I MET SOMEONE I KNOW who also happens to be labelled schizoaffective. That is Pinxx. She bought me an alcoholic lemonade, but she drank tea. She said when she starts drinking she can't stop. Not like me. I can. I stopped drinking after 3. We smoked Sterling and Pall Mall cigarettes. She says she sees faces in the floor like I do. I see little furry animals everywhere, kind of like patterns you see in clouds. And no, not every second of every day. Occasionally. Even when it is happening it only happens a few times per day. I had an extra-lovely dose of methadone in the night so I was extra woozy in the morning. In fact I didn't get up until past 11am. I met X and Y my 2 friends who are sometimes helpful. I told them I had schiz-affective. I only tell people the full name who I think might understand it. They didn't. X said only 1 in 1000 people is bipolar. This is nonsense, it's one in 50. Or one in 100 each of type 1 and type 2. Schizoaffective is 1 in 200 so I'm rare!
What was I ranting on about yesterday "showing 2 fingers" to the methadone clinic?..? This is because I hate them having one up on me. At least I'm motivated to get off the green gloop. Most people seem to want to stay on it as long as possible. I don't. I just want to be OK and drop the crap as quick as I can.
So Pinky and I had tea. There isn't much else to tell. We talked about mental hospitals and drugs. The secretaries on the next table seemed to find our conversation fascinating but I didn't play up to that. I don't think P would have approved. She is still using heroin, which pisses me off. She's not a heroin addict and never has been fully addicted. She's done cold turkey 3 times but can't have been fully addicted. She would have gone crazy if she was. Remember the time I clearly met diagnostic criteria for bipolar first was when I detoxed cold turkey. I was manic-depressed (both). I've seen tired mania (no physical energy but the mind seething over) and that was me when I came off the heroin. Full mania means you're shining out energy like an electric fire. Others can warm themselves on your heat.
I used to be very in tune with psychic emanations when I was younger. Heroin gave me the luxury of psychic sleep. Now I'm wide awake again and that's why I got diagnosed nuts. Everything flooded back at full strength. You have to bear in mind I went "mentally ill" ON the stuff that blocks mental illness out, so without that stuff of course I need risperidone to be OK.
I'm back taking the meds once more. It's very boring, but I do it.
Cleopatra is playing on TV. What a luxury to have afternoon films in the evening thanks to shiny digital discs. I nearly had a flaming row (yes I was manic) in the shop when I bought it about my reasons for buying that film. In the end I just dropped it and stalked out, film in hand. Why should I explain the fact that Cleopatra is very good but very long and a challenge to the attention span. You need lots of hot tea and cigarettes to get through it. In years gone by I'd have needed heroin too, least I don't need that any more. I haven't taken heroin since the start of the week. What a waste of time that was. I don't even recall why I wanted it now. Now I've proven, yet again, that it's crap ~ I don't need it any more.
Anyway that's today. I'm off. Take care everyone. Be safe.
IT'S MID EVENING. I am trying to remain calm. I know I was ranting like anybody's business this morning and part of this afternoon. Feeling very euphoric and "grandiose"!! Yeah!! Fantastic in other words. Way better than I did any other day. Higher, yet clearer. And less bizzledizzle in the head (I can say that without my head going fizzle dizzle wizzle hizzle) OK it just did, but at a far lower grade. I didn't go into a vector cyclone thing where it takes me off like a helecopter flying into a spiral and out the other side, then touching down on top of all that energy, looking down on everything. On top of the Universe. That feels pretty good.
I'm half tempted to give a list of drugs I didn't take to get there. I do need to make one point clearer. If I mention my experience in terms of drugs or psychedelics, those are merely terms of reference. I never ever was an addict to those substances. I'd done heroin more times in my first month of heavy using (not my first month of using) than I ever did Es, trips and all else in my life. You need to get in perspective the AMOUNT of something taken and the IMPACT it has on you. Heroin has had near-zero impact. It only ever took stuff away. Gave me very little. Psychedelics give. Ecstasy gives. Whether the giving is good I'm not going into here, and I do have a policy of not condoning drug use. Describing, yes, condoning. NO! Live your life, do not use. I cannot think of a single chemical I truly think was "worth it". My biggest recurring dream re drugs was of temazepam, which used to come in yellow (or dark green) eggs full of gel (or liquid). I dreamed of rugby ball (that is an American football) sized yellow ones. I only ever took temazepam in the early 90s that was prescribed to me. So I was dreaming of my own sleep medication which my own doctor, who was the best GP I've ever had (had a rolling once a week appointment with him, that's why I wasn't raving ALL THE TIME back then I was really badly in a mess. The music was a soundtrack, I indulged occasionally, it made a big impression, I indulged again in the late 90s when I was more together, it still made me a mess, I don't do it now) ~ that's me and raving, Eeeeing, clubbing, party drugging. Yes I did it every week for a short while maybe a year or so. So when I feel really good of course I'm going to think of E, the drug which made me feel "like I'd finally found the pot of gold at the rainbow's end". Ecstasy also made me feel lied to. Like nothing else, including heroin, ever has. And I have also spent days lying in bed crying because I felt lied to, let down, and that the people who seemed so nice were themselves on E, I was myself, but we all had issues, sometimes deep-cut horrifying ones and I mean other people, not me that horrified me who didn't need horrifying. And the whole thing turned out into a mess with me hallucinating a good 24 hours after the last pill which MDMA doesn't do, I was scoring the same pills off the same dealer as everyone else. And I wasn't the only one cracking up and not coping come Monday morning. It was horrible to see. When I realized the truth, the real truth about clubbing, beyond the obvious fact that these were young people pretty badly overdoing it in some cases (not mine ~ I was just doing it and the little I did, usually no more than 2 pills... except the very end when it went past 5 then 8... that was over... 4 occasions ie 2, 2.5...2.5 (shit I'm lying I did 1.5 then 1 ie 10 pills=4nights out) ... and I was very well organized re timing etc. When I didn't want to take it I didn't take anything. Or a tiny handful of mushrooms. So few I wasn't "tripping" just had a euphoria you get off a tiny mushroom dose but not acid.
I can't even remember where I was going with this, and Im not spending all evening editing and obsessing. Other people can obsess if/when they want to. I'm not as obsessive as some people seem to think. I have ASPECTS that are.
Hey I found a different tune. It's slow. It kind of makes me want to cry. I don't want to cry about anything. Never cry about myself, it always mystifies me when people cry because they ... whatevered. Tears of giult I can understand. Crying because you hurt someone, I understand. Ha! Do you know what actually healed a lot of my friendships (in retrospect) was me crying when we were yelling at one another. These were friendships/relationships with the opposite sex. Didn't realize at the time they were probably touched.
When my friend Lucky died I felt nothing for a whole month. Didn't go to the funeral. I was in a mess. Had nothing to wear. Didn't want to face people I didn't know who knew her who knew when..? Banging on about her. She fell into frienships with the opposite sex that weren't sexual (or weird) she was nearly 60 they were probably late 20s or in their 30s and they did crack and heroin round at hers. Lucky's flat was a safe, quiet, peaceful place to go. I deliberately kept some distance as her friends seemed to last a certain time then vanish. (She was an addict: an expert at self-confusion.) Then she died, suddenly. It wasn't an overdose, she just dropped down dead, in front of someone else. The paramedics couldn't save her. She always thought she was invincible but I remember myself dragging her from her bathroom after she overdosed. The jolt woke her up, but in those moments she was gone. If you don't take overdose seriously you really are a fool. Anyway a month later I ran into her old friend who showed me the Order of Service from the funeral. I suppose the fact that he was carrying it on him said a lot. And then I cried. And cried and cried and cried and cried. I have never cried so much over anyone I knew. I hope wherever you are you feel flattered Lucky. I cried for you.
I wanna contact the living... not sure I understand this road I've been given... that's it!
ps if you wonder why the unedited rants, if i tidy up when i'm extreme i'll get lost in the words, if i wait till a time like now: I'll make my own witness statement to myself into a lie, so I can't do it. The "worst" stuff IS who I WAS who I AM who I BECOME when I am like THAT.
TO ANYONE WHO PERUSED my last-but-one post, "in answer to some comments" I'd first like to point out my rantings were not a personal attack on any friends or commenters. Not a direct attack; not a sideways swipe. Passiveaggression (where you express anger obliquely, then deny you're doing it) is not my style. If I have a problem with someone I tell that person ~ it's the only way of doing it. Some of your comments did touch a raw nerve and that is what I was responding to. The fact that I'm me... not me... who am I?
The crux problem I had with heroin was that, apart from killing my pain, it held me very much together as a person. On gear I felt whole. The way other people seemingly feel.
Without gear I am Consciousness Aware of Passing Impressions. I'm expected to behave like and vouch for being "Somebody" but I do not feel like somebody. I feel many things at many times. I don't add them up. Somebody else might try to. Sometimes I have to account for whoever that person supposedly was, what happened to them. That's when it gets confusing. You see that's outward pressure to account for myself, to explain the inexplicable. It causes untold stress.
People seem to read into my words what they perhaps might feel had the words been their own. You need to be careful of doing this. Oftentimes I am comfortably numb. I never needed heroin to induce this and that puzzles me.
What heroin did do was give a certain confidence and a togetherness I had never in my adult life. That's why gear was so addictive. Whenever I tried to give it up, I (unwittingly) gave up my whole life also.
Far from over-analysing or ponderously dwelling on the issue of my life and feelings and future (the way many have assumed I do, probably due to my question-answering style)~ I realized in rehab that I actually hadn't the faintest clue what on EARTH I was going to do afterwards.
I was jumping blindfold into icewater! No wonder I ran out the door within half a week both times ~ despite immense preparation in the form of regimented drug-reduction, especially the second time. Despite what I'd assumed was motivation enough, I simply was not ready. Not the way I needed to be. I just did not know what I was doing.
You might also bear in mind that when I write, I use a naturally analytical style. This doesn't mean that I spend hours pondering myself in this way too!
People sometimes assume that because I write a certain way I must inevitably spend hours picking over my life in this manner too. That simply is not true. If I say I feel lost, I'm expressing a feeling. I don't wander about telling myself "I'm lost I'm lost I'm lost". I only say "I'm lost" when I talk to you.
At the extremes of experience I've found myself thinking far too quickly to ponder anything much. (That "breakdown" not long ago was like a tornado. Some of you read my words and appeared to assume I was more grounded than I really was. I was whirling a good one hundred times faster than usual ~ literally! It felt fantastic! But is not too conducive to self-examination.)
At the other extreme I slowed down and barely thought at all. My writing style cannot not reflect my minute by minute thinking style, unless I was willing to post near-blank pages or ones full of badddadah-dah-DING! Which is what my mind started doing when I was a little over-"manic". Perhaps that's my problem: if anything I ought to engage my brain MORE, not less!
On Sunday afternoon when I was tripping (on nothing; I've not taken psychedelic drugs in about a decade) and the Scouse of the South came blaring out a broken intercom I finally got fed up of people thinking I had DTs or needed Lithium. I popped some Librium which didn't really do much. My so-called Friend put pressure on me to find heroin. This was impossible, I said: it would be tiny, weak, money down the drain. He didn't care. Eventually to great irritation, which spilled into a dur euphoria (because I'm me and I am dur) heroin arrived. I took heroin. It was rubbish. I scored more that night and that was OK. Then I scored again and again and so I've done a lovely heroin binge.
And do you know what? The voices that were chattering away at night have vanished. (So much for drug-induced psychosis. If you wanna use the dreaded psycho-word this is a drug-REMOVED phenomenon. So the psychiatric industry can shove that in their crack-pipes and smoke it! Suddenly I feel put together and sturdy and strong again. All the reasons I got into gear to start with are revalidated.
Mental health nurses at the clinic will limply coo "ooo you're self-medicating" ~ yet they NEVER offer any alternative course of treatment or action. When I got into telling something particularly involved they crossed legs, leaned forward with a look in their eyes as if something really good was playing out on television. That's all I ever was to those people. Free entertainment.
Though I am supremely annoyed at this "Friend" for pushing me in that direction and will lance hi with expressions like "No ******g respect for MY feelings or MY sobriety," next time we meet, I am not "going back on gear" for anybody's sake. I took what was left tonight. I made sure I used it all. When it's gone ~ that's it.
I got a fantastic practical boost from heroin: it put me together enough to clean and tidy my living space back to the bounds of normality. Without it one disparate aspect of me nags "You've got to clear up" yet the other is not listening. I went on nagging myself this way for days, weeks, months with little-to-no avail. I could tell Mental Health Staff and this would provoke loads of engaged scribbling. With no benefit whatsoever to me. I don't care any more about my convoluted notes. I want RESULTS. Doesn't it come to something when only heroin will fix me?
Yes I could have not taken it. And I'd still be in a mess. I wouldn't have slept (I didn't sleep before). Less than a third as much would have been done (that's what happened last time). And my fractured less-than-self would watch caring-uncaring. Who cares anyhow? All I need do is get this task done. It's done enough now that I never need repeat that pharmaceutical relapse. I'm not offering an excuse for having used. I'm merely telling how using helped me. I only took heroin at all because it helped me a lot.
I was no longer crying. On heroin I was a whole person.
I'm willing to fracture up again, that's the inevitable result of pulling the plug on diamorphine. Please don't assume I'm telling you I suffer horribly. I feel nasty when I'm depressed, that much is true. But did you know, when I'm severely depressed it actually feels, in a paradoxical way, not as bad as moderate depression? Moderate depression, to me, involves constant impulses to suicide. In severe depression the suicidal idea is gone because there is no Life. Life is finished. I'm Finished. It's all over. "Rock Bottom" ~ if you want to use that phrase (personally I detest it). In this state I never even saw myself as depressed until afterwards. To me, I was in spiritual crisis. I'm no longer scared of going there because there are plus-points. While desire has gone, so has any sense of life. So I no longer desired to use. At long last I was free. The blackest stormclouds have a silvery lining. There's something to be gained from everything everything. Severe depression freed me from the constant craving to use ~ and for that I shall for ever be grateful.
Which is why I'm not scared. My life is a journey and I'm not even half done. This I am well aware of.
Just because my life is coloured in different hues to yours doesn't make me ill. I know that doctors could well see some of my experience as a mental sickness, but you need to throw out of your mind the idea that I suffer more than anyone else. I really don't think this is necessarily true. As mentioned earlier, I believe some of what's uniquely me is just a nonstandard coping mechanism. I don't walk about telling myself I'm ill. I only feel ill inasmuch as stuff has needed doing for a long long while, yet hasn't been done. No matter how hard I've tried to engage I've so far failed. The room-cleaning was a big one. If I can get this done, I'll be OK. A pigfull of meat shall slither off my shoulders. Then some other person can bring home the bacon.
You see it's not "feelings" that bother me, it's DOING. There's so very much I need to DO DO DO! Time is running out.
So that's my new question: how do I engage a disengaged person without using heroin in the process...? Surely there's some magical method? Some shortcut. Some effective way?
I very much appreciate the Answers I got back on Happiness. Thanks to Akelamalu and others, I made a decision to take a volunteer position at a Hospice. I have never in my life set foot in a hospice, but I believe passionately in what these organizations do. When people are terminally ill there comes a time when Doctors ought to just leave well alone. Stop their needlesticking, blood-letting, scanning, operating, endless interfering. Stop the painful tests, painful chemo, burning radiotherapy. Stop tormenting the dying and leave them in peace ~ dosed up on painkillers, tranquillized and happy as the chemicals can make them. I'd want this for myself. I'd want it for my friends. I'd want it for my loved ones.
I always donate to the hospice charity first when I'm giving away clothes etc (I find vast amounts of clothing on the street that doesn't fit me, so it's always trotting into that shop). I'd love to see how a hospice is actually run. Surely it's a privilege to spend the last days and hours with people who are dying. There's nothing maudlin or morbid in this. To be able to bring comfort ~ or even joy ~ to anybody's final moments would be a great honour.
So these are my feelings on feeling and not feeling, and on gear. As I said, yesterday's post was not a personal attack on anybody who commented, it was merely inspired by your remarks, so please, Syd and others don't be offended. No offence was ever intended.
PEACE, LOVE AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!
LINKS: HEROIN AND METHADONE AS ANTIPSYCHOTICS AND MOOD STABILIZERS
COLDPLAY: FIX YOU This video and the Madonna Hung Up Video both seem to have been filmed in the same place the Warp Club happened ~ inside the most enormous railway arch club, just round from the London Dungeon and London Bridge Station ...
I HAD TO GO VISITING today. My friends live in flats. Downstairs. But no light on. Seemingly she saw me as the intercom crackled with her distinctive Liverpool voice: "wait a sec!" So I did. Then I thought I'd phone anyway and she sounded off-beam, like she hadn't just spoken to me a few moments before and I thought, That was odd.
Then he comes out and I said "Did she just talk to me through the intercom" and he said "No, what are you talking about! That hasn't worked for years! What are you on?!"
And I said "Nothing," he said: "No you're on something." So I said, "No, I'm not drinking so it must be DTs." He looked at me carefully and said, "I'll go and get you a couple of Librium," so he did, he got me nine and said "Don't tell her."
I'm to take three every four hours, then they should hold me till next day. I don't know the milligrams but they're blue and white, like Prozacs. I took three as directed and barely felt anything.
So they probably make a good substitute for alcohol. Pills that don't do anything are easier to cut down on than drink, which I can feel something off.
Later on someone quite different asked me whether I'm on LITHIUM. Thanks so much, Friends.
I'm not on anything. I'm not taking gear, that's why I'm falling apart. I feel the fractures. It doesn't feel bad, it just feels bizarre. Quite fun though. I've been sleeping like a harvest mouse. Hibernating for hours on end.
O will I ever get off these drugs? Yes, because I have to.
Tomorrow I'm planning an expedition to Mr Temazepam (Mr Librium cannot go on sparing his partner's pills.) Mr Temazepam wants good dollars for his supply but as I say, if it's more "medical" than cutting down on just drink then I'm willing to go for it.
I got hooked on the feeling of drink. Now I'm without that feeling. So it's a step ahead already!
There is a significant risk of pharmacological dependence on diazepam and patients experiencing symptoms of benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome if it is taken for 6 weeks or longer.
(Wikipedia: Diazepam) Being as I shouldn't be taking it for any longer than 10 days maximum, I ought to be fine ...
LAST NIGHT I went to an NA meeting. Two people I know from outside where in there. One was the crackhead who lived downstairs in the madhouse I was in when I started this blog (as opposed to the crackheads and B-smokers Matran the ratman + Laundretta, prostitute extraordinaire, his girlf. (Matran eventually got busted for crack dealing and got our house raided, which I was NOT pleased about and something told me NOT to mention dealing going on in my own home (even though it was a different locked room). But that was a good 3 or more years ago. And I think Matran got deported back to Jamaica. The last thing I remember about this guy was him turning his room upside down. I stepped outside, found the missing rock on our doorstep and ran upstairs to pipe it myself!
The other guy was on gear and crack. The last time I saw him he was in our (dead) friend Lucky's bathroom, sticking a needle in his neck. He is now 18 months clean.
He said one thing that prompted him to give up was dealing with kids on mountain bikes (all over 18, thank God. We did have a big dealer who was FOURTEEN, about 10 years ago. I remember watching my friend score her crack from him. Couldn't help but notice he was being shadowed by someone much older.
When I scored off this individual, which I didn't really want to do but it was after I'd found and consumed 10.5 grams of heroin (3.5g China White, the rest "brown" ~ I weighed the brown on post office scales, it came in at 7g!) over about 5 weeks and got myself (mildly) addicted. When I scored, I noticed a young black boy of about seven come round the corner and eye me up in an obvious way. The drugs are coming! I thought, and I was right. (It was Shamps, the actual dealer who served me, not this little boy.) At this point I had dabbled in heroin, mostly to be "naughty". Nothing to do with rebelling against my parents, who had a horror of drugs, but against my peers, so many of whom thought they were so cool snorting cocaine. And yet crack, which is basically the most efficient way of delivering coke to the brain (feels indistinguishable from cocaine injection) ~ and even more so heroin were utterly taboo. I was informed several times when I broached the subject (admitting nothing) that they didn't want anything to do with anyone who dabbled in heroin. Much less a heroin addict.
I befriended local street addicts who sold cut-price Travelcards each evening at the local tube stop. These cards got you all over London. A zone 1-4 card cost about £4 at the time and the going touted rate was £2 before 8 or 9pm, £1.50 thereafter and £10£1! after 10.30 or so.
As I say I got to know these people well and found them surprisingly nonjudgemental and more accepting than any other group I had ever met. If I felt miserable I could talk about my woes without being called a buzz-killer, or being thought of as a loser. Because most of my life up to then I had been unhappy. Note I say most, not all. All these people were heroin addicts. One day, I was standing there shivering, because it was cold and someone I knew thought I must be sick. I had £10 on me and they offered to score for me.
I smoked the heroin off tinfoil, which is called running it, or chasing it, or "booting". If you've no habit, you get high within about 2 mins in this way, and you only need about £2.50 worth of top quality gear to put you into dreamland. London street heroin is ordinarily 20-60% pure. A £10 bag weighed 0.2g or a bit more if you're lucky. So £2.50 worth of B would be about 40mg 30mg diamorphine. The bioavailability of smoking from foil is said to be 60% (as opposed to 100% from injecting). So I was taking in about 24mg 18mg at a time. {My maths!} Considering a heart attack patient is ordinarily given 5mg (diamorphine, not morphine, which is weaker) that £2.50 was going a long way. This is one of the seductive things about heroin. Initially it seems to offer fantastic value, Especially compared to crack. And the high goes on for a good 4 hours. If you're "opiate-naive" you feel different even the next day.
I smoked my heroin alone and in secret. None of my "normal" friends knew anything about what I was doing. I was into heroin to get high. It wasn't an image thing and certainly had nothing to do with being "cool". I had two groups of "normal" friends. One lot liked party drugs, the other didn't. Ironically (or perhaps not) it was the straighter people with whom the friendships ran deepest. It was a long time before I used heroin with other heroin users. I did know a mad French girl who injected prescribed methadone amps and crack ~ £15, £20 worth in one hit. The crack at that time was 70-80% pure, so that's 200-300mg neat cocaine in one dose. No wonder she looked like a rabbit in the headlights afterwards. I smoked my crack with her. Because she didn't smoke, I learned the techniques on my own, myself.
When I eventually asked her to inject me with heroin, she insisted I cook it up myself.
Right from the word go I was scoring my own gear when I wanted it. Which was only occasionally. Heroin dealers expect calls every few days at least. So when I rang back a month or so later, I usually had to explain who I was.
The point to all this is that by the time I found that 10.5g stash ~ lying right on the high street in a shop doorway. I thought it was a bag of sweets! ~ everything was already in place. I was already an adept heroin smoker (though I had to snort the China white, it's heroin hydrochloride and doesn't smoke well). I already had a collection of dealers' numbers. I knew at least 6 or 7 heroin addicts who would score for me if I needed them to ~ not just one. So everything was set up for what happened next to seem rather inevitable.
My only reservation in all of this was that I utterly hated the process of scoring. Didn't like dealers. And was unjaded enough to feel the bad vibes that emanated from most of them.
And then I fell in luurve with a junkie. Who was like my twin. Like Kurt and Courtney were twins. And I fell in love with heroin ~ the only drug strong enough to make me genuinely not care about anything ~ more. And the rest is history.
And now I'm drinking cyder, shlucking down chill-pills on top of methadone (methadone has no buzz). And knowing that I probably will throw away at least £10 on the lousy gear that's been around, because I know who's coming to see me today. And this person always wants to score when he sees me...
It's not as bad as it was. But it certainly ain't over yet...
I SPENT the entire day with my Irish friend Patrick and a black girl I'd never met before who at first was lots of fun. We drank and drank white cyder. I bought Chinese sweet chili chicken pizza and cheese-and-onion-baked rolls. Tanisha bought the cyder. She grew more and more aggressive as we all got more drunk...
... in the end I had to go home before a full-on row broke out.
Oh, what a perfect day!
THIS is one of my favourite songs. Written and originally recorded by Lou Reed, the following versions, I think, are two of the best:
"BBC & STARS" (Lou Reed, Bono, Skye Edwards (Morcheeba), David Bowie, Suzanna Vega, Elton John, Sir Andrew Davies, Boyzone, Lesley Garrett, Burning Spear, Sir Thomas Allen, Brodsky Quartet, Heather Small (M People), Emmylou Harris, Tammy Wynett, Shane McGowan, Sheona White, Dr John, Robert Cray, Huey (Fun Lovin' Criminals), Gabrielle, Evan Dando, Courtney Pine, Brett Anderson (Suede), Visual Ministry Choir, Joan Armatrading, Laurie Anderson, Tom Jones, BBC Symphony Orchestra): PERFECT DAY
My Friend in Need (and a "friend in need is a friend indeed") came round yet again and scuppered my plans for the entire day.
I made my displeasure very clear by ranting for about an hour and a half. I told him I had no interest in heroin whatsoever and was only into disappearing into town on my own with no drugs.
He wanted heroin (and crack). I told him all the heroin was rubbish. Crack is always rubbish because it's cocaine and cocaine is inherently crap. Like many drug addicts I used coke as pharmaceutical sugar to sweeten up my heroin. On its own ~ to me at least ~ it is and was an almighty waste of time. But he wanted to smoke crack in my house as well.
I said I wasn't doing this unless he bought me two £20 deals. In the end I backed down and settled for one £20 of crack and bought half a gram of heroin. The gram cost £40, which is over the odds, was at least 20% short (but I sold my old scales to a dealer ~ I so enjoyed weighing things on them. Not just drugs (which, surprisingly weren't underweight as often as I had previously supposed) but anything tiny and cute I could get my hands on ~ dead ladybirds, paperclips... drug wrappers... (when my late friend Lucky bought an ounce of "B" some years ago, the wrapping alone (cut-off black binbag plastic) weighed 0.3g) etc etc. These were the ordinary digital scales used for silver and gold, which weigh down to a tenth of a gram (one "point") ~ not diamond scales, which would go down at least to 2mg (a hundredth of a carat, which is also called a point).
Anyway anyway I didn't go into town. Didn't get my whizzy Mandarin (but I did purchase a tangerine from the corner shop instead ~ ho-ho!).
Also just to annoy me, I checked and re-checked the prospectus I was looking at in Deutschland and Chinese isn't in all editions. I cannot tell which edition it's in, as I'm limited to online versions with no copyright dates. So I was forced to email their office lamenting how "verwirrt" (confused) I was, though I'm not sure I selected quite the appropriate word under the circumstances... and would they please clarify the matter. I've yet to receive any reply, which shocked me as I believed the Germans had an unrivalled reputation for efficiency.
Anyway I SHALL speak fluent Chinese whether higher education comes into the question or not. Plus Russian, because I am now determined to read Dead Souls (not as gruesome as it sounds, the dead souls refer to a kind of 19th century identity theft) and Anna Karenina in their original русский.
In readiness for all this I've already set my computer to type in Cyrillic (which will involve learning to type from scratch as the Russian letters don't sit on keys corresponding to their Latin equivalents (unlike, eg, the Greek keyboard). Instead of QWERTY my whizzy Russian keypad goes ЙЦУКЕН (Y, TS, U, K, E N) ~ highly confusing. A "Russian phonetic" layout does exist, which corresponds to qwerty (so Д (D) is on the D-key). But Windows 7 doesn't support it.
The Pinyin Chinese is lots of fun. E.g. if I tap in feng I get 风 (the character I wanted, it's the (simplified) feng of fēng shuǐ 风水, which says "wind-water"...) ... other fengs are: 封 逢 缝 蜂 丰 冯 枫 or 疯! It's actually dead easy to use so I'm looking forward to lots of fun with Chinese.
With heroin I am more seethingly furious than ever before. I am not particularly happy with my "friend in need" either...
I must ping into London today to get these books as a tube strike kicks in at 7pm tonight, after which the entire town shall plunge into chaos...
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?)
MY ALARM shrilled me awake at 7am; I was up by 7:20. Did all the bits I had to e.g. picking up methadone. At 10:30 my dealer rang me but I ignored him. At 11:00 I rang the dealer using my harshest voice to demand "a decent one, coz they've been getting smaller and smaller" (dealers like to try it on ~ they wanna see how much they can get away with. I had been punishing him by going elsewhere.) He said yeah yeah and he would be "fifteen minutes" (ie ages), so I took my time getting to the place. At 11:15 I was at da place. Then I sat on a lawn reading my 1943 Kathleen Speight edition Teach Yourself Italian, which I so wasn't in the mood for, but I'd left my German book at home. (I can actually enjoy this German book without constant recourse to a dictionary (though I'm not claiming to know every word) ~ what a wonder that is! I was knocking back white cyder and puffing on cigarettes as I learned to conjugate my verbs. At about 11:45 the dealer showed. Home by midday. I had one hour clear. I checked on my clothes, hanging dry from my windows on coathangers (I've nowhere else to dry them). Then I rushed to cook up my hit. The my first attempt was far too pale in my opinion, though a goodly chunk of "brown" had gone in. The dealer had made good on his promise and sold about six or seven "points", as we say, for £20. (Those are points of a gram ~ five points being half a gram.) Well as I say it looked too pale, so I added more and re-fried. I'd put about a third of a gram into the spoon. With vitamin C it dissolved into half a millilitre of tapwater. The resulting hit was midnight black. I took this half-millilitre of death-black liquid, dropped my clothes (which also gave relief from the oppressive heat ~ only 31, 32 degrees C but this morning so humid, I looked like I'd showered with my clothes on.) Afterwards I was trying to remember where I'd banged the hit in, but I couldn't. But it went in directly... ... and knocked me out cold. Next thing I knew it was 1:45 hours. FIFTEEN MINUTES TO GO. There was absolutely no way I was gonna make this event on time, and crematoria will not put funerals on hold just because some stupid junkie took too much gear to get there on time. I rushed to the shower and washed my hair. This only took three minutes but when I next checked the clock it was two o'clock. Knowing I'd missed it I slumped back in my chair of living death and was instantly unconscious. I woke up at 2am. Y'all can have a go at me if you like. I feel the weight of your disappointment already. My second thought, after "what the hell have I done to Pinky?" was "what will I say on my blog?"! You see your opinions matter very much. As I saw it I could: 1: obfuscate ~ give an oblique account of the day. Not lying, but making it seem to the uninformed reader that I'd actually been, even though I hadn't. 2: lie. But the day I start telling lies on my blog is the day I should give up blogging 3: tell the stark truth So I'm sorry, but this is the truth. I missed the funeral because I was too stoned on heroin to get there. And there you have it. Trust me, you won't be any more disappointed in me than I am in myself.
I CALLED up my friend who's unofficially organizing Perky's funeral tomorrow, I was stressing about where it was, who I was going with, how I would get there and what the hell to wear. I do have a suit, but it stinks of 10,000 cigarettes having hung on the back of a door for three years. Also I don't have a shirt to go with it. Or a tie. Except for a bloodstained old school tie I found on the street and have used as nothing other than a heroin tourniquet...
I was told: just come as you are, wear normal clothes, that's the type of date it's going to be. And I was saying, Yeah but I don't want to turn up as my regular scuffy self and show everyone up. And I was told: You'll be fine, you'll be fine. Then I said: Well shouldn't I dress as if I'm going to the doctor's?~ and she said: Yes! That's exactly right!
So my sartorial stressings are sorted, at least. I presently have a huge bucket of clothes soaking in the corner. (I hand-wash.)
I said I'd Google the address and bus-routes for the crematorium, so I'll have to ping off and do that in a sec.
O man I how am I going to get through tomorrow. All the drugs in Burma wouldn't do it for me. What am I going to do? What will happen? How will I cope?
I've never been to a funeral before. Not a friend's funeral.
The only ones I've attended were my Grandad's and my old Aunt Dot's.
How I'll handle seeing a coffin that I know contins a body that used to be inhabited by the most marvellous, wonderful woman who brought so much (and the most classic Turnip accent you've ever heard) to so many ... How I can look on this coffin and think of her laid out inside so lifeless and still, staring blankly into the dark; this person who was so full of life and is now about to be chucked into the furnace and burnt to ashes ~ how can I possibly do this?
I don't know how.
I don't know.
Of course I will survive. But what about poor Pinky, so cruelly left alone? A woman who, despite the most gruesome, grotesque, horrendous life you could possibly imagine ~ in childhood and in adulthood ~ has survived and lived as best she could. A woman who has endured years of psychotic illness. Nobody can comfort her. For there is no comfort. And no hope. (At least none to be seen.) To pretend otherwise would be to descend into clichés and platitudes and I'm not into them.
I cried this morning. I actually cried. And I never cry over suicide or drug deaths. These are personal decisions or inevitable consequences of life ill-lived. So how can I cry over the inevitable?
Perky's death was far from inevitable. It is wrong, so wrong. And that's the difference.
I'M not really in the mood to write this, but I painstakingly posted these facts in German so I have to do it in English too.
In January a someone I know threw himself in front of a train and died.
I had known him for years. Originally I met him in a mental hospital, where he was undergoing alcohol detox. He had borderline personality disorder and always seemed cheerful enough, though he was always on antidepressants and, towards the end of his life, bipolar meds as well.
He was depressed because he had to have an operation. Also he had been taking that legal high mephedrone, probably in large amounts. He ended up in a mental hospital (again) and was, according to someone who really knows the meaning of the word "really psychotic". This is why I suspect this nasty drug had something to do with his death, because in all the time I'd known him he had never, ever seemed "really psychotic".
So anyway, he's dead.
He was best friends with a lesbian I know who I'll name Perky. Her and her girlfriend reminded me of Pinky and Perky. When we met Perky we were so happy. Although she had recently been discharged from hospital having had psychotic depression, she was funny, witty, lovely to be around.
Better still, she came into the life of the most damaged person I have ever met (and I've met a few broken people) ~ that is, her "Pinky".
Pinky and Perky were together for seven years. I was so happy for them because at last Pinky had found somebody who respected and loved her. Someone she could trust.
But when John died, Perky was devastated and quickly got admitted to hospital.
She used to spend three days every week with John. They were very close. Pinky, you have to understand, has multiple severe psychotic and personality disorders. She is the epitome of a "vulnerable adult". So Perky probably NEEDED somebody like John to talk to. A voice of reason. Despite the "borderline personality disorder" label, John was an intensely reasonable man. And then John killed himself.
Six months later I got a call from Pinky sounding utterly distraught. She mentioned nothing about Perky. All she wanted was a good heroin dealer. Now I know why. She scores off the same person I do, so I couldn't help her ...
... then last week the ugly truth emerged. In a fit of depression, "Perky" had swallowed enough methadone and psychiatric medication to kill an elephant.
So now poor Pinky is left alone. And I don't know what the hell is going to happen to her.
I'm so angry with Perky for having done this.
The funeral's in a couple of days' time. I'm not sure I want to go.
HIER SIND DIE NACHRICHTEN VON GLEDWOOD Ich weiß, ich sollte einen besonderen Deutschen Blog anfangen... ja ich weiß. Aber im Augenblick blogge ich noch hier.
Der Hund meiner Freundin Belinda, der Alfred heißt ist krank! Letzte Woche wurde er operiert. Er liegt im Korb und sieht sehr öde aus. Nie habe ich ein so armer Hund gesehen. Er ist so ältlich, er sieht wie ein kleiner silbergrauen Esel aus. Sein Augen sind so elend. Heute war Alfred noch im Korb. Er trug eine kleine Hundenjacke und bewegte sich nicht. Er sah kalt aus ~ während das Temperatur 30 Grad erreichte. Er ist so alt, er konnte mich nicht hören, und er wußte nicht, dass ich dort war. Ich denke es tut ihn zu viel weh, den Schwanz zu schütteln. Belinda sagt er muss wieder zum Tierartz ~ noch mehr Chirurgie. Ich hoffe, er wird OK.
Wie ich gesagen habe, ist es hier so heiß! Heute war es schwitzender feucht. Ich fühlte, als ob ich bekleidet in der Dusche gegangen war! Sehr unangenehm. Das BBC warnt vor einer Hitzewelle mit 32 Grad oder noch höher. Ich hoffe ich werde nicht zum Tod schwitzen. Dieses Transpirationsproblem ist nur nach Heroin gekommen. Bevor meiner Rauschgiftsucht liebte ich den Sommer. Nun wurde ich lieber das ganzes Jahr in Winter leben. Das Dunkel befördere ich zur Hitze.
Die Vogel in meiner Strasse zirpen noch laut. Wir haben viele Spatzen. Sie piepsen ganz unmelodisch den ganzen Tag lang. Flapper, die Ringeltaube hat verschwunden! Ich ahne, er hat eine Affäre mit einer Ringeltaube-Frau, die in der nächste Strasse auf einer neuen Luxus-Antenne gurrt. Vielleicht gibt es da Platz für zwei...
Ich muss jetzt gehen. Es ist schon Mitternacht, und das Temperatur ist noch 19 Grad! Ich schwitze noch wie ein Schwein. Ich hoffe, ich werde schlafen können ohne ertrinken!
THIS IS MY FRIEND WELSHCAKES' DOG SIMI taking a rest after an exhausting fur-cut. Isn't she the cutest little trotterdonkey you've ever seen? Her coat is spun of pure gold. I hope Welshkcakes keeps the cuttings. Perhaps if you plant them, they'll grow into a gold-tree... Now Simi is barking at me: woof-woof-groany-bone-a-doodle. She is saying: please drop by and leave me a message telling me how beautiful I am, the link is here.
HIER ist das Hündchen von meiner Freundin Welshcakes Limoncello in Sicily, das Simi (kurz für Simone) heißt. Hier, nach einem ermüdenden Pelzschnitt, spannt der flauschige Teddybär aus. Sein Fell ist unvermischt reingesponnenes Gold, nicht wahr? Vielleicht falls Welshcakes die Schnippel in einem Topf anpflanzt, würde ein Goldbaum daraus wachsen??! Nun kläfft Simi: woof-woof-murren-i-gurren-i-knochen-pochen-dudeln. Sie sagt: bitte mal komm' vorbei und erzähle wie schön ich bin! Hier ist das Link.
(Simi spricht Englisch, Italienisch und Französisch und natürlich Doggie, aber leider kein Deutsch...)
I GOT a phone call from a psychotic nutter friend of mine (with 3 concurrent diagnoses) ~ at first she pretended to be from the kebab shop. I knew it was someone mucking around but couldn't work out who, so I hung up.
She was quite a good friend of Mr Man ~ Mr Mephedrone, who chucked himself in front of the tube train and died early this new year. I told her that even though i didn't know him very well, I think about him every single day. (Which is true.) She said yeah, and she has nightmares of his mangled body every single night.
This woman has the very worst personal history I have ever heard. Abuse, neglect, horror. Psychosis in adulthood. A lifetime of major depressions. Plus a personality disorder to boot. I don't know how she survived. I just don't get it.
Anyway when I told her I hope to get counselling at this psychiatric centre ~ where it's not time-limited to periods of 12 sessions, I mean what can you achieve in 12 sessions?? I only STARTED making any sort of progress last time on two years plus a 6-month extension. This stuff has to be longterm. And I think about Woody Allen and think, does counselling or therapy help anyone at all? Or is it just a tail-chasing exercise..? Or a psychological version of staring at one's own eyes in the mirror and saying "you're so beautiful". I have grave doubts about counselling's effectiveness and what it's used for. And I used to get peeved immensely when my old psychodynamic therapist used to ask me how I felt about her ~ ie of "transference". Something weird happened in our relationship and I confronted this distant (yet close) and clinical (yet warm) woman and got totally under her skin. I know I did. She said one week I turned up, after the 4-week August recess and was crying in the foetal position, yet I can't remember any of it. She kept saying "I think you need more help than I can give you" ~ meaning a psychiatrist. But I had deep distrust of those note-takers who, I believed, would only hold up what I'd told them against me.
Anyway I told her my new nutnut doctor said to me he would have a word with the guy in charge of the Deep Psychiatric Counselling Centre about me becoming a patient there. And she told me "that's where you go when you've got a borderline personality disorder. And I shivered, because that label has risen its ugly head yet again. She also told me she thought I had clinical depression. Of course she isn't a trained mental health professional, but this woman has spent enough years of her life in psychiatric institutions to know a profile when she sees one.
In a way I don't care WHAT name anything I have or am might be. In the past I have tried to avoid any sense of labelling and pretended to be fine when I wasn't fine at all. But this approach never worked, never got me anywhere.
Many nutters wear their diagnosis round their neck like a gold medal ~ and THAT I find disconcerting. So I don't know what to do.
I have another nuttydoctor's appointment in a month's time... so THEN... we might see...!
It's the most wondrous springtime weather and I'm off to get a Mauritian Vanilla cheesecake from the Morrisons best range (£4 if I remember right) ~ I've been craving it all weekend...
The cherries have yet to blossom... I can't wait till they do. They are the Japanese symbol for the passing nature of life and death... our old dog died, fading slowly away under a profusion of pink blossoms. I never wanted her to go. She was grey like a seal and used to open her boze and say "HELLO!" in the squealiest posh accent. You could poke her sides of her mouth and she would "BO" this way on demand...
LET THE NEWS BE WIDELY SPREAD... MY ACQUAINTANCE and Valium Marilyn's friend the "Greek Crackhead ..." is dead!
She was never really my friend and we never got on. So I'm not going to start pretending to adore her now. I hate that sort of hypocrisy. I feel sorry for her boyfriend though. He is said to be utterly distraught.
Medically this is a familiar story: middle aged person ~ cocaine user (snorted/injected/smoked ~ it doesn't matter) ~ has sudden heart attack and dies. Apparently in America one heart attack patient in two tests cocaine positive... So none of this is any surprise.
But still... Rest in Peace Andra xx ~ Safe at last
2. The drug services seem obsessed with the idea that crack use can spread the hepatitis C virus. I'm not so convinced. This whole thing comes about from self-confessed crack smokers, who claim never to have injected anything, and yet still test positive to the blood-borne hep C virus. Would you take a crackhead's word for anything? They say things like "the hot pipe can burn your lips"... yet most pipes are built in such a way they do not GET hot at the mouth end... Grrrr! o I dunno.
I MET SOMEONE I KNOW who also happens to be labelled schizoaffective. That is Pinxx. She bought me an alcoholic lemonade, but she drank tea. She said when she starts drinking she can't stop. Not like me. I can. I stopped drinking after 3. We smoked Sterling and Pall Mall cigarettes. She says she sees faces in the floor like I do. I see little furry animals everywhere, kind of like patterns you see in clouds. And no, not every second of every day. Occasionally. Even when it is happening it only happens a few times per day. I had an extra-lovely dose of methadone in the night so I was extra woozy in the morning. In fact I didn't get up until past 11am. I met X and Y my 2 friends who are sometimes helpful. I told them I had schiz-affective. I only tell people the full name who I think might understand it. They didn't. X said only 1 in 1000 people is bipolar. This is nonsense, it's one in 50. Or one in 100 each of type 1 and type 2. Schizoaffective is 1 in 200 so I'm rare!
So Pinky and I had tea. There isn't much else to tell. We talked about mental hospitals and drugs. The secretaries on the next table seemed to find our conversation fascinating but I didn't play up to that. I don't think P would have approved. She is still using heroin, which pisses me off. She's not a heroin addict and never has been fully addicted. She's done cold turkey 3 times but can't have been fully addicted. She would have gone crazy if she was. Remember the time I clearly met diagnostic criteria for bipolar first was when I detoxed cold turkey. I was manic-depressed (both). I've seen tired mania (no physical energy but the mind seething over) and that was me when I came off the heroin. Full mania means you're shining out energy like an electric fire. Others can warm themselves on your heat.
I'm back taking the meds once more. It's very boring, but I do it.
