Racy Brain (not down the drain)

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

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

Bipolar?

I HAVE just been scanning the internet to find out what on earth is supposed to be wrong with me. What I found out is not very reassuring.

~ It can't be drug-induced psychosis. That is a paranoid-schizophrenia type condition. I do get paranoia but the other stuff I get is way more extreme. I don't have the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia or drug psychosis

~ I thought there was a condition called "substance-induced mood disorder (bipolar)" but there is not. Substance-induced mood disorder is mania, hypomania (mild mania), depression or a mixed state, all of which I've had in the past 2 months. What doesn't seem to happen in substance-induced mood disorder is that the mood switches poles eg from depressed to manic (as mine did about 3 or 4 weeks ago) and if symptoms last more than a month from last drug use it's generally NOT considered substance-induced

~ Drugs can worsen bipolar disorder (a phenomenon known as kindling) but this doesn't mean they necessarily caused it. Bipolar has a strong genetic component. If you have one parent with type 1* bipolar or recurrent depression, you have up to a 40% chance of getting bipolar i disorder [my mother "can tell by the calendar" when she's going to be depressed and it happens every year. Recurrent clinical depression]

~ Heroin flattened out my moods markedly. That was the first change I noticed in my life: no more mood swings. In fact I had practically no depression in the first 2 or 3 years, so to me heroin was a mood-stabilizer, a mood stabilizer that has now been taken away

~ heroin is not generally associated with drug induced mood disorders; the culprits tend to be crack, speed, ecstasy (uppers); cannabis; psychedelics and benzodiazepine withdrawal

~ at least 50% of people with bipolar disorder abuse drugs and even more abuse drink

~ I have had literally every symptom in the diagnostic criteria for both mania and depression in the last 2 months

~ the hallucinations I had were actually more extreme than is normal. Apparently when most bipolars hear voices they just hear murmuring sounds and can't make out the words, or hear their name. This stuff was going on with me years ago in depression. Now it's clear words, sometimes sentences, and one time a half-hour monologue; I also have seen visions that is I can stare at a blank wall and a movie appears (this only happened a couple of times when I was extremely hyper)

~ I don't have all symptoms at all times. Nobody does. It's impossible to hear voices in the most intense mania as my head is full of just a roaring noise and I make a roaring noise, think a roaring noise and am a roaring noise. This is what happens when you go so incredibly fast you can no longer think

~ Naomi at the drugs clinic who is a dual diagnosis professional thinks I'm bipolar

~ I have the same symptoms and experience as everyone at Nutter Club who is bipolar. But not the schizophrenics. Since I've been coming we've only had bipolar and schizophrenia in the room

~ I have had bipolar symptoms going back 15 years; in the beginning they were mild and transitory (first triggered by antidepressants); over time they have grown more extreme. And now look at me

~ I am not diagnosed bipolar. I just have all the symptoms.

~ And if you want my opinion: when I'm high I think it's fantastic and don't care what it's called; when I'm low the idea of actually being a real life manic depressive is equal to having no life at all

Comment if you like but don't call me a hypochondriac. You haven't seen me, you've only read me. Nobody who sees me doubts I have severe mental problems. I was so out of it one time a couple of weeks or so ago that one of my friends, a 50 year old man, cried

And if you believe I'm being negative, just bear in mind that telling myself I'm sick is the one thread of reality I have left when I lose it and I do lose it. If you think I exaggerate my experience do us both a favour and drop reading this blog. I tell it as it is

Yes I still feel hyper now but have barely any psychosis (yes you can be psychotic and know it: read Kay Redfield Jamison's memoir. She's type 1 bipolar and a clinical psychologist. Knowing the terminology didn't save her from utter madness. It saves nobody)

My situation is not as extreme as it was previously. It's 4:20 I'll do 5 mins in bed but if I don't sleep in that time I'm getting back up. And that's it.

I am not saying I'm bipolar. I'm saying I have all the symptoms. There's still a chance I could somehow get off the hook on this drug-induced thing but nothing I've heard seems to back this possibility up. So this is the situation. I still don't know, but I need to know. I'm fed up of not knowing.

One last thing: yes I think too much. That's another symptom of a manic episode. "Flight of ideas" (racing thoughts).

Night all. I'm doing that 5 mins in bed in a sec. I fully intend not to sleep. (Why waste the time?)

PS I've had ONE drink today a White Ace cyder at 3.75 units alcohol (at 10mls alcohol in a unit).

*type 1 bipolar is more severe than type 2, which involves depression (which may be severe) and mild mania. Type 2 never has psychotic features; type 1 involves full mania and 70% of sufferers become psychotic at some time or other. Hearing voices or seeing visions qualifies as psychosis, whether or not you're also "delusional"

For those who are interested, BipolarAbout.com probably has the best info on the condition.

Voices to Choices

04:37 hrs. On BBC World Service radio there's an interview with a "man living with schizophrenia" and his Dad who wrote a book.

I notice the very first time he properly heard a voice he climbed a tree, believed he was in the hanging gardens of Babylon and believed Brighton ("London on Sea" on the South Coast) was Biblical Babylon, seat of all that's wrong with the world... I have friend who had paranoid schizophrenia (now diagnosed unipolar schizoaffective) who heard a voice telling her to take of all her clothes and run down the street naked SO SHE DID.

I hear voices every few days now. But they're nowhere near as loud as they were a couple of weeks ago. They're more like the voices I heard a few years ago. Murmuring.

They never tell me what to do. They don't impart information usually. As I said they tend to echo my thoughts or speak them aloud. Or lots of them babble random words and short phrases, some spoken to me, others just talking to nobody in particular.

When I was in the mental hospital the guy asked me what they said. It's very difficult to repeat what a lot of them say as they're so random. So when he went out to speak to the very fantastical lady doctor I specially concentrated on what they said. I lost one, but the other was talking about somebody beating somebody else up. This was like words coming out of the ceiling, not so much to me but to anybody listening, I would like to say. But it seemed to be speaking for my benefit.

The day before I heard a woman's voice in my left ear say "nervous breakdown" then some other voices said other things. Within 2 minutes a unisex alien type voice said in my right ear "schizophrenia". I was getting ready to go to an NA meeting and this put me on a real downer all night. I was very paranoid all the way there on two buses. I found it very hard to cope that night.

This is what pisses me off about NA; if I talked about this in oblique terms, people might say "oh I know!" But I think how many of you actually did go not just to one but several meetings in a row hearing voices pretty floridly. How many bus rides did you brave, feeling that every conversation you heard on that bus was directed to, or talking about YOU? Do any of you actually know how this feels?

This is what gets me about NA. They will assume I'm paranoid because I was on crack TWO YEARS AGO. That I feel like I'm on ecstasy because I was on it TEN YEARS AGO. Took E the very last time EIGHT YEARS AGO. And that was after a long break from popping those pills.

I last took one single £5 rock in 2 tiny pipes in early December, not having smoked any for weeks. I took crack a handful of times between late 2008 and late 2010. And I do mean a handful. Months between pipes. Crack psychosis happens when you pipe and pipe until you are paranoid and hallucinating. (Crack psychosis is nearly always paranoid in form. You don't go HIGHER off the crack than you were on it! ~ as I did!)

Before this I was smoking it strictly once a week on Mondays only. This lasted several months. Before early summer 2008 I was smoking crack a few times a week.

So why these extreme mood swings now? I don't know an answer.

My first priority is dealing with my mood states. I know they are extreme compared to ordinary people's moods. If you think I'm self-indulging let me describe the extreme.

About two weeks ago I was ON sleeping medication and sleeping between two and a half and just over four hours per night (some nights I slept longer due to physical exhaustion, but the night before I would have slept barely at all; I was on a 48 hour sleep cycle).

So I slept very little. Woke usually between 2:30 and 4am my mind rushing and full of loud, fast 1992 hardcore rave tunes. I felt like I'd fallen asleep high on E at a full-on rave. Jumped out of bed, danced in the kitchen, kettle raging, drinking black coffee for warmth. Straight online, skimming and skating all over the place. On the highest days my body was amping with energy as on ecstasy, crack, amphetamines full-on, every moment of the day, as if I had taken an electricity pylon and applied several thousand volts through body and brain. Utter electrification. Unlike with drugs, even crack, which focus you in a way, I was scattered all over the place. And very, very fast. WAY faster than speed, E or crack. I wasn't paranoid when this ultra-high. I felt like I was flying. I felt not just on top of the world but on top of the universe. THAT is an extreme mood swing. I was too out of it to cope with any chore more complicated than collecting methadone from the chemist. This I did first thing, when I was still pretty together. As the day rushed on I lost it more and more only settling down after my sleeping pill in the evning.

It was very difficult to post online during this phase, but I pushed through the experience, tapping rapidly into my machine. The photos and links appeared over the next couple of hours, when I had patience to endure the time-consumption of messing about.

These were the days when I peaked whirling into an ultra-hyperspeed vortex whirring with words and letters faster and faster, no words, just endings, no endings just sound. Roaring noise. That to me is utter madness. Not paranoia, not voices, but to lose my capacity for thought. Not thinking in English any more. Just a headful of roaring noise. Utter insanity. Spoken, thought, experienced. No reason left.

When NA talk about "insanity" they mean running about caring nothing for anything but drug use. Or getting paranoid enough on crack to be crouching behind a door thinking police or robbers are about to break it down to take your stash. I have never heard anybody share about no longer thinking in English. Or their mother tongue if that is a different language. So you see I feel alienated from these people who talk of "mood swings" and being "manic" and I realize they probably mean ups and downs. Not energy so immense it results in periods of sheer incomprehension on the most basic level. They talk about feeling "bad" when not on drugs. Not so good they're walking on sunshine, higher than they ever got on coke, every single day! This makes me very lonely. If even NA, who are there for the hardest cases, cannot understand me, then I've gone into the realm of the most fucked up of the fucked up, and who can help me?

I don't feel sorry for myself, except to nag myself to get help. If you can't feel sorry for yourself, you cannot feel worthy of help. I've texted Naomi ("Nigh-oh-me!") the Dual Diagnosis lady who runs the Nutter Club. I said I had an issue about my antipsychotic meds. They are not agreeing with me. Short of spending half a page trying to explain I cannot describe what's wrong suffice it to say it's like a nasty type of drowsiness. Drowsiness where you cannot sleep.

Yesterday I went and bought Valium on a street corner. Much as anyone needs Valium I needed it. Yeah I was self-medicating a very specific nasty symptom. I was not taking it for boredom or kicks. Before y'all judge me bear in mind I was NOT using Valium when so hyper I was sleeping 5 hours out of 48. I didn't use it when I was losing my temper daily over nothing but my own mental meanderings which were so intense it was like exploring Fungus the Bogeyman's Inner Maze. But this side-effect was bad enough I felt I needed something to straighten me out. So I took that something.

My life hasn't been terrible. Not by addict standards. Off the top of my head I can think of two people whose lives have been considerably worse than mine. All suffering is relative.

You must bear in mind if you think I'm pulling a "poor me" that my mental state has SAVED ME from craving, has PUSHED ME OUT of the drugs realm into a nutty realm where for the most part, heroin seems about as relevant to me as a waterslide on the moon. This is what you need to understand if you think I'm exercising self-deception. What I say here is my literal experience. Not symbolic, but literal. Yes you may think it's unreal, but it's real to me. This is my life. However insane it may sound to you, it's saved me.

I'm blessed. Because I'm living life without heroin. I'm doing what I dreamed of for years ~ yet could not manage.

Heroin made life just about bearable. Methadone made life unbearable; it kept me depressed and suicidal. On methadone life was utterly un-do-able.

I cannot understand how anybody can hold down a job on methadone. If it does to everyone what it does to me, then the idea of methadone "stabilizing" anyone is an outright lie. People say it makes them feel "flat". I don't really feel flat. I go into a trough or a peak. Flatlines and methadone and me do not go together. Heroin put me on as flat a flatline as I've ever been in my life. I asked about being prescribed it or morphine for medical reasons and the Dual Diagnosis meeting erupted into the jolliest expectorations of giggles, cackles and guffaws I've heard in a long time.

I noticed since I have been drugs negative I get totally different treatment from psychiatrists. I get their undivided attention now. What they're seeing is the Real Me, not a dampened down Junkified Version. Yes I'm still an addict, but a methadone addict, no longer a heroin addict. I say this with confidence knowing I don't generally WANT heroin any more. Methadone does very little (but probably still a slight something) to damp down my mental state, which is still by and large UP not DOWN. Better to be UP than DOWN so I'm not complaining.

The UP I'm on has been many times more intense than the mixed up UPs and DOWNs I was riding in December. Those crashed so bad I felt worse than ever in their aftermath.

Broken, wounded and very raw. I don't ever want to feel that way again.

The way to avoid that is by staying UP. Nothing is required to achieve this, bar an overheated brain. My brain has cooled but I'm not depressed (thank God). The last Big Depression eroded my self-esteem like nothing else ever did. Junkies are meant to swagger. They're supposed to be full of shit. Yet I didn't even have superficial confidence. Nobody wanted to know me. I drifted from my friends. Kept myself to myself. Set up everything necessary to Break Free.

I have implemented Stage One: stick to Methadone. Stage Two is cut down methadone. Stage Three: cut OUT methadone. Stage Four: opiate CLEAN.

Please God, let me be Clean. It's all I want in the short term. No more drug addiction. Ever.

No more. No more. No more.




PS these students moaning about tuition fees ~ learn a foreign language, study abroad. Tuition fees in many Eurozone countries are a TENTH what they soon will be in the UK!

Supported housing!

£1.50 Roast Dinner

ICELAND'S £1.50 COMPLETE ROAST BEEF DINNER is in the microwave. Cooking merrily away. 6 mins then 3 mins then put the blinkin Yorkshire pudding in then 1 min how many mins mins chuck 'em in the bins shuttup. O man it's WINDY outside. There's been gusting gales the last 2 days.

That brainy Susie Dent is explaining something to do with etymologies of snake bites on Countdown. Susie Dent is my ideal woman. Brainy. Looks like she can handle herself in a fight (joke).

O man this dinner is doing my head in. Microwave. In. Out. Stir it all about.

I just spent an hour in a car in a carpark talking shit with someone to pass time. It was fun in a different way. O man I'm craving alcohol. Shall I get some yes I'm out the door one second...

No I'm not getting any. Yeah I'll get low alcohol Smirnoff cloudy lemonade. If they've restocked. I bought all the last batch!

A load of Yum Yum Smirnoff Vodka stuff went through my head on the way too and from that voddy shop. They've restocked. Know a good vodka customer when they see one (me).

Yeah my name is Gledwood I'm an alkie. I know. I confess. I don't like being a lousy drinker.

I feel hyped up enough already without drink dulling me down. I only took it to dull pain. I'm not in pain now I'm in pleasure so why dull it down? See: stupidity.

Eh that find the money programme is on. When you open boxes. Can't eve n recall the name. DEAL OR NO DEAL! That's it. Thomas is on. "I think this is one of those we're going to remember for a very long time," says Noel Edmunds. Not likely. Who remembers crappy gameshows. Don't answer.

I hear my name come from inanimate objects on the street: does this mean I'm a mentally ill nutter? Don't answer!

Right I have to go, cheerio!

PS Why do people mix up honesty with frankness? I'm frank, doesn't mean I'm honest. I am but I don't see that one means the other. Maybe frankness is a TYPE of honesty. Yeah that'd be it...

PPS That Iceland £1.50 roast beef dinner tasted like the smell of dog food

Come down now

I THINK I HAVE COME DOWN NOW. Down to normality. I still felt excessively cheerful even yesterday, which I'm hardly complaining about; it was fantastic; but I knew it was the back end of a mood-swing, just as uncharacteristic breeziness can be the back end of a hurricane.

This is what gets me worst about being "ill". Judging normality in the context of sickness. If I don't I'm not going to know if/when it happens again. It's always come back before.

I don't want right now to go into a list of times I've gone up, but it's happened at least 5 times, probably 10 times. Some of those times can be blamed on a drug. Others can be blamed on "viral infection" (colds/flu). Depression I've had far more of. I first got depressed enough to be thinking of dying when I was only 10.

I'm not angry about not having been "treated" ~ how do you treat a depressed child? I wouldn't want my kid on meds. Talk therapy I don't think would have worked on me, not at that age. (It did work when I had it later. I'm only wary of it now from having got to a stage when almost nothing at all in my life feels personal to me. It's all just some story I've told endless times to endless professionals.) What does feel personal are the memories I share with my family. The times I shared with them when growing up feel more dear to me now than they felt at the time. In a sense my treatment was the good treatment I got off my family. And you need to bear in mind the worst of this depression occurred over 2 periods both about a week long, over about 2 months. Then, after that I was more OCD than depressed.

I saw a thing on TV where two men who had been in constant, severe depression for over a decade and one woman who had been in a parallel state on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (couldn't stop counting backwards, etc) had psycho-laser-surgery into the bit of their brain handling emotions.

All three made a dramatic recovery. One had to have a touch-up job when depression returned, but he was OK. Point being OCD and depression, including bipolar depression, were situated at precisely the same point in the brain. Which explains to me how I switched one "diagnosis" to another. Of course I don't have an official diagnosis as no dr. heard about this till 10 years after the fact. When I was depressed again. This time at university.

That was the worst depression of my life. I got badly depressed on heroin. You could say this was worse because at university I wasn't suicidal, not most of the time. On the heroin I was. And I was seeing nasty twisted faces in the carpet, in piles of clothing, in discarded carrier bags. I also heard voices. But the faces happened most frequently. Every day at some points. I think back to that time in horror of what might have happened had I been persuaded to drop that heroin. Considering this was depression WITH self-medication. What would it have been like with no meds bar methadone (which does almost nothing bar keep my body from being sick). As the dr. said it probably was "depression with psychotic features" ie as bad as depression gets. THIS is why I'm scared. This is why I HATED having that psych evaluation the other week while so hyper people couldn't follow what I was saying. Or had to keep putting me back on-topic.

[I hated the psych evaluation because it threw up rubbish from years ago I just did not and do not want to think about.)

But this 45 minute (was it really that short? It took up 5 hours of mental time I'm telling you!) this psychiatric history the guy had to take, before a Very Attractive TV Girl Doctor with shiny tights, really shiny black leggings that looked absolutely amazing and I felt myself light up when she came in (gave myself well away on that one)... (she must have looked over his report) and asked more questions along the same lines: not sleeping, going too fast, irritable mood T-ing into euphoria, paranoia, voices. I don't think they covered visions, which I also had that day. Their magnolia wall turned into the most amazing movie. I was hearing voices enough that rushing along their corridor every single room had babble emanating out.

This was the day I played aeroplanes on a swivel chair, like a 3 year old. Nobody was watching. I was in a private room, away from the receptionist. The whole point of a mental hospital, apart from saving your life is to give you somewhere to be crazy, so this behaviour is OK there, and doesn't contribute to your notes, unless it's done on a ward, in which case you're being "observed" they want to know how much energy you have on different days to see whether it's going up or down or is same every day... all that stuff. I know about moods from my little library of "how not to be" Depressed Books. Which I sold years ago.

Last night I kept having flashes of what I hoped wasn't depression. I don't feel depressed now. Not hyper, not depressed. Not slightly hyped up (which is really really nice). So I'm just lazy and lacking the amazing energy I had.

Going UP was too quick, but coasting down I really felt good, the way you coast down at the end of a rollercoaster. The going up happened so fast and with such paranoia and irritability it wasn't really good. But I had a fine week last week, even though I knew really I was coming down. I kept hoping I was going up again.

The things that might sound scariest to you weren't necessarily worst for me. Euphoria of course feels wonderful, grandiose is great. Paranoia I tended to get more when I was on the way into or out of the Ultra State. Going so fast I couldn't think any more, that was the worst. That to me is true madness. No thoughts in the head just noise like racing cars, whizzing about. That was the time I made myself think French to bring myself out of it. Visual hallucination is amazing. (Twisted faces in carrier bags happened in depression and technically that's called illusion as the crumpled bag sets it off, true hallucination is like me staring at that wall and seeing Visions.) Voices are usually just echoing my own thought out loud, or making suggestions. Occasionally they are abusive in a name-calling way. I never hear voices ordering me what to do or conversing about me. Those voices are said to be more characteristic of schizophrenia.

I went to a schizophrenic forum yesterday and couldn't relate to the level of paranoia. If I was "psychotic" it was in a much more fragmented way, where nothing adds to a whole, it's just weirdness. Not as frightening, as you might expect, when it actually happens. A lot was just funny e.g. the stairs exclaiming "oink oink poink poink!" as I descended to the front door. (Another illusion: the sound acts as trigger to a reinterpreting brain).

So that's what it's like to go mad. The peak lasted about 2 weeks. The week before I was horribly depressed some days, irritable and telling an anonymous commenter to F off, because his rapidly skimmed words seemed to be having a go. I repeated myself twice and thought "hang on a sec you're getting a bit vehement here..." but I didn't understand my own behaviour. So I was probably up for about 3 weeks in total. As I say the going-into stage is very hard to discern. Y'all might remember I was starting a mood, sleep and drink diary. I obviously felt some need for a mood scale going up as well as down, and that just about puts the issue in a nutshell. I knew I wasn't right.

I'm seeing a shrink once monthly. I'm on risperidone 2x2mg daily. Today I take it with methadone one mornings, one nightly. 4mg is half the usual maximum for bipolar; 40% of the usual max for schizophrenia. There's a chance I could have a "substance-induced mood disorder" (as well as pre-existing depression) ~~ but what substance is setting it off. Considering I WASN'T in withdrawal in December, most definitely wasn't in January, was ON heroin when I was hyper before (but not crack) was on heroin and crack (Mondays only) when antidepressants set me off badly one time before... blah blah it doesn't seem to phase in with anything. True withdrawal or switching off heroin on to anything eles has set me off high or low every single time (Subutex was a high: music sounded amazing! So good on days 1 and 2 I wanted to dance outside.)... So I don't know I just don't know.

I've been told this "happens to everyone" well I haven't seen that. What I'm telling is precisely what happened and I know people with schizophrenia etc. I know what's mild what's severe mine was edging towards the latter. I don't know anyone who got it this bad from drugs. Anywhere. At Nutter Club earlier today, a bipolar woman said "when I was depressed at NA they told me it was because I wasn't doing the steps properly and they said come off my medication". I said "I decided I'm going to tell anyone who says that: yeah I'll come off psychiatric meds. Only if I can stay at your house." This caused uproarious laughter.

Have a nice day. I'm trying. It just feels weird being "normal". (And how long will it last!?)



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HAPPY DAYS!

GUY ON HEROIN: UNION SQUARE NEW YORK CITY
THIS GUY HAS HAD "FIRE DOPE" AS THEY CALL IT THERE ("PROPER GEAR" AS YOU'D CALL IT HERE).
IT'S WHAT HAPPENED TO ME QUITE A FEW TIMES. TIMES I REMEMBER IS WHEN I WAS STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROOM NOT KNOWING WHAT DAY IT WAS. SOMETIMES I DIDN'T KNOW WHERE I WAS...




EH! DALLAS is coming back! JR will be shot again! (Sorry I got taken in by the Independent newspaper's pun. They mean shot on film. Ukkkh.)

Dynasty was nicer to look at. Better homes. Heather Locklear. Joan Collins. (Dallas had April Stevens). Dynasty had near-incomprehensible story lines. Dallas had so-called cliffhangers but how those stories dragged! Please Lorimar: faster, better this time!

Dodgy Chinese/Ghost

I HAD HEARD staff-members at record shops could be a bit sniffy according to what you bought. I never had that problem with Sly and the Family Stone limited edition CDs or even years back with my Ultimate Rave/Reactivate II compilations. Maybe I was in a touchy mood, but I did appear to notice a slight smirk cross Mr Dweeb-Glasses' poker-face when I handed over my £3 for Whoopi Goldberg/Patric Swayze/Demi Moore in Ghost!

I took it home and watched it. I know this is old hat to y'all but I've never actually owned one of these DVD machines before. I was amazed how superior the picture was to video.

Then I glanced through Further Options and saw I could have Ghost speak to me in German. So that's what I did today. Watched Ghost in German and followed nearly all of it!

(Big wow, considering how terrible my German was just over a year ago...)

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I also went to NA. Crowded out. Heard the life story at the beginning, which is called the chair. Couldn't sit still longer than that. Had to go out for a cigarette and a walk home.

Majorly sweaty palms; hearing voices but the antipsychotics block most of that out.

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I bought a horrible dodgy undercooked Chinese chicken curry mix vegetable fry rice. Not going there again. Nearly raw onions. Chicken too soft. Microwaved the second half; instincts say don't eat it. I'm saving a sample (not reheated) in case I get ill. So I could prove what caused it. I've never in my life reported a restaurant or takeaway and I don't intend to start now. I wish they'd just cooked the food properly. Ruined my favourite meal. Nearly £8 down the drain...

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Here's a poem I started writing years ago. I still remember it in my head. I only have one stanza and a bit I'm afraid. It recalls me staring into the River Thames from a boat and seeing fantastical shapes in the shimmering water:~~

Glance and gleam the fishes in the sky,
sun has streamed them the strong river's course,
one by one they wink into my eye,
mud-and-blue flashes of fish-force,
darting each rippling willow between ...

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THE ORB: LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS (CUMULO NIMBUS MIX)



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THE ORB: LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS (DEEP DUB)



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GHOST: FINAL WALK TO HEAVEN SCENE
i nearly cried when watching this. y'all know a big cry baby like me would just fess up if i did actually weep, but i didn't. that was a close nearly though. i love things that take you away from ordinary reality; things that are sublime



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Illustrated: pottery scene from Ghost starring David Hasselhof and British comedian Allan Car; hopefully not a countdown to being sick on that Chinese ..(!)

Saturday Afternoon Quick

I am rushing faster than I thought I was. Two cups of tea set it off, if you want blame. Should I blame something or was it just me? I felt anxious, then had to find my keys, then had to go get methadone after going post office to get out money to lend someone else. Then I went saw Paddadadster gave him £25 then I felt PHEWWWEWWWW!! Deflated, down to the ground, but in a good way, then I was hyper again by the public library, pacing, racing. Pinging in all directions inside there. Found a Readers Digest Family Health guide, right there on the shelf-end, found myself in there, didn’t like what I saw. Snapped book shut. Pinged out, up the road, phone rang someone had seen me who was in that Magical Mystery Tour Car last Saturday saying I saw you from the bus how’s it going. Very well. Very quick. I didn’t say quick, but talked it.

Now I’m in bedroom as other room so chilly my hands barely move. Open windows no heating. My own heater’s broken or the fuse has gone.

Last night I slept maybe 11 or 12 hours. 10:30 to 10:30 with some awake “uuuuuuh?!?” in between. First time I got up it was just after nine, but I was sure the click was broken and it was 7pm ie not 0900 but 1900 hours but no. It just felt like I slept hours and hours and hours MORE than I did. I had a weird dream about a servant girl from Upstairs Downstairs in our house sneaking upstairs to take the dogs for a walk.

I went to NA last night but was only there for the chair [life story given at beginning]. I was tripping* with “auditory hallucinations” all day and all night.

Yesterday day time I went to the laundrette but again was tripping. And trying not to drink too much as people think I’m an alcoholic when I just was off on one anyway.
That’s my diary for today and yesterday. Hope it makes sense.

Hope y’all are OK. Take care XX



*I haven't taken a drugs trip for over 10 years, this tripping/hallucinating is just me, what happens

JAM AND SPOON
thanks Lizzie
part of that's the tune from moby's GO. jam and spoon did AGE OF LOVE BY AGE OF LOVE remix
which is fantastic trance classic, from a Tsuyoshi psychotrance mix tape we had back in 1994 which seems ANCIENT now!



AGE OF LOVE AGE OF LOVE
this tune is transcendently beautiful. note the foreign voice "come on, dance with me, move your body..." trance was & is international
VIDEO the waters are Goa-green. When I went to India, the water I saw was emerald green, not sapphire blue I was expecting... except perhaps in Tamil Nadu, which is on the Bay of Bengal-cum-Indian Ocean (not the Arabian Sea as is Goa) ... I'd love to Goa back...
for non-trance-party purposes, i thik this mix is better than the one at the bottom



AGE OF LOVE AGE OF LOVE JAM & SPOON REMIX same as above but longer 6 mins not 3



MOBY GO 2 VIDEOS the distinctive tune is the twin peaks music, not the theme tune, the tune that made it seem so dreamlike in-sequence ...
apart from the awful piano break i quite like this one:~~~~~~~~



different visuals, different mix

Antipsychotics

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

How to get a life in 1000 easy steps

I say one thousand because that's very approximately 3 years and I think anyone Recovering from serious heroin addiction would be hard pressed to truly be able to say they'd broken free in less time.

All I'm doing at the moment is

1. seeing psychiatrists
2. going to mental health groups/meetings and methadone clinic appointments
3. sorting out housing problems (I think this social worker type person is meant to get in touch soon)
4. looking after myself in basic ways
5. going to NA

I'm not sure I could do more than that. Not today.

My attention was so scattered last week I could focus on nothing. Cooking was fun because everything burned (couldn't hang on to the fact it was in the oven) and the smoke alarm which "went right through me" felt absolutely fantastic. Rather than just pissing me off the way it normally would.

I didn't realize I had a truly "high mood" until last Wednesday when I got taken to a Mental Hospital for being too hyper (and proving I wasn't on drugs with a drug test) and having complained of mood swings (up and down) for a long time. And now being tired of just not functioning the way others seem to find it easy to function, and living in a mess. And also getting pretty badly depressed on occasion. These were and are what I'm trying to sort first. Drug addiction itself has to come second. As my old Worker, who was a mental nurse, told me I was "self medicating". At first I thought this was just a load of tosh that sounded good, though I'm sure I repeated it here. Then I slowly realized how true that was. Now I'm after either Nothing (ie I piece my life together myself with no chemical assistance) or I take psychiatric meds. The word "antipsychotics" has come up repeatedly and not out of my mouth. From doctors' mouths.

Yesterday I was in a meeting and couldn't focus for hearing voices. I was nowhere near as hyped up as I've been before. Yesterday morning, for example, I had this weird sensation of actually being in my body, the way I was before, but hadn't been for about 9 days ~ and didn't care about, at the time...

So I'm off to this doctor in about an hour's time. I will post what happened, unless I just decide to hibernate.

This is another problem, and I suppose it comes under self-care in the above list. I just am not sleeping the way "normal" people seem to or the way I used to (which often involved feeling crap and sleeping too much).

I was taking sleep meds (zopiclone 7.5mg). I was prescribed a week's worth and took it every day in an attempt to reset my sleep cycle.

It hasn't entirely worked, as on Tuesday night I slept between 1 and 2 hours then just woke up and got up. Yesterday I was absolutely exhausted and slept about 7 and a half, going to bed in the early evening and getting up at 2. Yes I know that's not ideal timing... just you try and be that tired, that distracted and not sleep, knowing there's a good chance you might go UP and keep going through the night.

Yeah I'm pretty sure this is what doc-docs like to call a "mood disorder". I certainly had one before (depression). Whatever this one is I cannot diagnose so that little issue has to remain there.

Now I'm off. I have pizza cooked for breakfast. It's only 10 past 10 in the morning, but I've not eaten since I got up. I have no appetite, interspersed with sudden, intense hunger.

So that's what I'm up to, and thanks to the person who said get a life at Melody's, you inspired a fairly focused post for once.

I told that person to get their own then tell me about it. I wasn't being entirely sarky: I'd be interested to know what that person does do with their time. I mean if they keep house, have cats, kids, a job. Or whether they're just some addict who cannot break their habit. I know how the latter feels, but not really the former.

Take care y'all...

:-)

Psych Clinic

I GOT VERY HYPER THIS AFTERNOON. SO HYPER I WAS LAUGHING MY HEAD OFF. I could not follow what anybody was saying, unless it was a formulaic receptionist (or psychiatric interviewer) type person.
Anything with twisting, turning or unexpected content had me rapidly lost. I got taken to the clinic by my druggie worker for being so out of it I couldn't follow him. Within half an hour I was repea pea pea pea pea pea pea pea pea pea peating words urds urds that didn't belongongongongongongongongongongongongong together and causing havoc in the waiting room where I couldn't help noticing three other people at the opposite pole. I did try and be considerate. I went exploring through double doors and ended up in a private room making abstract musical noises because that's what I was thinking.

I've not gone to NA. NA will have to wait. Sitting in a room full of poeple who believe I'm on drugs when I PROVED IT THIS AFTERNOON WITH A URINE SCREEN. Nothing but methadone. And benzos I don't remember taking.

I did keep wondering whether E and LSD were in my system, because this card didn't test for them. And acid, with it's quarter of a milligram blow-your-head-off speciality always used to be hard to test for.

The best thing to happen, bar causing havoc and breaking into an empty office and pretending to fly on a swivel chair was staring into a blank wall and watching the most amazing movie unfold in silvery-blue and psychedelic rainbow colours. The view behind my eyes was amazing. The lights in the psychiatric car park are particularly good. I think somebody deliberately added purple, green and yellow tinges to various ones just for manic people. Yes I was talking extremelyfast and according to my interviewer constantly derailing topic. I thought I was speaking quite reasonably. I also thought I was totally rational and normal until I got so euphoric I just could not stop cackling my head off.

The doctor seemed to think viewing "hallucinatory" voices as free entertainment was healthy not pervy. As I demanded to know. I expressed a lot of things LOUDLY AND VEHEMENTLY!!!!

But I'm home now. I mentioned not wanting to be sectioned only about 228,375,496 million times.

Akh I've got to go beddybyes now. I noticed myself coming down during the interview as when I first indulged in some ingingingiinginginginging I could not stop stop op op op op op for quite a few seconds sponge. among ung ung ung ung ung ung!! Then I could do it but not stop it (with the dr.) now I can't even utter syllables that first. I didn't stop moving nearly the entrie time I was there and noticed they gave up on getting me to sit during the interview. I was too hyper.

It was thinking in musical noises and clangangangangangs that bothered me, even as I came out of that most intense phase. I know I visibly frightened one horribly self-indulgent shouting and crying girl in the waiting room and frankly consider her so selfish and self-centred (I heard her endless display of phone-calling) and frankly I don't care. Better be frightening than abused. Especially in a psych clinic. That's what I think.

If I had gone in I'd have made sure to get wrestled to the floor and needle-stabbed. Don't think that would have been too hard, the state I wsa in. I was more hyperkinetic (not necessarily more high) than any maniac I've seen admitted. But I only remember two. And one was clearly exhausted.

By the way the theme of METHADONE NOT DOING ANYTHING TO HELP MY MENTAL HEALTH BY SHOVING MOOD SWINGS OF BOTH POLES INTO THE OPEN repeatedly rose its head.

I don't think I was being questioned re schizophrenia. I can't remember what I'm to do as far too fractured attention span. They didn't think it at all unusual that I can write but not read online. Yeah I can read snatches, but ask me the gist of an entire post and I'm lost or speaking about something else entirely before I ever reach your end point.

Today it was my cling-clang over musicality that got me I felt like such a nutter while I was doing some of it. Felt nothing but the vibe at other times. Realized staff had just floated past me without my noticing (rather disconcertingly) at others... My head's still a bit all over the place.

Well I hope I get FAR MORE EUPHORIC and a little less hyper.

No sleep since I don't know when. Not since yesterday late morning if I remember right. If you're obsessive enough and wish to know: you check.

Interestingly despite my hyperactivity and hilarious mood i was markedly less paranoid then yesterday. And the voices were less intense. And far less intense than early December when as I said I couldn't tell the difference between thinking and hearing. I remember that. And being rather confused by it. I have been and still am confused by a lot of things.

I'm not raising the spectre of severe mental illness in an Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Really am not up for being misunderstood (by people who assume you can only get high on drugs) and/or judged by rooms full of people, no matter how well meaning.

Hope y'all are OK. :-)

I really should try and get some sleep. It's supposed to make you less manic. And probably more depressed. I expect. So I'm scared of sleeping, but need to do it.

NA Again

THIS MORNING I heard the landlord's man saying "I'm outside the house" through my open window, then I heard him a few hours later on the phone talking about having moved my bed. I heard him. I'm questioning whether he was real now. Because just before I went to this meeting I heard several voices amongst random teasipping flowershop driving a car and buttering toast type things a woman said in one ear "nervous breakdown" then a male voice speeded up said a few minutes later in the other "schizophrenia" and this put me on a real downer. Usually I don't let them get to me but tonight they did. And now they know because if they can't read my mind, they can read my blog.

All the way there people were talking about me or I felt they were or saying weird things really wierd things like conversation at a rave club chillout room at 5am everybody drugged talking at rather than 2 and me saying nothing it fracturing in.
The meeting was OK I calmed down a lot in there. People talk about serenity well I did find a bit at least. But as I think I said in version 2 below as soon as I went to the loo the literal madness came back and was back all the way home and is still with me now at varying degrees at varying times but always still here. I feel like a starburst, a kaleidoscope, not a whole person not broken but funkily rearranged in a weird way I cannot say why or how or wherefore I can describe as best I can what follows is a deliberate speed of consciousness. Stream (steam train) of consciousness. And here we go:~

A letter to self. To future self. if I ever ever have a self back again this is for me, not for you but for me. I wasn't sure who it was to now I know...

22:51 18 Jan 2011 after NA
DUDE dude methadone disabled disability. Church. Satnus. The dmmmf kept going all the way there. That is the way my mind is going. No laundrette. Cleanest clothes I could muster. V bad paranoid mood everybody talking shit on bus all the way there. A rattle-voiced old man saying "hallelujah!" and "have a nice day" I don't know if he was trips and dripping on peaches or not. Then two crack dealers discussing my habit at the back and a kid at the front who sounded like a rave sample. These people were there. I saw them. But the voices in/from/around my head I didn't see but they followed me into the meeting where I eventually found some peace but was hearing them again the minute I was in the toilet which was like Aladdins Cave. I keep getting told to keep coming back. I complained about being judged for being on drugs when I'm not on drugs. What has made my brain go kaleidoscopic? All nuts all these ways every which way and all at once surrounded by itself in pieces like that kaleidoscopic. I'm not editing my grammar you wanna know how I think how I am this is it. Hey McDonalds very fucking rude dismissive but had to serve me woman did me x2 double cheeseburgers for about £2.80. Aren't they $1 each in the USA? Ripoffsville Britain how typical $2=£1.20 not £2.80!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am fed up tired and happy and want to laugh and everything all at the same time dude my computer dude dude. Why do people say dood. Wow. That's what I'm wondering. Christmas Carol Vorderman McGiffin. Akkh so that's it it it o fuck it this is an essay in selfwanderingness shall I post it and go or not go i will timestamp it and save for later. Not in mood to be judged yet again.

Illustrated: was looking for "henchman" as in my landlord's henchman. That word appears in Snow White so I googled Snow White Henchman and found gnomes like Itchy, Bashful, Spherical my robo-hammies (in name). Ha not so crazy now am I. I am quite sane... oh I don't know what is happening to me does anybody know?? Be honest I'm not taking drugs why does it go then come again then??

OK Voices I admit it you won tonight. You set me off on one. You won. Tonight.
That battle is won. The war ain't over.

PS 23:26 I read the top part 2 back methadone disability. Is that what's causing all of this? Methadone? Wouldn't surprise me at all. That a drug given by you know who is sending me mad. So what do I do?? Stop taking it? Take what? Cold turkey really sends me round the twist my family have seen me go and that was very mild compared to recently. Can't they give me something else? Or are they going to start playing mindgames? And where does the mindgame end and All Else begin? Biggest Question. And is this better than normality as I previously knew it I'm not sure. I'm not sure where I'm going. The TV looks amazing it's cartooning in the snow, no aerial but moving images in snow sometimes they look amazing. So am I tripping then? On what precisely??
[the sound is there, the visual channel half there through snow, it's enhanced in the most amazing way...]
Please somebody if you have one give a sensible answer.

23:44 just remembered supposed to rate mood? was it. that scale doesn't fit i was very para and then angry and then relaxed but trippy and now uptight and not feeling good but tired will try and sleep early exhausted don't feel i'm getting better though i feel it's getting worse hence need to scrap old scale and invent a new one that gives more separate biorhythms/mindrhythms

Drink: 3 cans so far but not into finishing can 4 (barely started) each is half litre 7.5% alcohol

PRAGA KHAN: INJECTED WITH A POISON
There's a rainbow inside your mind... injected with a poison: we don't need that any more
Sums up what my attitude to heroin used to be; is again



03:37 I had forgotten how hyped-up that tune sounded. Don't wanna sleep anymore. It will only bring me down. I wanna wake up buzzing like I did the other day, buzzing and rushing on free natural neurotransmitter ecstasy

06:00 eh! now look what I found. i clicked trish li going cuckoo, she's so funny she makes me laugh. what i didn't put is that she and i act a little bit the same. when i had hamsters i talked to them sometimes the way she's talking to her surroundings. i continued talking when they were dead, because the words were stuck in my head. yeah i have mental health problems. anyway: this vid shows another woman who is also manic but presents very differently. to me, she's acting way more like someone on uppers. more composed. speaking very fast. they call her grandiose but she's not that grandiose at all. thinks she has lots of money but there's none of the raging ego i've seen in the mental hospital in two particular patients of four i engaged with (one was very paranoid, the other very hyper and euphoric ~ these two patients i'm thinking of were boorishly boringly egocentric. the sort of person you don't really find interesting after a while, they're so arrogant, so into bigging themself up, though i liked one for the rest of his personality... point being notice how less fidgety and hypekinetic this black woman is than trisch. to me that is the difference between uppers and natural hyper. though the drug is called "speed" the natural version is way way faster and way more powerful. the euphoria of the drug can be intense and the drugged mood is more stable than the natural high, which switches in me into irritation very easily, not to mention paranoia; it also fluctuates during the day by a factor of up to ten... and as i said before ~ moving around, walking when i have to go somewhere, that really brings me up nicely. sitting in a chair doing nothing, i actually start coming down slightly... i can feel a high off caffeine that would make it illegal if you normally got it. alcohol can take some of the jittery edge off and further intensify a high into something really really nice, but you don't need a lot of drink to do it, just a single can or so. o yeah and ive had 5 cans today. so my drinking has gone up. and no i don't know what is causing mine. those 2 ladies are called manic, i don't know what i am, i just feel high and low and paranoia and tripping at different times, sometimes all together. what is that???

Medicinal Heroin Binge

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. Passive aggression (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

1: Methadone reduces the need for antipsychotic and antimanic agents in heroin addicts hospitalized for manic and/or acute psychotic episodes

2: Use of methadone in the treatment of psychotic patients with heroin dependence (abstract)

3: Heroin and psychosis (antipsychotic effects)

4: Heroin improves negative symptoms of schizophrenia

5: Methadone as a mood stabilizer in bipolar disorder

6: High dose methadone as antidepressant and anti-anxiety agent

7: Heroin reduces auditory hallucinations/80mg methadone prescribed as sole antipsychotic


GOOD NEWS: MELODY LEE IS BACK!
If you don't know Melody, she's one of the best junkie-bloggers out there. So read her stuff!

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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 ...

This is for Anna Grace especially ...

Slept!

WOW I SLEPT! For far fewer hours than it felt like, it has to be said. I thought it was evening when I woke up. It was midday. I didn't sleep till long, long into the night past 5 or 6 am. Cannot remember when. Then I slept!!

Without pills, which I didn't really want. Or glugging excess methadone (not really a temptation). Or drinking. I did "imbibe" 2 White Stars last night. To prove what was going on was not DTs.

To even think you have DTs you must be pretty far-gone.

Last night, when I was still going batshytcrazy, the POLICE were everywhere. I have no idea what happened. They were parked up all over the place. Wherever I looked some lady police officer in fluoro jacket seemed to be in the car. One particularly attractive one proved to be a parking meter. Ho hum. I was not in an "ordinary" state of mind.

The lights looked absolutely amazing. Then 2 police cars, blue flashers full on. Wow!! That was a moment!!

Then there were police everywhere, following me. Before that, my house, road, and all the shops were full of obvious crack dealers. Talking their horrible way they talk. And just being horrible people I want to avoid forever. Because i hate crack.

I am not trying to say people were serving up all over the place. Just these off duty bastards. Making piles of cash out of other people's misery. Spending the money in my local shop!!

Haven't a clue what was or was not real. That out of it. At one point my room seemed full of radios left on each babbling some different speech or tune. Then I started hearing voices speaking Spanish and Chinese. Now that has to be loony tunes.

I don't know what the hell has happened, and I don't feel I have fully come down. (Don't want to. Who wants normality anyhow??)

But I did sleep. And I am a bit less destructible, disinhibited... still barely any appetite. At all. Not hallucinating smoke and bubbles. Everywhere. This the baseline. Crazy stuff on top. Saw the Northern Lights in candy colors in my own house!! How amazing is that!! All free of charge of course. No drugs.

I did crave a go on the heroin. For about 0.2 seconds. Then I remembered how crap heroin actually is. First time I properly tried it all I could think was "is THIS what all the fuss is about!!" Marianne Faithfull put it best: "Big waste of time."

So there we go. Don't want that any more. Always kind of knew it was an expensive Chemical Lie. As people off it, especially people who had never been on, seemed far happier and more contented than any addict I had ever met, especially the ones still using.

No amount of heroin, no matter how good (and I know I wasn't being ripped off: nearly always disappointed with intros to other people's dealers) even when I was nearly unconscious, still wasn't good enough enough enough enough. Never ever enough.

Thank God all that is Over.

It actually feels Over. Over. Done with. Gone.

THANK GOD!!

PS thanks mental health person. Did get what you said. Was in a slightly "distractable" state. Couldn't get head round charging a mobile phine, putting key in lock, signing into internet stuff. So was only randomly able to achieve anything at all. How I posted I have no idea!

PPS 2303hrs just found this discussion on my favourite cheapie drink White Cider. (White Star #1 choice; White Ace #2 choice. White Ace doesn't taste quite as nice in my book. If you're foreign, get out of your head any apply cultured drink country pub fantasy. This is dirt cheap alcohol. Like liquid brillo pads. With bubbles.
Really nice with tropical fruit juice though. Addictively so!!
Not bad on its own when you get used. I use a mixer to be a bit responsible and make it less alcoholic. As do not WANT to be an alcoholic.

PPPS read this for a lurid depiction of Xanax/etc Valium/benzo withdrawals. In America. Sadistic Doctors in a rehab clinic?? Surely not!!