never told Dr Nutnut (or the nurse who wrote the report) anything about the food...
Also this condition/diagnosis is not mutually exclusive ~ ie you can have it and 1, 2 3 or more other nutty conditions... isn't life wonderful??!?
UNHAPPINESS, depression, "low mood" (as psychiatrists like to noncommittally describe it, when shying away from diagnosis) ~ all this is half the story of my life.
I say half the story, because depression tends to be an episodic thing.
In recent years, however, it has been pretty much constant.
Drug addiction, of course, must be a major factor in this. I realize the drugs have boxed me in. i want to break free ~ but cannot. (This is what addiction is: not just having a habit, but being unable to break it.)
My life, if you can call it that, is barely an existence, played out amongst the accumulated flotsam of years of near-inactivity.
Heroin makes me feel slightly better. From the very start my heroin use was self-medication for pain, physical, mental and spiritual. for a while it appeared to be working very well. My confidence went up. Mood swings and depression seemed a thing of the past. I noticed very early on, though, that heroin tends to block out natural happiness better than it does sadness. (How typical.)
But heroin use and the achievement of life goals make uneasy bedfellows. Heroin dulls ambition and tends to lead to inactivity. When I gave up constantly raising money to feed the habit and relied instead on methadone, a gaping hole was left in my life. Despite all my best intentions I have not been able to fill it.
My mental health was already shaky when I was living with a woman I met on the street who became a good friend, but frankly had clinically paranoid traits that did my own stability no good at all.
My only way of escaping her was to run away and live, not literally on the streets, but in an abandoned industrial building that had originally been co-squatted by my begging friends. Now it was empty. Just me and thousands of echoey square feet and rats and pigeons for company. the sound effects when it rained were amazing. it was like Fingal's Cave.
At night, ferrals cats and foxes ventured into the building. I once woke up and left the stockcupboard I was sleeping in to find a man I had never met before smoking heroin in my hall!
It wasn't even a case of no locks on the doors, which were heavily barred and boarded inside and out, but one window (thankfully not visible from the street and hidden behind thick bushes) was wide open to anyone curious and persistent enough who wished to come in.
So apart from the wild animals and uninvited junkies, at nights I started seeing weird visions and ghosts. I believed these were "spiritual emanations". When I moved into emergency bed & breakfast hostel accommodation shared with crackheads I found myself smoking "white"more and more often and my mental health plunged into paranoid psychosis. i believed the neighbours were watching me on TV via hidden cameras and laughing. I heard gunmen outside my door waiting for me to fall asleep so they could rob my stash. i saw sinister faces in my crumpled clothes that were scattered everywhere.
I managed to reduce the crack to once a week and the paranoia receded, but I was still depressed with constant suicidal "ideation" and no will to live at all. I didn't really want to kill myself, what I really wanted was an accident (or an overdose, though with my enormous opiate tolerance there seemed fat chance of that) ~ or merely to curl up and die.
The last time I tried an antidepressant (mirtazapine (Zispin/Remeron) I became agitated and so "high" that the last time I stayed awake for four days on end. Trotting up the road in the early hours, I knew which was my house because it emanated lightning. After a week of this "improvement" I came crashing down lower than I had been in a very long time.
I felt sick, physically and mentally. Alcohol made me feel better, so I attributed the sickness to DTs. I had sinister hallucinations. One day, a dead body appeared in the bathroom mirror. I was convinced that in a Frankensteinian way it was "alive" and about to open its eyes. When I glanced away it was still there when I looked back. It stayed there for five minutes, totally doing my head in.
Physically I was so weak and shaky I had to hold on to the walls. I got thrown out of a shop for being "drunk" ~} when actually the alcohol I was trying to buy, as I said, was the only thing that cut through the horrible haze that was drowning me.
Mentally I hit such rock bottom I couldn't handle the thought of polluting myself with heroin a single day more. When I did score a £10 bag, I opened it and stared at it for the best part of two hours, without the will to use any more.
The crisis went on for a month, until my druggieworker pointed out it was the pills making me ill. Unbelievably I hadn't considered this, and didn't realize that in unusual cases, antidepressants can increase depression, morbidly so, in sensitive individuals.
So I stopped taking the mirtazapine and felt better ~} though not 100% well ~ within days. The depression went on, though in a less extreme form.
A full year ago I decided I needed a proper assessment and diagnosis of whatever "condition" plagues me. At best I might actually commence a programme of recovery. At worst, it might at least mark a new start. I have had trouble with antidepressants before, but shied away from confessing the symptoms, that seemed a little too "bipolar" in flavour for comfort.
Personally, I think I am just one of those people who is over- rather than under-sensitive to such medication. But what the doctor might make of my odd experiences, I dread to imagine.
In the second half of last year I thought I was getting better. Then there was all the hassle of troublemakers moving in next door. I started waking in the early hours feeling very peeved indeed. The troublemakers moved out but the mood got no better. So I am "clinically" depressed again.
The difference this time is that I am determined to clamber out of this state. I just don't know how to.
My council tax situation reached a point where I it HAD to be sorted to keep bailiffs from the door. I have found myself using and drinking more. On methadone without gear I feel so enervated It can take hours simply to muster up the will to push myself into the shower. And I tell myself I absolutely have to do this. I was so filthy and unkempt before, I am sure there are rotting haystacks more hygeinic than I was.
So I go through life on a mixture of autopilot and exhausted trudging. My sleep is all over the place. I cannot bear the thought of antidepressants that might literally drive me crazy.
I am in counselling ~} though I missed the last two sessions. I just could not face going.
I am seeing the nutnut nurse every week now.
I have an appointment with the headshrinker in two weeks' time. What on earth he will make of the mental mess that is my life, I dread to think...
I console myself that there are far worse cases out there than mine. Most of those people, though, tend to be ravingly psychotic and have the dubious luxury of not knowing they are ill.
I am going back to NA meetings. Narcotics Anonymous appeals because it is by addicts for addicts. Nobody is telling you what to do. They just work the programme the same as everyone else.
I decided I have to stop drinking alcohol and cut out heroin altogether. I just wish something better than methadone could be available. Many addicts say they feel flat and dull on the "juice". I just want to curl up and die. If a medication leaves you feeling that bad then surely some alternative must be available. If private doctors can prescribe time release morphine pills that are less toxic and less addictive than methadone (simple fact) ~ what on earth is stopping the NHS?
So the rudiments of a programme are already in place.
But why can't I get a grip on my own mood? Why the constant irritation, sulkiness and brooding?
I break out of it. I do things. But it comes back and wallops me. Every time.
What else can I do?
I used to assume my methadone lows were "I want gear" sulks. It was actually the mental health nurse who pointed out this is probably the underlying depression making manifest. I am starting to think she might be right.
One consolation of all this depression ~ I don't usually lose my ability to write. (So long as I can muster volition to put pen to paper.) This is how I managed to keep a blog going so long. This is why I would like to pursue a literary career. If only I could make a living by writing I could get off the nasty state benefits that are as much a trap as a help.
All in all I just don't know what to do except what I'm doing already.
(Minus the using.)
My best hope for recovery seems to be the NA programme. this is so rigorous I am sure lots of "normal" people who work all week and hit the pubs and bars each weekend would have trouble sticking to a programme of total abstinence. That means no illicit drugs... not even spliffs (no problem for me: I'm hardly tempted by a herbal cigarette that brings on a cross between alzheimers and paranoid schizophrenia ~ complete with the "voices" within five tokes) ... and no drinking either.
NA say NO DRUGS AT ALL. But only "just for today"...
The logical solution to my problems would appear to be: run away from all the places I've used and spend a long time in isolation in deep countryside. In a way this is most appealing. But it's the complete opposite of the NA way. If I can get clean and stay clean in the same places I once used in ~ then I know I've really done it.
What puts me off rehab is that all you learn and all you do is in a great comfy bubble. Then you're out, full of these ideas, back in the same nasty wide world. Statistically, most people relapse. It's no coinicidence that so many rehab facilities in Britain are dotted along the South Coast... and that the south coast has the biggest heroin problem in Britain.
Nothing, no level of shame or other people's disappointment has ever stopped me using in the past: so why would it stop me again? No. I feel I gotta tackle this from deep down and out. And rehab is a business that keeps people in work. Drug businesses, I have noticed, breed complacency and one size fits all type programmes. That's why I'm saying I will make my own programme. The NA programme might well be part of that programme. But my programme will be my OWN.
How on earth I am going to do any of this clean thing I have no idea. I feel so dreadful most days without gear it's about all I can do to go through the most rudimentary motions of living. Let alone running to and from NA meets across London.
But there we go: sufficient for the day are the cares thereof.
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". 
