Far better than earlier

MY ACCIDENTAL "OVER" DOSE IS WEARING OFF. I am 90% sure I took 8mg risperidone instead of the prescribed 4mg. 8mg is the maximum ordinary dose for bipolar; 10mg the maximum ordinary dose for schizophrenia. Some patients (exceptionally) take up to 16mg but not being used to 8mg it knocked the crap outta me. And it WAS accidental. Not every day I didn't take it was accidental but no way would I deliberately take too much. I put the pill on the side ready for me to take and thought I'd lost it. In actual fact I'd almost certainly taken it. I feel such an idiot. So that drivel you got earlier is just how I feel on too many pills I'm afraid. Sorry I can't come up with something more positive when I'm in a negative state of mind. I took heroin again today and again it was rubbish. This on borrowed money as the DSS have messed up my claim. They're paying 2 weekly and thoughtfully inormed me of this when I was in a manic psychosis so of course none sank in. I vaguely knew the spacing was changing from weekly to fortnightly; what I didn't grasp was that I'd have to do a week on NOTHING. Thanks so much DSS. You wanna know my change in my medical condition GET FUCKED. I'm not telling them nothing.

If I inform them I'm diagnosed schiz-affective they'll only use it to play mindgames against me. No I do not trust them.

Thank y'all for finding so many links. Michael David Crawford's Living With Schizoaffective Disorder geometricvisions link was particularly good. Like me he tells people he's bipolar. It is easier to understand than schizoaffective wheich means bipolar with sparkly knobs on. Like MDC I hallucinate too much to be bipolar eg when I'm ill (not all the time) one time I bought a cyder and my change jingled "fuck off!" at me. My psychiatrist said that is schizoaffective not bipolar. I didn't bang on about the weirder stuff, more the more ordinary stuff to do with mood swings. Yet still he recognized schizoaffective when he saw it. My coping mechanisms are low for bipolar, which is again schizoaffective. So I accept what is wrong with me.

Seaneen at the secret life of a manic depressive says to me congratulations you're the top rung of the psychiatric ladder. Which means I'm less likely to be deliberately mucked around like a person with anxiety disorder would be, so I'm glad to be taken seriously even if it is in a way I wouldn't like. Seaneen is only joking. She's a brave girl who has had severe bipolar disorder since her teens. If you didn't laugh, as they say, you'd cry. And in most circumstances laughter outdoes tears. She got a big knock back when the Kings College, London nursing course she'd set her heart on turned her down, but like I told her, she's only so upset because she WILL make a difference, WILL put her heart into whatever she does. Just by reading her I can tell she would be a credit to whatever institution, company, team she joined.

Somehow she manages to handle her illness without being childish. I know I am being childish when I mention suicidal ideation and everything being pointless and worthless. That's how I feel, but how can I express it in a grown up way? I have absolutely no idea. Most people don't blog their actual breakdowns the way I did, so maybe it's par for the course. I don't know.

Well I'm here on my own with Michael Jackson singing. I looked EVERYWHERE for some music I could tolerate on repeat play and Michael Jackson was all I could find. Bear in mind I'm talking DVDs not CDs so it must have good videos. A lot of music I like has no videos at all. So Michael Jackson it was, along with Abba (Mama Mia) and Varied Contemporary (Moulin Rouge). HMV seem to have a thing against Madonna. Not one single disc of any description. Madonna's collected videos I would have gone for but they weren't there.

Thanks again for all the links; I'm going to look through them more carefully. No link any of you came up with was one I'd already read and I have googled away. I still don't get what illness I'm meant to have. Is it bipolar plus schizophrenia (the implication is NO). Is it a cross between the two (the implication is yes). In ordinary people's terms I'd say schizoaffectives I've met were the most messed up of all psychiatric patients. They get ultra-floridly psychotic: manic with even more psychosis. In psychiatric terms disorganized or hebephrenic schizophrenia (that strikes in the mid to late teens and strikes HARD) is probably the worst psychosis you can get. Most people's idea of psychotic apperas to be paranoid schizophrenia. You have to bear in mind there's also depressive psychosis, manic psychosis and schizophrenic psychosis as well as paranoid psychosis. Each of these has a very distinctive flavour, which is why I say being in a madhouse is FAR more interesting than being in a drug detox. Heroin/crack addiction bends unique people the same way. While nutters go mad after their own fashion. I mean I went into a space where I was the centre of a tornado universe my head so frazzled I had no English thoughts just Noise. Now I didn't even know it was possible to go mad like that. But I did. That is severe mania. See I learned something from my experience. I hope one day I would be able to help another person. As it is I need help to help myself and I do need it. I'm tired and I don't know what to do. It's confusing being ill and dull being less ill (a psychiatrist would say I was still unwell, I know the way they think now) so I'm stuck between a frying pan and a fire all the time. How the hell I find my way to sanity I've absolutely no idea.

And thanks again DSS for making me have to go begging on the street, something I only did for tube fares, food and drugs when I needed heroin money. Now I need to do it just to survive. So thanks DSS for accepting how fucked up I am on paper then treating me like I'm able to negotiate beaurocracy only someone in a paid job should be expected to deal with. I'm putting this to Deshane on Thursday. This week there is a special nutter club because it's ENDING and I don't want to go. I went last week as a gesture of support more than anything and nearly had a panic attack over it so I just don't know what to do. I'm fed up of forcing myself into things in the name of "being grown up" and just suffering, gaining nothing from it.

I learned from the schizoaffective write up that of the 3 personality types: weird (eccentric); avoidant (anxious) and antisocial (don't-care) I'm the first yeah a weirdo so no wonder I have schizophrenia!

Right I have to go I'm dying for a cigarette. I hope y'all are well and thanks again for the links they were very handy.


PS Didn't someone recommend the film Bucket List to me? I looked and looked but cannot find the comment, but thanks whoever gave it. I've got that already on DVD, I bought it during my manic DVD shopping-spree!

Illustrated: see how tiny my robo-hammies actually were. These are fully grown specimens! They're very flighty and like nothing more than pinging onto the floor and vanishing for days at a time. Itchy (the only one of my 3 who was remotely hand-tame)spent more than a week of her life AWOL on 3 separate occasions, the swine!

Snobbery

OK YA GOT YA SHOT OF FURRINESS look one post lower. Hibernation. I haven't done very much today except hibernate. I wanted to sleep last night and was maniac instead, as soon as I hit a lull I chucked risperidone down my throat, still didn't sleep. Realized I'd forgotten methadone. Took that and Nytol. Slept. Slept all day till four pm.

Heroin is slipping down down down in my affections. I got a really cool message last night callling me a drug snob over H4, H3. That is, preferring the injectable hydrochloride salts of heroin over heroin base which is strictly for smoking but can be injected with the addition of vein-rotting fruit acids. If I'd used more H4 (instead of just TWO batches in ten years) my veins might be in better shape. But then again I'd still be using and would have gone even more insane when I stopped, as more time would have passed and everything would be worse worse worse so maybe I should be thankful for H3 the drug that made me stop it. My veins are so bad now I just skin pop, rather than go in the neck or the femoral. Skin pop WHEN I do it. Which is now never. If you follow me you'll have to excuse the constant lapses in time. Past, present and future all converge here.

Anyway, yes I am a drug snob and doncha just love it! I love being a snob. There are drugs snobs, fashion snobs, intellectual snobs and cultural snobs (not strictly the same thing as painting and opera are cultural but not intellectual); money snobs (big time) and here in Lovely Britain you still get Class Snobbery or more commonly Inverted Class Snobbery. Just about any aspect of human life is enshrined in snobbery of some sort. Even junkies are snobs. To do with how long you use. How much you use (the littlest the best; the most the best)... and so on.

Moulin Rouge is on as I felt musical. I like the music in Moulin Rouge. If I were in that film I'd want to play the conductor. I'm way thinner than the conductor they cast but I'd do a good job at King of the Crazies.

Outside it may be rainining
But in here it's entertaining!

Couldn't have written a better couplet meself.

Here's the conductor:



The Moulin Rouge must have been quite good on absynthe.

According to Wikipedia, "a critic" said (probably last year) that:

Absinthe makes you crazy and criminal, provokes epilepsy and tuberculosis, and has killed thousands of French people. It makes a ferocious beast of man, a martyr of woman, and a degenerate of the infant, it disorganizes and ruins the family and menaces the future of the country.

Vincent Van Gogh was said to have been a heavy drinker of absynthe. I spell it with a Y.

I'm so not into drugs I have a pack of unopened needles. Just lying there on the floor. I am throwing all dirty ones out. This one stays vigin and unpenetrated until the day comes when I chuck it out or use it. Possibly to squirt ink over canvas or for some artistic purpose. Didn't say I'd use 'em for heroin did i?!

Well this has gone on too long. I tried to watch Cleopatra last night but was semi-conscious by the end. See I told you it was a drain on the attention.

Do you know City Roads drug detox actually have a "no cutting" rule. So they expect you to take away the only thing that "makes life worth living" and not act at least pseudo-suicidal. That's what happens in drug detox. Most people are suicidal. If you don't know that you don't know about addiction! Why do you think I get offended when NA tell me to "detox". They haven't seen me do it! It makes me lose my marbles. I lost then every single time I tried to do it or even switched medication. I got hyper on Subutex. Never realized what was happening but music suddenly sounded incredibly lush. I was glued to the music channel for days on end. In the mornings I was so happy it was unreal. Made the 3 days of going from heroin/methadone to Subutex a doddle but looking back I know I wasn't right. The other times it was just horrible.

I was into doing that Waismann method anaesthetic detox and getting the druggieclinic to fund it. They might if I impressed them with my logic. But considering every other detox I have done has perturbed the balance of my mind very obviously (and not worth going into here) and that even switching heroin to methadone had the walls speaking to me, and that my mind is fractured enough to be labelled schizo... I cannot see that I would wake up exactly in one piece... Know what I mean?

PS Heather's Mom writes addiction book reviews
http://heathersmom1.blogspot.com/2011/02/book-reviews.html?showComment=1299375596672#c563837765930657841

Well I wanted to end this on a positive. See below for the entertaining furrybunnyhammywithatail sleeping. That is a dormous:~~

Tea and Sympathy

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.

I'll tell you a secret...

LET ME REVEAL to you my most embarrassing of secrets. It happened when I was 16 and staying on a campsite in Belgium. This Lithuanian gypsy girl who looked "like Madonna" (Madonna was a huge star at the time)... anyway THAT should be enough to sucker anyone who follows me into logging in for a good read.

Now on to the real business. Heroin! Please somebody help me start this heroin production line of mine. I need (off the top of my head) lots of charcoal biscuits, ether, acetone, ethyl alcohol, hydrochloric acid, calcium carbonate and of course acetic anhydride. And I want lessons in how to turn opium paste into high grade white heroin hydrohloride (no brown junk, please) and how to do it in my own back yard using portable camping stoves for heat. I know you simmer the morphine base in acetic anhydride at approx 85C for 5 hours... what then? The H3 to H4 bit I know in principle... advice please. And can anybody arrange for me 50 tonnes of H4 white on tick? I'm good to repay and don't care about getting gunned down.

Well my mediation vacation is going swimmingly. Only people who meet me think something is wrong so I'm writing as rationally as possible to fool y'all. I'm not hearing voices today. My mood is barely hypomanic. OK: slightly hypomanic, as we speak. Hypomania is MILD mania. Full-on mania is like being in an explosion of colours, sound and impressions. Exhilarating! Hypomania is like a few lines of coke.

I had a beautiful Natural Cocaine binge all last night. I was bingeing on my own free neurotransmitters by not taking medication and it felt wonderful. I slept 5 hours this afternoon (fitfully, it has to be said). I love sleeping, even for a few hours. The night before I slept over 11 and didn't want to be moved.

My mood is "cycling" that is I get mood swings lasting very approximately 24 hours to 7 days. High and low. The highs are like free cocaine as I say so no complaints there. They only get acid-trippy on the very extreme high. Naomi from the Dual Club says "you might be right" when I bitterly told her my symptoms get "severe" (by psyh standards: normal standards mean nothing, by normal standards I'm a huge fuck up anyhow so I don't bother with normality).

I went to Nutter Club but had to leave early due to a near panic attack. I really was not up for handling other people's negativity. So I got up abruptly said I needed fresh air and pinged out. Now Naomi is really worried about me. I was in dire straits yesterday and that was ON meds. Severe manic symptoms dampened weirdly down with weird repetitive voices in my head. I nearly had a panic attack in Sainsbury's. (No wonder you might say if you know Sainsbury's. A supermarket.) Yeah Naomi rang me for half an hour. She is very good. Never puts a foot wrong. Knows how to handle people in really precarious mental states. She was wonderful when I came in on full-on mania laughing my head off hysterically. Unable to string words together. Somehow through the clipped-up slideshow of the day, she shines out as a beacon of sense. I was too out of it on mania to follow what anyone said once they veered off the obvious. I was interrupting everyone all the time with my own thoughts and opinions.

Apart from Nutter Club what have I done?... Not a lot. Planning my Heroin Empire, mainly. I'm in a really good mood so I have energy for important stuff like international drug importation and production. I want to PRODUCE my product. The brand name is going to be WHITE TIGER with 100% written underneath and loads of shit in Burmese, Chinese and Thai hong-donging down the side. And before anyone DARES imply I'm raist let's have a Chinese and Thai language competition, you and me, and see who wins. Least I studied them. Bet you didn't.

PLEASE EVERYBODY HAVE A GO ON THE PERSONALITY PERCENTAGES DISORDER TEST. The link is here
http://www.similarminds.com/personality_disorder.html I gave my results in the post below. I score highest on schizotypal (eccentric), schizoid (don't need friends), borderline (over-emotional) and paranoid. The paranoia is definitely down to illness, I just do not have the unforgiving nature required for a "paranoid personality disorder" y'know?!

I'm v grateful that personality disorders shit is out of my life. I mean as if! I might have a bit of a schizzy personality but that only means I keep myself to myself and my primary motivation is not other's approval and that I do my own thing. That's all.

They thought I might have one because I basically had mental illness I had successfully semi-medicated away, creating a confusing clinical picture. My heroin worked about as well as risperidone as an antipsychotic mood stabilizer. It definitely worked. And no I do not suggest anyone try the same thing, I mean look what happened to me. I'm lucky to be nuts, means I get kid-glove treatment at that clinic now. If they mess me around I will show them 2 fingers and just score on the street. It's more a "when" than an "if". I was all for giving them the elbow when "severely manic" last month but everyone told me not to. I told a few people I had "anxiety and depression" and they believed me! "Not depressed now, are you!" said one as I burbled deliriously away. It was SUCH GOOD FUN whizzing around in the back of a car scoring heroin not using the dullardly heroin [they scored it; I didn't even know that dealer] (it reduces mania so why take something to get LESS high? Dur!) I was out of my box. Thinking we were off to some magnificent party, then remembering we weren't. Thinking all manner of things very rapidly it was fantastic.

This is what I love about being "mentally ill" the candy-colored hilarity of it all. It's much much better than any physical illness I can think of. I can't think of many physical illnesses that make you feel Better Than Well like manic bipolar does. Fair dos it can get ultra-ultra super concnetrated like whooshing into the centre of a spiral. Which is why Stephen Fry annoys me for making flip comments about a condition (bipola i) he doesn't have. He has bipolar ii which is quite different. The heritability of bipolar i is quite clear; bipolar ii is a mystery. Bipolar i comes in families with a clear history of depression, bipolar or schizophrenia. Bipolar ii doesn't. Bipolar i has funky bits (psychosis) bipolar ii doesn't. Bipolar i typically has 3 parts depression to 1 mania (time-wise); bipolar ii is 37:1. Different illnesses.

Sorry Baino to go on and on about my issues YET AGAIN but I'm confused about everything. I don't even know what schizoaffective really means apart from it being the luuuurve baby of manic depression and schizophrenia and being "more serious than bipolar disorder" and "less serious than schizophrenia". I heard the manic type has a better outlook for recovery than the depressive type. Stress makes me manic. So even if I'm depressed, when I have a psych appointment I'm ALWAYS hypomanic in there and that is not acting. I act exactly as I am in those interviews Im too sick and tired of mind games to do any different. Sometimes I wish I'd said YES to going into hospital, because Id probably be in there now if I did.

That is what I hate most about the mental health system I actually got desperate enough at one point to try "showing what they needed to see" which I thought was depression. So I never dared crack a smile, initiate any conversation or basically do anything except answer what wa put before me and get the hell out and quick. I also noticed I was getting asked a set of questions that didn't even apply to me. When I didn't hear voices I got asked all the time whether I did. Then once I did nobody ever asked about them! I felt like such a fraudster thanks to those DSM diagnostic criteria which are frankly nonsensical to anyone with depression lower than the higher end of "moderate". Moderate depression means the absolute fucking pits of suicidal hell. The top end of severe is staring into space for hours yet being able to break out of it and do things; the lower end means staring into space and only able to stop with egreat difficulty. You'll end up in the middle of the room, frozen, wondering how you got there and where you're going. Not through memory loss; through lack of motivation. Very severe depression is a complete stupor where you literally cannotmove or speak at all. It has nothing to do with playing a game or acting or resisting attention, you literally have nothing to say and so cannot move your lips to say this nothingness. Everything is utterly invalid, incomplete, inconsequential. As in mania where all is equally good, equally valid and you can go with anything, in depression I frequently end up in shops stuck. Not wanting to go home. Not wanting to buy anything. Not knowing what to buy. So I just do the bare essentials and get the hell out and go straight home and curl up in a ball again, like a little hammy in a nest. Hamter are schizzy and very spirited, jut don't cross one they get into raging fury and do bite. Pandable was my best hammy and he threatened to bite me every time I woke him up during the day. Only when he knew for sure it was my hand and me did he calm down and sniff around it (after food, the tubby swine!)

Now I can't recall where this was going. Tubby swines. Hammies. Good a place as any to stop.
I'm taking my meds tonight; I feel qutie confused wtihout them and my mood cycles fast, on a 24 hour cycle a in one day up one down; one up one down etc etc

EVERYBODY PLEASE DO MY PERSONALITY DIOSRDERS QUIZ AND LEAVE RESULTS IN COMMENTS!
http://www.similarminds.com/personality_disorder.html

Tut mir leid: I don't recall what I put in this post, I can't spend all night fretting over wordings, so it's going IN. Sorry if it's boring....

Schizotypal personality disorder link:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002493

Schizotypal wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotypal_personality_disorder

(I'm supposedly schizotypal; though on the friendship side I'm not SCARED of people, I just don't NEED them there. I do like people I just don't NEED them the way some other people seem to need companionship. So in that aspect I'm schizoid rather than schizotypal. Now come on somebody else take the test please y'all are pretty normal, I'd like to see how you come out of it!

Medication Vacation/Drugs Empire

I'M GIVING MYSELF an unofficial medication vacation to see what happens when I stop taking these meds. I nearly had a panic attack yesterday. VERY nearly. So they're not working. And I was hearing "voices" in my head saying eg "annoying" as annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyingingingingininginging" like that it's a type of clanging where you get stuck in the syllables of a long word (or a short one). It feels really strange I don't know entirely whether it's schiz or manic being as I have the luuuuurrve child of manic depression and schizophrenia I can't believe I got TWO THINGS WRONG wonkybonkytiddles wong with me how ridiculous is that. If I have a panic attack tomorrow I can take the shit in the day I just really don't want to. I had Valium; took 1; lost 2. Money goes walkies all the time. My dr said not handling money well even off drugs is a schiz symptom and I REALLY mean I cannot handle it. I go on manic spending sprees or just lose it. Absolutely no idea where it goes. You wonder why I want [wanted: I'm fed up of this suicide talk; this will be the last of it] to commit suicide you're all taken in by my ability to keep a blog going you don't see what a mess I'm in. A really really bad mess. The council want to sling me out on the street but they can't (apparently) because I'm too nut nut. I don't care at all what happens I honestly don't it was easier on the street, ironically enough. Though it also brought on a severe episode of illness. Severe for the time. I remember riding the bus and everybody had crosses in their eyes. I saw visions in the walls and heard things, every day. Today somebody yelled my name repeatedly from a car but I ignored him. I hear voices like that all the time so I ignore them. How am I to know when they're true? So I'm living without meds now, had enough of them, I want to get manic. Least I KNOW I'm not frying my brains even though it feels really brainfrying at the peak. The peak I got to was, as I say, like a road drill going through my head on acid. Ultra intense. But this is a feeling of energy and euphoria. Very very hard and strong. That's why I like music with an aggressive edge in this state because I feel aggressive and powerful. And I don't have time for shit from nobody. In the severe state I would just lamp someone as soon as look at them. I'm not a violent person but if someone pushed my button they'd getta smacka da face-a before they could say "geronimo"..!

I'm not manic now. Just a bit hypomanic. That feels like anxiety but in a good way. It's like positive mental energy coursing through me like amphetamines. I read a quote from that idiot Stephen Fry, who is type 2 bipolar (ie the mild but miserable subtype with 37 times more depression than hypomania; I'm type 1 the full-blown type)... he opined on his QI show that only hardcore manic-depressives go on lithium. Hang on a sec he is lucky to have bipolar so slightly he doesn't even need meds. If you've seen that "secret life of a manic-depressive" he made he's by far the mildest case on there. His "hypomania" looks faked-up to me. Far too little speediness and far too much jolliness. He actually looks drunk more than manic. Mania is FAST, it amps out energy like an electric fire or a huge burning light bulb. You can feel the energy of a manic person, just as you can feel heat from a fire. His depression looks real enough, but the mania, in my view is strictly "for camera". And he hasn't a clue how intense mania can get. He says manic depressives are lucky because at least they have the ups of mania. How intense can mania get? EXTREMELY INTENSE. That's why I cried when I saw the deer in The Deer Hunter. The poor thing is FOAMING AT THE MOUTH. I thought what does that poor animal have to go through to get so wound up it is FOAMING? Whatever it felt was INTENSE. I just hope the bastard film-makers put it down quick. They had no qualms about animal cruelty when that film was made. Mania is INTENSE. And that's why I cried for that animal. Because we both know INTENSE.

I'm just glad what I had was intense mania not intense suffering. When I do go down I tend to think I'm in a spiritual wilderness rather than a true Depressive State. I spend hours staring into space. Last time the TV semi-conked-out and I didn't notice for 2 days. Somehow I collected methadone in this state but don't remember. They are used to me behaving strangely and are very sarcastic. I think they can fuck off. If they take the piss then I will ******* ** **** I am fed up of people taking the piss.

I'm coming off my methadone as quick as I can I am fed up of the clinic taking control of me they want to run my life. I feel sorry for the poor worker who probably thought he was taking on a normal case when he's taking on a grade A nut job. Did you know 25% of all people who are psychotic are schizoaffective. It's probably 50% schizophrenia and the rest bipolar. I found out my suicide risk is only 1 in 10. Bipolar is meant to be 1 in 5. Maybe it's because I get more free entertainment off my "illness" than a bipolar person would.

It means I get more funky bits, which they only get when ultra-manic, I get voices when just hypomanic or depressed. Depressed is harder to deal with because I disengage. Manic I thoroughly indulge in when alone. Pottering about. Outside I have to REALLY watch myself and button down. Even then I'm radiating manic energy like a psychiatric beacon. I remember the look on the police's face when I walked right up to them. I don't know whether I was meant to miss the OBVIOUS NUDGE-nudge but it was BLARING I only wanted directions to the main road.

I have to blog this for when I die I want my family to cash in £££ if I die they get more dollars because the crap I have written has a publicity value. It's my wish that any revenue from my intellectual property be split entre ma mere, mon pere et mes deux freres sorry there's a French film on it makes me think in French. I'm watching Un Prophet encore il s'agit dans un prison francais ou les prisoniers sont gangsters de la Corse et cetera ok i'm dropping the French now. I can't believe I recall that phrase "il s'agit" (it takes place) and that a director is called a metteur en scene. See I do know some French. It's just vraiement terrible; pardon: vraiment terrible ~ pas de l'"E" I love the double-clanger french quotation marks like this «O» or even funkier »O« ~ German styleee.

Now what was I babbling on about. That Frantic screen is playing but I hate the footage. Love the music but they all look like kids. Lollypops, dummies, no thanks. A dummy is a pacifier.

Hey they're taking heroin on telly. Got a real good gauwch on. Just as I'm getting a good rush on. I'm rushing nicely off my meds.... yummmmyummmmyummmm. why the FUCK should I take something to bring me down. I am just glad I don't have money. My Mum rang me today to find out what was wrong with me... I just blurted it out. She knows someone who is bipolar who lost everything thanks to a bad business investment when manic. Im so glad I don't have money to lose, then I really would kill myself.

Does anyone want to take part in a poppy farming scheme? I need 50,000 acres, Ideally in America or somewhere sunny. Does anyone live in the highlands of Iran, Turkey or Afghanistan who wants to come in with me to make H4? I want to be trained up as a full-on heroin chemist. I would love to work in an H4 lab with the Wa, the Burmese tribe who now control "China White"... ask Valerie. She says her Double UO Globe is doing terrific business. She is too off her tits on crack to write much these days...

Also would anyone be willing to smuggle me over 50,000 kilos of China White? Please do it in one shipment I want no fucking about. I'll be the crime boss, you can all get the scrapings off the lab floor.

Actually I might seriously go into heroin production that would be such FUN. A product I believe in..!!!!!! China white, babes.

By the way anyone who DARES ship out brown from my refinery will get Death by 1000 Cuts, no messing. I'm only gonna be known for high grade shit. My brand name will be White Tiger 999. I'll ship in 1.4 kg (double unit) blocks. Yummy big blocks of A grade white heroin! Anna Grace do you wanna come in with me as my American connexion. I want to supply Chicago, New York, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles... fuckit I will flood America with my evil brands! UK watch out you don't know what is going to hit you. The shitty stuff will be called Trotterdonkey Brand, it will have a donkey with sombrero on the bales, in tacky turquoise ink. The shit stuff is coming to Britain as Brits will take any crap heroin wise. That's why they were on BROWN sugar for so long. Ukhhh.

Hey I have got a real adrenaline rush going here. I'm so full of schemes and plans for my New Drug Mafia. I will Rule the World in Narcotics. Once I take over Afghanistan and Colombia-Peru-Bolivia I'll have a monopoly on heroin and coke. I'll expand into ecstasy and designer shit as well as yucky cannabis. And I'll crank out crystal meth like nobody's business. The HUGE market for cryssie is in Europe. Those middle class parents won't know what's hit them as their kids become bug-eyed monsters picking at skin, painting walls, ripping up books, getting rid of ants and dirt that doesn't exist.

YES AND ALL THIS IS A FANTASY for anyone who takes me TOO FUCKING SERIOUSLY HONESTLY!

Right I'm off.

PS Drugs Empire ideas in comments. Quickly! Please.

Do mafia bosses say please? OK then fuck you!

And NO I AM NOT ON DRUGS I AM A MANIC DEPRESSIVE SCHIZOAFFECTIVE NUTCASE OK!?!

GET WELL SOON ANNA GRACE IF YOU'RE READING... Anna is probably in hospital with manic depression.

Illustrated: my mountainous China White Empire; gear to Aus; gear to Europe NOT ENOUGH COMES FROM BURMA in my humble view. I don't need it for myself but others do so I shall make multiple millions from their misery. (Someone has to.) I'm going to stick these maps on my walls full of map pins and post-it notes to make them look really important when the council come round and say "plan your drug smuggling operations elsewhere" and I'll say "I'm a heroin producer and importer not just a master smuggler"..!

0515 I should really go to sleep; but I'm too excited!

0641 Schizzoaffective quiz! See how you do. I got 20/24... oops

0739 I love these tests (personality disorders test)! I just found out I'm ~
paranoid: high
schizoid: high
schizotypal: very high
antisocial: low
borderline: moderate
histrionic: low
narcissistic: moderate
avoidant: high (I'm very avoidant, it's my new favourite word, it means you don't do anything that makes you feel SHIT)
dependent: moderate
obsessive-compulsive: moderate

eh I've found another one, a personaltiy disorders test. Im determined to get myself one. They're this season's hot psychiatric accessory. Especially in blue...
My results: paranoid 78%; schizoid 86%; schizotypal 90%; antisocial 46%; borderline 78%; histrionic 30%; narcissistic 42%; avoidant 42%; dependent 38%; obsessive-compulsive 66%... so I'm really schizotypal ie eccentric and don't give a flying fuck what anyone thinks of me! Big wow. Big revelation that one. How perceptive.


1749 come on take the 2nd test, with percentages and gimme your results in comments. all psychopathology will be treated in strictest confidence. many thanks.

Antidepressants

I NEED ANTIDEPRESSANTS. But they don't work. They make me cuckoo (high). I have a great big crispy purple £20 note that could buy antidepressants in brown form. That one doesn't get me cuckoo. Crack and mirtazapine belong in the same category. Difference: mirtazapine (ironically) = more manic-depressive (I went DOWN on mirtazapine after going UP how crappy is that from something that's supposed to level you out?!) crack makes more paranoid. Extreme paranoia. I once thought people were climbing up the walls of the house and hid inside a home-made tent... the one you use once you're fed up of flashing at hidden cameras. That's nutnut for you. I never thougt I was a nutter despite all this. If I'd been a bit more naive I'd have blurted loads of this to psych staff years ago but I knew what paranoid/suicidal ideation meant. Knew what implied what and what they might eventually diagnose from what pattern. Because it's like joining dots. Akh I hate doctors. All I'm trying to do today is join dots of happiness. I have what they call a rapid cycle. That means I confuse myself because I don't know when Im up or down except when it's so extreme... I mean yesterday despite the nerves I was dunking biscuits while I shared at NA. All casual-like. (Manic-casual.) Not one person said anything except someone laughed knowingly. I'm not offended by THAT if I was I'd not have shared to start with. I didn't expect Absolution. Hey it would be funny if that person thought I was lying, would give me something to play up to. Sometimes I annoy myself by doing this; if somebody gets an idea of me that I don't agree with I'll show them the idea is true in the most ridiculous, eventually pantomimic way. When another person is there I never break eye contact with the first to shoot a look over. That gives you away. I do it like a professional actor, never once breaking stride, despite the ridiculousness. Usually I am pretending to be naive or stupid, my 2 favourite things I love to show people. I wear soft on the outside! Just like a tiger. All furry and cute. Nobody sees my teeth unless they rile me to it.

Did you know the lifetime "risk" of developing a substance disorder in type 1 bipolar (severe type) is 61% according to one study. I thought 50% sounded ridiculously small. I would estimate the true figure to be around 85 or 90%. 50% was supposed to be the number of bipolars who ever used drugs. Type 2 bipolar means mostly depressed with manic blips that never amount to full mania. I never got full mania until this year it's the only "up" I would recognize as illness because my head starts saying "power hour shower power shower" that's literally what I think and I say a mixture of things (incoherently, so I'm told that is with the topic jumping all over the place). I have every single diagnostic category among the 7 or so including reckless buying sprees (DVDs) I have so many they fill an armchair and they were bought mostly in 4 days. Great thing is EVERY SINGLE ONE is one I'd ring in the TV guide, so they're shit I WANT. Ben Hur I might not be in the mood for every day. Or Cleopatra. Or Dr Zhivago (a triple £5 pack) but they're there for when I do feel like watching lots of beautiful music and snow (Dr Zhivago) or Burton-Taylor (Cleopatra) or ancient stuff (Ben Hur). Shit no Gone with the Wind was the third in the treble pack, I hate that one but it came essentially free.

Does anyone care about any of this I can't think Up anything to say now so I'm going now.


Illustrated: famous people supposedly with bipolar. Vincent Van Gough is a maybe. Virginia Wolf definitely. Britney Spears absolutely no idea. Kurt Cobain: writing a song called lithium and then shooting yourself does not equal bipolar!

Plum Tree by Van Gogh, Japanese lettering even worse than mine

23:22 Schizoaffective Link. I still don't know what bloody disorder I'm meant to have or what the hell it actually is. [I got diagnosed schizoaffective.] I'm just NOT COMPLAINING that my main symptom is ELEVATED MOOD despite the fact that I had pretty full-blown melancholia this afternoon: exhaustion, Siberian low mood, suicidal thoughts, a feeling of intense guilt and wrongness and the idea that I would never ever feel any better about anything, by mid-evening I was fine by ten o'clock I felt a bit manic even..... PLUS I have "schizophrenia"..! Only fucking disease that made me cry just thinking I could have it and I fucking have it! No-one can ever say I was blowing things out of proportion again because I wasn't I was keeping something so fucking intense it was like a road drill through the head (psychotic mania) and keeping that like it was a little furry hammy in a nest, keeping that inside me head... ukk. How did all this happen?

SINEAD O'CONNOR: REBEL SONG
this is a traditional Irish ballad; despite the title it's more a lullabye than anything else

Dont' Take Heroin, Gledwood

AKH WHAT am I doing? Using heroin then going to NA. Well it's good to go to NA; bad to use heroin. I don't WANT to be using heroin. Now I have it I feel I never need it again. It's all inside me but I feel no diferent to how I've felt a million times before WITHOUT gear. So I don't need gear, don't want gear. I refuse to lie about when I take gear. Can't be doing with making myself sound all clean when I'm not. So I have to be direct.

And I told NA I was bipolar which is of course only half the truth as I'm bipolar+; but I told as much as I was willing to share with a group of people I don't really know. I felt nervous enough to feel my voice go quavery. Which is better than ROARING as I have before. So hard to strike a balance. I told them I reckoned they deserved an explanation. I know more people at this group than any other it is just one bus ride away, rather than 2, or a train as so very many others are, so I call them my home group.

It's really pathetic to use heroin. Why do I do it? I have no excuses. I don't need excuses. I only got diagnosed because I had gone beyond the point of desperation. Then I went beyond that going ga-ga-ga at the top of my voice in the kitchen. (No wonder the neighbours give me a wide berth.)

I don't care what anyone thinks. Well not THAT much. (Wouldn't put it online for any person in the entire world with internet to access if I did.) But this is why I can't face interviews. Someone asked me if I would do an interview but the timing came just after I'd gone potty and couldn't keep my head together so I gave no answer. In fact my email is so randomizedly badly answered I'm sure I've offended loads of people.

Please don't be offended if you sent me email and I didn't get back to you. I find it hard enough to keep a blog going, attention wise. So email on top is difficult.

If you email and don't get an answer back, please comment. Or comment saying you emailed and direct me to the date you sent it and I'll find it and get back to you.

Does American grass really cost $300 an oz? I'm watching American beauty.

Hey American beauty is quite good. I like the 42 year old Kevin Spacey plays.

I have to go now. DON'T TAKE HEROIN GLEDWOOD. EVER AGAIN.

*******

AMERICAN BEAUTY (KEVIN SPACEY): AMERICAN WOMAN
i love this: it's what stoned on spliff looks like



AMERICAN BEAUTY (ANNETTE BENNING): DON'T RAIN ON MY PARADE
i love this: this is what good-mood manic looks like

7:07 Entertainment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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



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

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



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



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

At 3am

SLEEP. My sleep has been abysmal. At best I can sleep a few hours. Or go all night and half the next day ie going to bed 24 hours from when I last woke up. So I got some zopiclone and took one in the early afternoon. I don't think I've ever taken a pill to sleep at this time. I thought I might sleep a couple of hours but I slept about hours and hours, probably 10 or 11 hours.

It's now past 3am. But I woke up feeling OK, like I could focus and concentrate and maybe even read a book.

I gotta go methadone clinic tomorrow. No choice. Gotta go. I hate going because the last few times I was high and caused great amusement. Talking to everyone. Being friendly. High on nothing.

I can't bear to walk in there as my normal boring self now. But I have to have to no choice have to. Hate being a methadone addict. It's not as bad in some ways as being a heroin addict. You don't wonder what the dose is going to be like strength-wise as you never feel it.

Heroin barely feels like anything, even when I took grams of it I never felt more than hot and chilled out. Which is strange as withdrawal literally makes you feel burning hot and freezing cold at the same time. Which is strange as apparently ancient (non-Biblical) descriptions of hell give a very similar account of simultaneously burning and freezing.

I want no drugs. I wish I'd never tried a single one.

Hey I feel alive alive ALIVE!


MICHAEL JACKSON: CHILDHOOD

Back to NA

IT'S NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS TONIGHT. NA hold meetings every night and every daytime and as far as I know most mornings in London, but tonight is one of my favourite ones, so I'm going.

I'm thinking of just telling them how I feel about being (as I see it) misunderstood. Then, if I am misunderstood I'm sure somebody will feed something back to me. But if I was understood all along I'll find out that too, so it's win-win.

I have no word to "yell in their face" as I so delicately put it; and more than once, if I remember right... If I were that wound up then I would yell it too, but I'm striving to avoid over-confrontational behaviour, even if I'm merely confronting the Group rather than a person in it... If I had an issue with one specific person then I wouldn't share that to the group, I'd tell that person alone.

What I will tell them is that I'm going to a dual diagnosis group and that I feel better understood there because the dual group accept that I walk in every week hyped up to a greater or lesser extent and the specific culprit drugs that tend to make hyper (cocaine and amphetamines) are ABSENT from my wee-tests. (I love the word "wee"; it reminds me of being four and saying "a wee and a poo"!)

I will have to tone myself down if I do feel amped up and I have felt amped up for most of today. I don't want a repeat of the time when I was raging angry and sent a very tangable jolt round the circle. A jolt of bad-feeling. The woman next to me, who is an itsy-ditsy-smiley-happy former pot-addict nearly jumped out of her skin and I only wish I could find her again to say I'm sorry. (As an ice-breaker.) There's another NA member who gave a fantastic chair (which means a 20-minute potted history of your using and how you got out and stayed out of the chaos everyone comes to NA to crawl out of)... I went and made a mess of the meeting my very obviously hefting up my loud rustly carrier bag full of stuff just as he was cruising towards the finish line.

I wasn't trying to communicate anything to anyone, but that's how it must have looked and I feel guilty because he looked at me a few times as he made his points and I just want to say I'm sorry ~ again as an icebreaker. I don't feel ridden by guilt and I don't feel he's desperately pissed off with me, but if I could speak to either of these two again I think they're both fascinating people to be friends with. Both are brimming over with their own distinct spirits. I suppose I feel bad for having given out bad vibes that it's obvious both have felt and I don't want to go around emanating nuclear radiation. I want to radiate Serenity, and charm. If I am charming now it's very much by accident. I feel most people pick up the vibe of precisely how I am, even though they sometimes misinterpret it. If it's "drugs" it's a distinct lack of, rather than a presence they're picking up on!

It's obvious to me that I'm nearing the end of an over-long story drugs-wise. Because as I said earlier, if I'd done gear at any other time after a break I'd probably have gone on using it until I was penniless and then had to stop (because I wouldn't go out and graft up money these days). I'd use the days without drugs to reset my priorities, then by the time I got paid again I had willpower not to use. This only happened on one occasion, some time in January. I went through four phases with heroin.
Phase one: I only used what money I could "afford" ~ usually £10 a day, though I still got into trouble, running up debts. When the shit finally hit the fan I went hurtling into phase two, where I begged up as much as I possibly could every single day of the week most weeks. I never took a day off at weekends when I already had money. I made as much as I could when I could, and nearly all this money went on heroin, not crack. Crack was only ever a minor part of my using, apart from one binge I indulged in for several weeks. I considered myself addicted because the small amount I did use was very important to me. Eventually I reduced to one day a week and from that to "nothing" ~ I probably lapsed on crack about eight times since giving it up "for good" for new year 2009. And I'm well aware how pathetic "eight times" sounds in conjunction with "gave up for good". I had my last ever toke on the crack pipe in early December 2010. I couldn't go near crack now. Considering how high I get without it, I'd go so far out of the stratosphere on it, I doubt I'd ever come back!Stage three was me as a "giro junkie"; this is an addict who only uses money paid by the state for sickness or unemployment. The final phase is now: no heroin at all bar a couple of lapses, which were me being depressed enough not to care any more. I only crave gear when I'm very low and down in mood or a methadone dose is overdue. If I can manage not to get depressed like that again, I cannot see why I'd turn to heroin. It never did much except salve my pain.

In the fifth and final stage I'll finally have kicked methadone. And I will never have anything more to do with Drugs ever again.


God, grant me the Serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the Courage to change the things I can ~
and the Wisdom to know the difference.


Illustrated: apron representing 15 years clean and serene (other items of clothing, including underwear, are available) I wish I could wear something representing some vast number of years clean and sober and for it to be true. But the truth of that matter is down to me ...

5pm Sour

I CAN'T KEEP UP. I can't keep any buzz any happiness anything good that I feel, it just falls flat, like an actress in a long dress walking up steep stairs in high heels I fall down flat. I've lovely alcohol in my system but I just feel slightly drunk plus depressed. And I have to go to this doctor on Thursday and try not to present as a picture of self-pitying misery. If I do he will just laugh inwardly and think "bipolar". I feel like such an idiot for ever getting swept away on a high that was somehow of my own making, except I can't make it now. Trust me if anybody could get high like that the world would be full of hypomanic and manic individuals spending, bonking, dancing and wandering round in psychotic confusion, clothes inside out going "dib-dib-dib".

Ask any psychiatrist which mental condition they'd chose to have and I guarantee they'll all tell you "hypomania". That is mild mania: euphoria without paranoia, delusions or voices. So I'm watching Meet The Fockers and I still can laugh at Robert DeNiro and Barbra Streisand. If they can outdo Ben Stiller they're A1 comedians. So I try I do try I keep on trying. Where did I go wrong? Considering this was going BEFORE the heroin. I remember a friend of mine saying she wanted nothing more to do with me "while I was on drugs all the time". But I wasn't! It was mood swings she was seeing. Not drugs. I never was a druggie (a drug-taker; yes. A druggie: no!) I wasn't a druggie until I got into heroin and then I took heroin every day. Heroin flattened out my mood. No more depression. No more highs. The "high" of heroin is very mild and weak as drugs go. I only really took heroin as a chemical coping mechanism, not the indulgence people seem to assume it is. That rubbish about recapturing some original high is pure bumkum for me and most people.

Most people, self included feel little more than an indistinct wuzziness, a hot and itchy body and nausea when they first take heroin. More likely than not you'll end up with your head down the toilet, puking. Only when you get used to it: ie get hooked, do you get the full-blown opiate high. And that rapidly fades into an enhanced version of OK. I OD'd on heroin before I'd ever had a major habit, was in hospital for 2 days. And the high I got (in terms of strength, not niceness) was little higher than a 4 out of 10. Heroin feels weak. It feels clean and fluffy as fresh towels. It doesn't feel dirty or depraved and it certainly doesn't feel "hard" like a "hard drug". Crack does. Crack is drug-induced madness. Heroin makes mellow, gives very little but takes much. It takes away pain. It might eventually take your life. So this feels like it's come to and end. See ya later.

Illustrated: what Americans call a pratfall. Looks better when a pretty girl does it

9pm to 9am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Ecstasy and Heroin

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


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



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

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

MADONNA: THIEF OF HEARTS (Erotica album)



MADONNA: SKIN (Ray of Light album)

A handful of nothing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


SONYA: END OF THE WORLD

Bye bye Heroin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just glanced over what I wrote off heroin.

Shamanic Heaven? Very shamanic. Not heaven.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a nice day y'all!