Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts

Ideas and/or Advice, Please!


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

TRANCE VISIONS: PARADISE (KOMAKINO REMIX)



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

And how was YOUR DAY? rsvp!


RALPH FRIDGE: PARADISE (PUSH MIX)

Better today


I FEEL FAR BETTER THAN I DID YESTERDAY. That is because I am on my own, not in McDonalds surrounded by people with attitude problems, not riding a bus, not crushed in by people people people. People do my head in.

Michael Jackson is playing on my TV. His collected videos was the only thing I could stomach music wise and play round and round (as I do) with DVDs. There's a lot of other music I like but hardly any of it has videos because it's either bleepy and abstract or obscure or Sinead O'Connor (who is so much more than Nothing Compares 2U, she's an Irish baladeer).

I was thinking about Michael Jackson and how someone who knows me well once compared him to me [in personality]. Really, I am flattered. Somebody took Michael Jackson's world and smashed it and crushed him and all he could turn to was drugs, which he was probably involved in since burning his hair in that Pepsi accident in the early 80s.

No Michael Jackson music today. What I picked comes more under "obscure" but it did chart and does have a video:~

CAPTAIN SENSIBLE (lead singer of the Damned (hi Melody Lee)): GLAD IT'S ALL OVER
I always thought this song was about nuclear war. Blue moon happened after the Krakatoa eruption and could well happen after neuclear war. Too many little particles in the atmosphere:




Tsar Bomb:
largest nuclear device ever exploded ~ 50-57 megatonnes
57,000,000 megatons = 1000 tons of dynatmite for every man, woman and child in the UK.
this one's 250 times bigger than the bombs that will soon drop on US!




SCREAM
stop pressuring me
, like this one

6:41 calm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


SEAL: CRAZY
i love this tune



SONIQUE: PUT A SPELL ON YOU



SONIQUE: FEELS SO GOOD



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



Abba to E to Mental Mania

I AM LISTENING TO ABBA. Proof positive if any was required that I am in recovery from SEVERE MENTAL BREAKDOWN. I found Mamma Mia down Morrisons for a few quid. The lurid red heart on the cover made me buy it as a FUCK YOU to sneery supermarket staff, so I made sure I went through the slow isle where a surly person serves you, not self service as I usually do.

The sneery looks make such purchases so much more worthwhile (shame I didn't get one). Same as when I pick up cig ends from the bus stop. It's always better when somebody's watching disapprovingly. One time one Jamaican man had the cheek to inform me "that's disgusting" NOT AS DISGUSTING AS THE EXTORTIONATE NEW LABOUR GOVERNMENT TAX I shot back. He shut his mouth then. He looked like a Labour voter. Sad.

I'm voting Tory next time as long as they lower taxes for the rich. I want to be rich and I want to pay low taxes so I'm voting for whoever lowers them most for Proper People. High taxes for the poor don't bother me at all. We already have them. It's called the Council Tax. The one I'm being sued for not paying. The one my solicitor wants me "severely mentally impaired" for. Now that I'm a hallucinating paranoid mood swing nutter on antipsychotics I might go for it. Unless I'm depressed again, in which case I don't believe I exist, so I don't bother engaging with forms of any description. Mainly because my depressed self believes it's natural and right that I should live on the streets anyhow. And that the answer for just about everything is a flat-fronted commuter train whooshing into London. (Trains going into go faster than out of. Flat fronts are best for maximum fatal head injuries. I was researching this issue that day when the BASTARD DRIVER actually read my mind and knew I wanted to jump. He waved arms at me! I know I've said this before but honestly how did he know??? I wasn't exactly hanging off the end of the platform.

I was blaring out this Mamma Mia movie when Naomi the Nuttery Club lady rang up re my antipsychotic problems. She said "ooh what's that music" I said "do you like Abba?" she said yeah. I said well you can borrow it on Thursday but she's already got it.

I have to say it's a HELL of a lot better than I thought it would be. I LOATHE that Dancing Queen song. The only Abba tunes I really like are Money Money Money (of course) and Take a Chance on Me. And Chickadee Chickadoo whatever it's called. I never actually VIEWED most of the film. Just smoked fags and looked at blogs. I keep forgetting to comment so y'all probably think I'm dead rude, ignoring y'all. I'm not ignoring y'all. I'm just plain rude!

Now it's blasting out at 2 in the morning with German dialogue. I love German dialogue. Double value on all my DVDs. I now have a good 16, purchased in the course of a week. Tomorrow I get Burton/Taylor in Cleopatra. I know it's crap, but I like her look and I Like the scenery. Main reason I watch films: bright colours, nice scenery, nice actresses.

I know I should be gay because I like Madonna and like musicals but seriously do you know what you have to do to be gay? Wear TUCKED IN TEESHIRTS, cut your hair REALLY SHORT. Snogging boys I've done just for the shock value but they're not as nice as girls let's face it women ain't called the Fairer Sex for nothing. So I'm plain old metrosexual. I feel desperately disappointed in this [I meant being straight is boring, but it's not boring, I was just being provocative]. Also gay clubs are FAR too sexual for my taste. I've been to a couple of gay-mixed nights, but didn't really like them. When I was a clubber my Big Thing To Do was go to Trade Club... but it never happened.

Trade Club was THEE best club in London. It ran from about 4am to 4pm Sundays. Heavy heavy banging hypnotic E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E music. Ie absolutely fantastic. But I never went. I went Sunny Side Up instead, which ran from about midday Sunday till around 9pm, meaning you could spend Friday and Saturday night actually having a sleep cycle, then go clubbing Sunday afternoon and be daisy-fresh (well as fresh as anyone on an E comedown can be)... by Monday. E comedown doesn't really hit you till 3 days later hence Friday night high: Tuesday blues. About half the people at Sunnies as they called it were spacefaced nutters who'd been going all weekend and had probably had twelve pills each by this time.


Trancy hard house: what I went there for


The other half were like me: people who appreciated a sleep cycle. The press often compared Sunny Side up to Trade because it was thee most banging hardhouse club I ever went to. But Sunnies was a normal straight club. I never liked gay clubs as I say even though most are actually mixed I didn't like the sexualized vibe. Clubbing is about being free and expressing who you are. When I was persuaded into a gay club, I stood out like a sore thumb with my long hair and non-tucked-in teeshirts and no belt. Let alone one with a huge buckle.

Maybe I should play about with y'all and do a protesting too much thing so y'all think I AM gay. Well I'm hardly out of touch with my feminine side am I.

Everything I tried just led to the usual situation in my personal life. Me in bed. On my own. Crying my heart out because I felt broken, empty, abused, confused and very lonely.

That was the end effect of Ecstasy too. Though I ADORED that drug, because it's not just a high, it's transcendently high. Cloud 9, 10, 11... going up up UP!

Everybody's happy. Everybody's smiley. Everybody free. Everybody E.

Then the E wears off and they become the miserable gits they are in real life. And after the after after after party, no matter what adventures happened between then and then I always ended up in my own bed, eventually (never brought anyone back to mine: ALWAYS went to theirs. I had a thing about other people's beds, other people's showers... much more exciting)... after all this I ended up in bed, alone and crying. Wondering why I had said what I said (E makes me ULTRA frank, to the point of friendship-damage)... why I had done what I'd done. Usually it was just me being a tit, dancing on the stage but on a comedown this feels ridiculously over the top)... most of all I felt let down and lied to. Badly lied to. So I curled up in bed, crying again.

I had been to wonderland. A paradise so high I wasn't even dancing with people, I was dancing with fractals, dancing along a rainbow. I didn't just find the pot of gold at that rainbow's end, I picked it up and showered in stardust.

And then I came down down down and reality was just too much to take.

The last few times a kind of trip kicked in as the E-rush wore off. My books were dancing on the shelves. Everything was pink, blue, pastel coloured dots. Maggots in my contact lens case. I had to put the lenses in with the writhing maggots, telling myself they weren't really there. Telling myself this did nothing to diminish the hallucination. Then I took downers to sleep. I couldn't tolerate the cannabis most people toked to come down. I was on Valium (bought on the street, of course). Then I switched to heroin ~ far naughtier.

The fact that my friends disapproved only made it more attractive. I thought they were really uptight, snorting weak coke, thinking they were it. I scored heroin via dealers I met through the local homeless (my true home crowd: they never judged me, always accepted me. Only true acceptance I ever got was from the crustie junkies. My true crowd. Not the shoplifters or the prozzies. The crusties. And nearly ALL are dead now. The only people who "got" me. All dead. I'm one of very few left. So I took this heroin in secret. Because it was forbidden. Because it worked for me. Because unlike that coke, even the dealer's personal... it was crap. Washed crack cocaine: THAT worked. Heroin worked. In the end I switched drugs totally.

Raving and clubbing burns you out in a way not even crack does. Taking eight ecstasy in a night really does hammer brains and body. I was never into multi-pilling. I did 1.5 say at midnight, so by one I was flying. By two this dose was peaking and it was time for my second dose: one more pill. By three am I felt fantastic. by four everything was going full blast. Most clubs chuck out at six, so my 2.5 pills were coasting down luxuriously from six to eight.

Usually I went to someone or other's house, but was home by eleven when a couple of blue Valium pushed me down enough to get three or four hour's sleep. I never slept dirty. Always showered first. Showering on ecstasy is like that "dancing naked in the rain" song. Showering on ketamine is like showering in a spray of diamonds. Mushrooms added extra sparkle when I wanted it. Those were my holy trinity: ecstasy, mushrooms, ketamine. Ketamine was attractive because though I couldn't tolerate spliff, ketamine was OK to me. And lots of people were scared of it, which only increased its appeal (have you noticed I can be a contrary person?)

I genuinely loved the K trip. It's quiet and sparse. Very sparse compared to acid, which is sensory overload. On ketamine you float through outer space. One time I flew through the thorax of a gigantic metalic insect each rib clang-clang-clanging as I thrummed past it. The vibrations of ketamine (you literally feel a low-pitched vibration) were to me AUM, sacred syllable of the universe.

These drugs were my religion.

But you need to discard any ideas that I was somehow a fucked up acid casualty. I used E ONLY at parties. One per weekend. Any more was just overdoing it too much, you really do fry your brains on too much E. I knew about E, knew the bad brain damage neurotoxicity publicity so I took it with care. Yeah the last couple of times I took 5, then 8 pills but that was just 2 occasions. Through most of my E-phase I was known as somebody who DIDN'T TAKE IT WHEN I DIDN'T WANT IT. Even though I ALWAYS had it on me at a dance party (only the desperate score in the club where prices are more than double what they should be).

Like most drugs, like an empty glass once you fill what's full, what's as high as can be, you don't get any higher, the full glass overflows, the drug overflows sideways. Instead of Eeeing you're tripping. This is the law of diminishing returns. Didn't Jesus counsel "moderation in all things"? I'm sure he didn't have MDMA in mind, but it's good advice. If you WILL take drugs take this advice and TAKE THE VERY MINIMUM NEEDED TO GET THE EFFECT YOU WANT. Taking more is just wasting money, wasting serotonin, dopamine etc; wasting brain cells.

So that's me and E. Me and raving. I adored it while I did it, but eventually it all got too much and I wanted to do other things. I cleared myself out for several months but the mood swings I'd experienced since my early 20s were worse. I felt like the sea. High tide (me buzzing on nothing) meant a low tide was coming (depression). Heroin squashed my moods into a flat line and I thought I was cured of this cyclothymia. Then it came back ON heroin (ie heroin wasn't working any more). And y'all know what happened lately. Those mood swings were severe even by psychiatrists' standards. I know what mild-moderate-severe mean in the context of bipolar. Now I have bipolar symptoms.

The doctor didn't use that word but he did say when handing over the risperidone script "it should damp down these mood problems". What I experienced was definitely bipolar in that I swing between two opposite extremes. Bipolar disorder is another matter and it must be carefully diagnosed. So I don't know what's wrong. But it would be just like me to be a manic-depressive junkie, wouldn't it?

I've gone past wanting an excuse for inexplicable behaviour and self-neglect and neglect of pretty straightforward responsibilities like filling out council tax benefit forms and sending them off. I got to a point where I was engaging with nothing. It all seemed pointless. I felt like an utter waste of space and a fraud. And I was usually able to put on a convincing front which confused friends and drug workers. It was Mother Hubbs, who says she was on lithium before she dropped it in favour of heroin (both are mood stabilizers) who told me I was bipolar ~ years ago. I thought she was exaggerating. Then I asked her more recently, "do you really think I am?" and she said "you know you are".

I don't know what I "know" but I know I'm up against something pretty formidable. More formidable than any drug I've ever tried. I mean this high I had not very long ago, the one that had me posting rubbish for days on end... that literally did feel better than any drug I've ever experienced. Now I'm down towards normality I'm pissed off, to be frank. Well if you got amazing free highs, wouldn't you want to keep them? It was the agitation, volatility, physical exhaustion to the point of nausea (having forgot to eat), utter inability to focus on anything longer than a few seconds, a total lack of judgement ~ not so much regarding should I or should I not do this, but judging what was or was not right for another person... I honestly had no idea... the utter inability to care for myself, the inability to think of anything without the idea popping open like a flower, every petal exploding with streamers and little ducks dancing down these streamers saying "hello! hello! hello!". Utter distraction. It was this. This mess that I could see I was in, yet didn't really care about. That I was hearing walls, cars, ceilings talk to me. I knew I was going crazy but didn't care. Yet I was angry enough at having been ignored, written off, misdiagnosed that when my druggieworker suggested I see a psychiatrist I agreed wholeheartedly. I knew in my heart I wasn't right. The psychiatrists knew where I was coming from. I wasn't complaining of feeling bad. I was telling them I felt EXTREME. And I was going very very fast. so fast I lost touch with my own thought process repeatedly. If I put food in the oven I didn't know it was in there till the smoke alarm reminded me. Well it's past 3am and I've not slept. Sorry to go on about my mental probs yet again. You must understand this is a big deal to me I have to reach some solution, some serenity, some sanity. If sanity is good then I want it. If it's boring: no thanks. I wasn't bored when I was mad. See I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I've messed myself up so bad I don't even know what "ordinary" or "healthy" or "balanced" really are any more.

I need a Speak and Spell machine. Perhaps then I can phone home. Maybe somebody will rescue me. I'm lonely here. Nobody seems to understand where I have been. I went to wonderful places more beautiful than you can imagine. And I was tripping on my own natural Higher Power. No drugs. If you honestly do still think I'm on drugs then do yourself a favour and stop reading this blog, because you're totally missing my point.

Well this has gone on long enough. From Abba to Ecstasy to me being a nutter. What's new. Take it easy people. Sorry if this is a mess. I'm not editing, else I'll get uptight and won't want it to go. All I'm doing to this is spellchecking, paragraphing it out then BAM! It's yours to skim or pore over or have a good laugh at.

Take care, lots of love

xx

PS I can just tell someone is going to read this and assume I only took heroin to be "naughty" I had many motivations. Its deadliness was a big one. The fact it made me FEEL BETTER was what kept me taking heroin. "Self-medication" as the nurse who never medicated me (did she think heroin was a good thing?) used to spout...

The flakes on the spoon are ketamine, cooked down from medical ketamine for injection into dried ketamine salts, which are snorted up the nose. Ketamine is NOT horse tranquillizer. It's a dissociative agent used for emergency anaesthesia and pain relief where more diamorphine is not appropriate. IF YOU HEAVILY ABUSE KETAMINE WITH HEROIN AND HAVE A BAD ACCIDENT, DOCTORS MAY HAVE GREAT DIFFICULTY ADMINISTERING ADEQUATE PAIN RELIEF... YET ANOTHER REASON TO GO EASY!


MAMMA MIA MOVIE: TAKE A CHANCE ON ME



ABBA: TAKE A CHANCE ON ME
fully original version
don't anna frid and agnetha look a bit like men in drag?...??



MAMA MIA MOVIE: RED NOSE DAY SPOOF



This tune is the kind of stuff I used to go E-E-Eing to. Without the tacky voiceover. And less cheesy eurotrance. More hardhouse with trance on top. Or hard Goa (late 90s Return to the Source type clubs were my favourite parties; tranced-up hardhouse was my favourite music)
shall i add a few more dance musical terms just to confuse you more if you're not into this shit? hardcore-jungle-tekno, drum & bass, speed garage, grime, deep house, trip-hop, amyl house, psy-trance, gabba, acid techno! There ya have it!!



Anna Grace


MY FRIEND ANNA in Wisconsin is depressed. She is back on the gear after quite a long break during which she transferred from methadone to Suboxone (buprenorphine/naloxone). She felt nowhere near as good on Suboxone as on methadone. Now as I say she's back on gear. What took her back was a daytrip to a large town where she picked up a $20 bag. Now she's spending $50 a day. Anna is on mood-swing meds but they don't seem (in my view) to be helping the way they should.

All this is detailed on her blog. The other day she posted up a song for me "I wanna sink to the bottom with you". We were supposed to do a China White binge in New York City. What's stopping me, apart from lack of money is 1 that I really want to go to NYC and don't want to mess up my chances of a proper visa and 2 I'm off heroin anyway. Even China White (though I hate to admit that little nugget.

China white is proper heroin. Afghan brown and tar are glorified scum drugs. China white is refined scum. I'd rather be refined when I'm being scummy ~ hence the white H4 fascination. Number four China White heroin is up to 97% purity at manufacture whereas brown H3 is rarely over 74% and China White doesn't need nasty fruit acids in the mix. It's already gone in an acid bath and has a fairly neutral PH. A hit of acidified brown has a PH of 2.55* or lower. Ie it's ridiculously acid. No wonder it erodes veins.

I was looking at my foot the other day when I suddenly had a feeling of peace and serenity as I told myself something I wish I could have thought ~ and meant ~ a long time ago: "You don't have to stick this with a needle ~ ever again". I don't want heroin in my life. Heroin did the best job of anything ~ bar depression ~ of destroying me. So I don't want heroin. I wish Anna didn't want it either.

ANNA GRACE this track is for you. I wasn't going to post up any old rubbish to return your musical favour. So here's a tune after my taste for you. I don't know any guitar music, I'm afraid...

REFLECT Feat. Delline Bass - Need To Feel Loved (Adam K & Soha Mix)(Arcdsa Videoremix)



FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE: SINK TO THE BOTTOM live 2003




Illustrated: Top: By appearance, Afghan brown H3 vs Burmese China White H4. Though being as this picture is American these may actually be Mexican Brown and Colombian White. Bottom: the type of heroin Anna is on is Colombian White, which is often grey, like this stuff ...


*ATTENTION any European heroin users. As a scientific experiment at the University of Bath, 130mg of 75% pure brown #3 heroin base was cooked up with 20mg citric acid; the resulting concoction had a pH of 2.55; when the entire sachet was added, the pH went down to 1.9 ~ from pretty acid to REALLY acid. Adding extra citric just damages veins. The 9 minutes long "How Much Citric?" Video is here.

ACEN: CLOSE YOUR EYES (Remix I) (Optikonfusion!)
this 1992 track has every ingredient of an anthem of the time; the eerie backdrop, talk of insanity and a euphoria you actually felt from the E more than the tune!



Ever Decreasing Circles




16:24 I JUST READ BACK the miserable post below! I was wondering at myself for using such extreme sounding language about wanting to kill one part of myself and the other part taking over...? Now I realize despite having labelled it not at all relevant (hmmm!) ~ that what I read was actually my drug addiction speaking!

In addiction the three year old child rules!

In my madness the adult takes care of the child. The child plays, but the adult remains in charge. This is the case even in severe schizophrenia. I know a couple of schizophrenics; both are delusional. Both are on compulsory once fortnightly depot shots. One goes absolutely loony-tunes fruitloops when he's ill. And I've only seen him "half" ill, and that was ill enough for me. He gets so bad police have to pick him up for his own safety to hospital which he declares is "worse than prison" (how bad was the hospital or how cushy was the prison? That's what I wanna know!).

But even with these two, the parents must be in charge. Otherwise they'd get in far more trouble than they actually do!

This is what's heartbreaking about drug addiction. It's the only mental or medical condition I know of where your Lower Self (for want of a better expression: I don't know what else to call it) where your baser motives rule over you. You find yourself running with a different flow that is exhilarating as it is scary. Suddenly you can do whatever you want. And whatever you want is more-more-more of your drug of choice ~ probably heroin and/or crack. The people I hung around with were heavy IV heroin users. When we had £10s we bought a £10 bag (each). £15 bought £15. £20... £25 (3x£10) £30 (2x15 or one gram) £35 (2x£20) £40 (3x£15) £40 or £45 a "sixteenth" (1.5g) £45 (different dealer) or £50 a true sixteenth (1.75g) and so on. Any amount, in £5 increments was covered by one dealer or another.

Our entire existence revolved around getting money, phoning, waiting, meeting, using using using sleeping, up with a jolt "got to go to work" running to the begging pitch money money money phone bus wait score bus home (home was a disused factory at one time) candles burning: use use use. Sleep.

I had nightmares nearly every night at one point. I woke up laughing or screaming around this time, a lot.

Wake up in a blur. Same old same old still ever-going-round day.

I nearly always had drugs and/or money when I woke (carefully shoved in one sock) because I organized myself well that way. Unlike a crackhead, a heroin addict knows for sure they will need to use the next morning, so they make sure the ways or means are there. The idea of going sick was unconscionable. I hardly ever went sick without knowing a bottle of methadone or a few DFs weren't stashed somewhere and could save me. [I would rather wait for real gear, save the medication for absolute, utter desperation...] As junkies go I was an organized junkie.

So what happened? Over a period of years I lost faith in myself. Lost courage, lost energy, lost the will to go on.

I thought I wanted to die: perhaps I wanted to clean up.

Methadone never really worked for me. A day on methadone was a day of visceral misery punctuated by frequent trips to my chest of drawers for hits from ever-weakening twice-thrice-four times ~ here's a new bit! ~ filters.

It sometimes annoyed me that the drugs clinic appeared not to have the faintest idea what I meant by "craving". I meant "I will pick heroin out of dog shit and use it" I meant "I will inject a crusty old scab if I think an old heroin filter lies in the middle". I did inject my own crusted blood once. Made myself sicker than I've ever been, physically. I got a dirty hit so dirty I could barely walk the next day.

In the end I just got tired. "Sick and tired of being sick and tired" as they say (another NA expression). I don't think NA are my Saviour. I think I am my Saviour. God is my Saviour. NA are a tool, like a screwdriver that tightens a sqealing hinge. Apply your own oil. NA have a purpose, that purpose is to keep Addicts clean. So I use them what they're there to be used for. You don't spend £100 on a train ticket to Glasgow then expect it to fix your leaky roof. Likewise I cannot confide to a roomful of NA members my mental condition. I have a Nutter Club on Thursdays for that. I try and keep my ears open and my expectations reasonable.

So here you have it: me being positive.

I'm sorry about earlier, to anyone who was bemused or pissed off. I was merely letting off steam!

*******


18:28 I just googled someone I knew from uni, found him. It stressed me, made my head go fast-ast-ast-ast-ast like that-at-at-at-at echoing-oing-oing-oing-oing-oing which is not the same as the hearing words echoed, that's hallucination; this is thought smashing fast enough into itself to break into trailing sounds. Those antipsychotics are doing something. They keep me physically calm; I noticed that earlier today. When I'd otherwise be pacing or even dancing they keep my feet literally on the ground. How bizarre. And caffeine doesn't have such an "illegal" effect on TWO cups of tea or coffee, any more..!

*******


ACEN: TRIP TO THE MOON iii
Thanks Lizzy o yeah I remember this. Do you know I'd head of "trip to the moon" but never knew it was this one!




Illustrated: ever decreasing circles sourced from The Games Blog



I don't know who I was yesterday... who will I be tomorrow?

"... I DON'T KNOW who I was ysterday... who will I be tomorrow...?" only time can tell that one Gleds!

Now it's 04:42 hours; I've been up since 3. Ursula le Guin, author of The Earsthea Trilogy, is on the The Interview, BBC World Service radio. She's talking about the last Yahi Indian, whom her father knew (he learned Ishi's language from Ishi to communicate and tape down all his stories and knowledge. Ishi Ishi was the very last of his tribe, the last speaker of the Yahi language and Ursula Le Guin's Dad learned this language. This is fascinating.

Do you like the top illustration? My mental state! The second one's just funky triangles I found. I've updated my
sidebar with some tunes I do actually listen to now. Moby Go, Urban shakedown Some Justice, Joe Beltram Energy Flash and Praga Khan Injected with a Poison (my anthem, that one... "there's a rainbow inside your mind... injected with a poison... we don't need that any more" well said!!

Well I'm going to ping off now. I only wanted to post some more music. Here's Moby's Go. The proper original video mix as well ...

O BTW for me really but in case anybody wondered why I posted up
Trisch Li manic a couple of weeks or so ago, it's because her behaviour is so strikingly similar to mine it's unreal. She's like my sister!

MOBY: GO
official video. l luuurved this tune



MOBY GO {JAM AND SPOON DUB MIX}




GOOD MORNING LIZZY!
MORNING EVERYONE!
hOW ARE Y'ALL?!


06:38 BBC Today Programme is doing a report on the Heroin Drought and low street heroin purity.
SOCA claim that as well as poor growing conditions in Afghanistan, the cause is more dealers and importers being busted. SOCA also say the wholesale price of heroin has doubled to £40,000 per kg (ie ridiculously high)

Cutting through the Alcohol Obsession



20:20 DOES MY BODY ACTUALLY REMEMBER how much I drink? Why does "it" want one more now? Does "it" know I usually take 2? Is it just me? I've been drinking for 10 years between 7.5 units (75mls) and 22.5 units (225mls neat alcohol) that's 2-6 half litre 7.5% vol white cyder cans.

20:52 I'm on Smirnoff Ice vodka-cloudy lemonade 4% vol 700mls which is 2.8 units 28mls alcohol and it is much nicer than the "gutrot" I was on before. Also I can water this at will with cans of cloudy lemonade. (Huge bottles I will probably just glug through, I know me.)

I came in from the shop met the nice guy downstairs who told me he hears voices (I don't care if he's a nutter; so am I!) also it's an alliance against the people who hate me here, so it's important. We also give each other money. Both ways. I like this guy. He was on "white" (crack) running between crack houses. Doesn't even smoke a spliff now. Is still hyper and I know someone on drugs he ain't on drugs. He struck me as "mental health" the second I first saw him.)... I was in a good mood, With a rush I used to get from drugs. Hey at least this means I've not burned out my brains on all these chemicals. Otherwise I'd not be ABLE to feel good...

Gotta run: Iceland's best cauliflower cheese in oven!




22:33 NA Basic Text p294 ("What Makes Me Happy Now") Japanese woman shares about NA in Japan:
Many women shared how drugs were a good thing for them, until their using became unmanageable. I didn't understand this until the new translation. These woman also had a hard time with the word "recover". In Japanese "recover" means "to go back to the way you used to be." Surviviors of abuse don't want to go back to the way they used to be. In recovery, they want to move on and grow. People who had nothing to start with were afraid that they really had nothing to recover...

And THAT, my friends, is what put me off stopping for ever such a long time. I had nothing to come back TO.



Read Shane's post about a heroin drought (2001) for the truth on the attitude of drug clinics to the Truly Desperate ...


187 LOCKDOWN: GUNMAN
Thanks Lizzy (spelled correctly this time)
I like this



SNEAKER PIMPS: SPIN SPIN SUGAR (ARMAND'S DEEP GARAGE MIX)
for Melody



"We are E" means the same as Urban Shakedown's Some Justice "we live as one family"... we're all together, all as one, on this brilliant stuff E for Ecstasy. Which lived up to its name with me, I thought it was fantastic, more fantastic than anything before or since ...

LENNY DE ICE: WE ARE IE (GARAGED UP)
one more for garage-lovin' Melody



LENNY DE ICE: WE ARE IE (ORIGINAL 1990)




WE ARE IE (HIJACK MIX)



WE ARE IE (CASPA & RUSKO MIX)





Illustrated: bolt cutters ~ I need these to cut through my drinking obsession ....


Drink Update Sunday

15:04 I'm kind of drinking but not liking it. I had no drink in the morning, longwalked to Iceland to get my £2 chunky Family Steak Pie and kept thinking "I don't need alcohol, I don't need heroin, I don't need anything, I'm OK" then I kept thinking about the drink and thought "OK well just get one then" which I did and it spent an uncannily long time unopened ~ over half an hour, which is not like me. Usually I crack it open on the street, then have to be real nice when police stop me. (They don't like people glugging alcohol in public, even from a Soft Drinks Bottle...) So if I can, I'm making this my one for the day. Knowing what I'm like I cannot be confident in this, as I'll tend to go to 2, as I said. But more than 2 I'm sure I will not do, not today. ("Just for today"). I got a phone call from my old heroin dealer yesterday. I didn't answer. Got a text from another saying will I taste some food for him (no). So I'm still off heroin. Still off drugs of an illegal nature. Still ON drugs of a legal nature: methadone; risperidone (both daily) and zopiclone 7.5mg as required. I had one last night after staying up well past 11pm. Dropped it. Sleeping like a baby by midnight. Yummmy stuff. I only ever daydreamed or loved or obsessed over sleeping pills TO SLEEP. Not to "light the tedium of the protracted evening" as Sylvia Plath said. She also said "their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good". Mine are white, so I'm OK on that score..!

Man I just checked that drink, nearly ALL there! Such a guzzler me, aren't I!!

THIS is why I wasn't too hot on going to AA instead of as well as NA. People hear that I drink, but my problem is OPIATE ADDICTION. That's the core problem. Drink only ever was a gear-intensifier and a bit of Dutch courage for begging.

As I told the dr., it makes me feel a bit better in depression. When ultra-hyper it barely does anything. Probably it takes the edge off. If say I slammed a glass into a wall in that state it would be my hyperosity NOT the drink doing that. I've drank enough over enough time to know how I behave on drink, and it's not like that! Also I was down to my bare minimum 2 on most days. Not drunk, by any means.

I know I'm walking a fine line that sounds like excuses here. I have to note down the facts for my own recollection. I WANT OFF DRINK ALL TOGETHER. I was told to cut down in stages, not just come off, which is why I can't just dump it. Though I'd sorely love to just do that, I also know I'm an addict. Which means I'm into associations. And the best association I can use to get OFF is to use a mixer and switch gradually to neat mixers with no booze. Does that make sense...? Somebody who knows please advise.

"An addict on their own is in bad company". (NA saying.)

"The heart is deceptive above all things". (Biblical quotation.)

I'll leave it there (another NA saying).



LEONA LEWIS: FIRST TIME EVER I SAW YOUR FACE
Nick inspired this choice with his Peter Paul and Mary video



LEONA LEWIS: see how pretty she sings? She's in the Streisand-Houston league though to listen to her singles you wouldn't believe it... Illustrated: not even I have this many empties (was this person a Diet Coke fan..?!?, Seconal 100mg (1960s sleeping pill); empty coctail glass (depressing)


Sylvia Plath: INSOMNIAC is here.
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/sylviaplath/1402
Brings me up in goosebumps it's so fine.

About pills: ...
... A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.


And re nighttime brooding...
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.


19:34: Note to self: GABA supplements and XXXXXXX Disorder
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/nutritional-supplements-for-bipolar-disorder/
Not that I have XXXXXXX Disorder. I don't, I have no diagnosed mental disorders (apart from depression) and certainly not that one.






Sunday Noon Entertainment/ Alcohol Report


THIS POST IS REALLY FOR MORE MUSIC (see below). I slept about 10 hours from midnight to 10am. Took 2x2mg Risperidone 1x7.5mg zopiclone; had 2 or 3 drinks (500ml White Stars/White Aces 7.5% vol alcohol). The day before yesterday I drank about 5 of them. Today I'm sticking to 2, or even 1 if I can do it.

2 drinks I can get to quite easy. 1 in the morning; 1 in the afternoon. Going below that has been difficult. I could cut out the morning drink most easily.

The Dual Diagnosis Worker phoned me the other day, post Psych Dr Appointment; we talked about ways of reducing. Everybody says I want to switch drinks as White Cyder is "gutrotting" and "has never seen an apple". It is NOT a romanticized evening Cyder House near Stonehenge beautiful Keats Ode to Autumn type drink. It is liquid Brillo pads, for homeless street drinkers to get pissed-up as quick and as cheap as possible. Mixed with tropical fruit mixed cocktail it's a beautiful budget alcopop. And probably super-bad for my teeth. Which are acid-eroded enough (to quote the toothpaste commercial).

OK so that's me and drink. I don't know my mental state it's probably higher than normal still but high feels good. I only say "high" knowing now what that is and how it reacts and how it feels (not the same as drug high, by any means: feels more "normal" goes off like a Pinnnnng--gggggg-ing Pika at no notice. Is intensely cheered by social situations. Speaks quick. Is highly distractable. Is paranoid more on the lower levels than the high ones, when it is full of grandeur...) so that's me.

I'm OK. I hope I'm staying on topic and being relevant.

Anyway here's music!

FUTURE SOUND OF LONDON: PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Thanks Lizzie



OBIE TRICE: GOT SOME TEETH
Hilarious. I love this "song"; only rap thing I really like



SNEAKER PIMPS Spin Spin Sugar ( Armands Dark Garage Mix )
Thanks Lizzie




ARMIN VAN BUUREN FT. SHARON DEN ADEL - In and Out of Love (Official Music Video)



Illustrated pinging pikas: they live up mountains in North America and Central Asia, look like a bunny rabbit crossed with a hamster. They ping everywhere, and collect bunches of flowers to hoard and eat when the flowers rot down. Russian Dwarf hammies live in disused pika burrows....


13:25 severe hunger pangs; going up Iceland for a Family Steak Pie (proper chunks of steak, no mince) which I eat with mixed veg dumped on top (there's enough carbs in the crust in my view...)

Back to the old School


I'm sitting on my bed (on the floor, very Japanese) because it's so cold in the other room my hands freeze! Here's some music I've been thinking about posting for ages!




Back to the old School

STEVE "SILK" HURLEY: JACK YOUR BODY
I prefer this one best. A genuine club cut. Got to UK mainstream #1 early 1987
Love the dancing in this one; paaticulaly the black guy in a suit doing that v funky liquid shuffle early on



M/A/R/R/S: PUMP UP THE VOLUME
UK #1 later in 1987 "Pump up the volume" was sampled endlessly by the unimaginative in the year following.



Illustrated: Victorian school photograph, commemorating a school play, from the school at Great Crakehall, near Bedale in Yorkshire



Pirate FM Radio Stateions London: http://www.transmissionzero.co.uk/radio/london-pirate-radio

OK I'm on Rude FM 88.2 now. Digital tuning: v difficult... vs analogue= so narrow you miss it!

20:13 Now on House FM 88.6; fed up of D&B ~~ anybody know any good Old Skool Hardcore Rave FM? (Can't find anything) ...

OK these are notes to self: 92.9FM mellow; Eruption (hardcore) is 101.3
94.6 drum & bass better than Rude FM (more NRG); 95.1 D&B better again; 97.00 African(?) 102.8 Turkish "rave" haha!!

Away Day Return

MESSED UP DR APPOINTMENT: something went wrong re the dr's appointment between me, my family, my worker, the dr, and the time but I've got another for later today so no harm done. I had to pick up a methadone script for next week anyhow. And I saw some nutters I know. And some junkies I know. Nutter-junkies are the best. Only type I truly understand.

Where me and normal junkies go off at tangents is in lifestyle as there was no way I was barging into shops every single day, multiple shops per day, stocking up, hiding it all in alleys and bins and hoping no other bastard shoplifter or tramp runs off with it all, then when all that's done having to sell the crap, probably feeling tired and your lovely customers being able to read how desperate you are (not that I've ever "sold stolen goods" but say, hypothetically, that I did it as a favour for someone else; then that someone would have been really surprised at how much cash I got, as I came in daisy-fresh and got money for their toothpaste and shampoo (when I didn't know it shocked me just how humdrum these shoplifted items are! I thought addicts nicked nice stuff. Not coffee, headache pills and razors! Another thing that shocked me was realizing that stuff on sale in small shops was often shoplifted from bigger shops, sold on at less than wholesale. The kind of shop that would go nuts if you got caught nicking from THEM, the hypocrites!) anyway shoplift thing over... what was I on about. O yeah

here's a point (at last)

how can I possibly know how much another person suffers? How good or bad they feel? That's (part of) what stopped me thinking I was clinically depressed when I was. Not having a point of comparison, even among people I hung out with and/or knew very well. As everyone's personal hell is their own, y'know...

Well I SLEPT 8 HOURS which was lovely. From about 6:30 to 2AM. OK probably 7 and a bit all told, and that... does it make up for last night's hardly any sleep? I dunno. I got up at 2am last night after taking the zopiclone late so I can't have got much more than an hour and a half sleep. I write down my sleep for this diary thing I WAS doing properly. Or going to to. You ALL won't remember; someone will.

O I hate going to doctors to describe how I am not how some physical ailment is affecting me. That's a headfucker if you think about it. Doesn't psychiatry mean "care for the soul". Does my soul need caring for? Shouldn't I myself do the caring? What can a headshrinker actually do for me? Apart from write down their medicalized version of how and who I am and think about prescribing drugs of their own. While telling me not to take ones obtained for FAR TOO MUCH MONEY from bastards on mountain bikes.

My phone is full of desperate text messages telling how THEIR gear is the best how one "runs" amazingly even though I'd never in a zillion years SMOKE THE CRAP. Unless it's H4 [for injection] I'm not in the remotest bit interested. H4 is pure white heroin hydrochloride. China White is still heroin. Heroin is shit. I wouldn't actually take heroin. But enjoy the oblique "your wares are shit" dig. Plus being way more knowledgeable than the idiot selling it. Surely if you're retailing you wanna know your product? But they don't. Hence the absolute SKANK sold during the worst part of this ongoing drought....

Khhh. My worker listened very closely when I described having once given up caffeine and cigarettes. Caffeine for more than a year. Cigs for at least 6 possibly as long as 9 months. And the mental persuasion entailed in dumping nicotine. My point was I was so intensely addicted to heroin none of that ever worked on me. Heroin was as intertwined round my soul as anything ever has been. Total and utter addiction. Never again!

And yes I do need to remember this. I'm the sort of bastard who doesn't recognize the same landscape in summer and winter. Message to self:~ Seasons change. No heroin in any season. Thank you.

I was so knackered today. I actually came down to the ground in the morning. Like coming home after a wild an whacky holiday (Vacation you Americans! Not Xmas hols)... yeah an adventurous holiday. Imagine sunning yourself on a beach on Ko Phi Phi, which is said to be sublime, somehow the walls of your own living room impinge into this scene and a sun-lounger turns into your own chair. Wow! Then I had a bit of coffee to get me through both these appointments and I was flying yummily again. On less coffee than most people take to get to Work!!! How amazing is that. Free illegal drugs in my coffee. Wow. Anyway I was so tired I was zombified on the outside, bizzy-buzzing on the inside. Which meant whenever anybody asked me a question I suddenly sprang to life and wouldn't stop rabbitting. Then stared into space again: wearied close to exhaustion. That's why I slept so very long, and it did feel like 18 hours, not just under 8... like when you wring out a sponge and wring and wring more and more water so I got all the sleep out of me I could. A nice good long lie in. Getting up early AM. Yeah I know it's stupid. It's also fantastic not to be addicted to sleep any more. Not the way I was. Not struggling to function on 10, 12, 14, 16 and even more hours. Get my attitude to sleep now? It hits me like a disease and I can't function through exhaustion, depression and sheer ukkhhh-ness. THIS is why I have a rave, an ongoing party when suddenly I'm OK, don't need DAYS of sleep don't need don't want get rid of my old shitty life... ukk. Live on fresh air! That's the ideal. Like a sky blue flower aginst a blue sky. Blue into infinite sunny blue and cool fresh air. I'd love to live in Switzerland, wouldn't you? OK I'm gonna leave it there else this will never get finished.

RESTFUL CLASSICAL MUSIC. OK the restful is sarcasm. Sometimes I am sarcastic you know. E.g. when I asked would a caramel cadbury's creme egg set me off hyper. I'm not the kind to get high off a red smartie you know. And as for caffeine... all it used to do was give insomnia and anxiety. Never got high off that cept when I was on Prozac or naturally high anyway (not drug high).

MOZART: REQUIEM TRANCED UP



MOZART: LACRIMOSA (IE SAME PIEC) TECHNOD DIFFERENTLY
oh man: well you might like it, I'm saying nothing about this one



EVANESCE: (MOZART'S) LACRIMOSA
OK we're starting to go down a blind alley with this one but here:
05:04 finally got this to play properly: what an oppressive dirge! doesn't suit my mood at all. I far prefer that On With the Story Higher than the Eiffel track (look for a tiny little box, shrunken youtube screen last Sunday) for clish-clashing waves of music. Does anybody like this?:~~~~~



Illustrated: I was trying to find bindweed to illustrate heroin and me and that's the flower ~ WHAT AN AMAZING COLOUR BLUE! The bottom shows what bindweed actually does, view from a beach, Ko Phi Phi (Thailand) which is pronounced "pea pea"

Midnight Music

02:58 I've been up since just after 1am, meaning not much more than an hour or so's sleep. I need sleep (far as I understand it) not to set myself off more. Here are some lovely garage links for those into parking cars... the music [of today] is more reminiscent of the rave music of my youth, with a funkier beat on top. Quite good really. I prefer a lot of the newer stuff to the classic garage I've been posting up. If I can find a good tune or two I'll post it up.

GARAGE: this is the station I'm listening. With these things it's usually the later the better. When I woke up at midnight it was pssssht-ta-clonking pleasantly ~ Love FM Live

Melody here's that other garage track I was telling you about. I prefer the no-video version .... this classic track from the mid 90s doesn't have that rave-sound I'm talking about that's new; this is old

ROSIE GAINES: CLOSE



ROSIE GAINES: CLOSE
this is a funkier pirate radio edit, note the lovely authentic needle jump at the beginning!



JOHNNY WHITE FEATURING MY ROBOT: DESENSITIZE
bizarre track, excellent video "be careful if photosensitive epileptic!"
i love this



SCIENCE LAB: FLESH AND BLOOD
Old techno from the hardcore rave era. I used to love this: the quotes are from Shakespeare's King Lear

NA Serenity

I HAVE JUST COME BACK FROM NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS I will keep coming back. I explained my interpretation of the 12 steps, which are ways of shedding guilt, bad habits and excusese and making you a better person than when you went On Drugs. I said I came to NA for serenity. And I said I had been taking heroin as self-medication, that crack made me a mess, that I was very reluctantly taking methadone (and nothing else) and that taking illegal drugs is putting your happiness in the hands of a cunt on a mountain bike. I hope they get my point.

I don't do group hugs. Done them before, they do my head in. Eeeee was the "hug drug" so "hugs not drugs" means... confusion for me.

Gotta go wash again. Twice a day. With a bowl of hot water. I'm allergic to showers when the stupid showerhead won't stay where it's meant to be so you can't just Walk Under Hot Rain you gotta hold the stupid thing doing a bowl of water instead. Yeah I'm a living breathing 38 year old 3 year old. Got that bad. Least I'm attempting to take care of myself now. Someone has to, that someone has to be me.

Right I'm off, take care everyone ;-)


ALAN HULL PIPEDREAM (1973)
you have to let this one get going.... THANKS BUGGALUGZ!!



... reminds me of this one...
PINK FLOYD SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND... Syd Barrat tribute. Syd Barrett who blew his brains out on LSD... bloody hell this is slow. In drugs terms, spliff-tokers' music ;-)

this one's bigger because the pictures change slide-show style... it's the original album version

This is for Anna

ANNA GRACE POSTED ME A TUNE called Sink to the Bottom by Fountains of Wayne. It was highly appropriate. Here's my reply:~

Mine is not a highly original choice, but I love the tune, I love the sentiment and I love the video.

I've gone all night with no sleep. It wasn't deliberate. I was pottering about then I realized it was 7:15, then it was 8.59.

I hope you're all right Anna. I'm surviving. I can't say whether I'm good or bad, I'm in between :-)


REM: EVERYBODY HURTS



THANKS ANNA. JE T'ADORE


Hamsters and Heroin and Chinese Food: a Polydrug Addiction

IT IS 07:13 in the morning. I didn't score yesterday until the evening when the urge for Chinese food possessed me like that naughty goblin who killed my hammies, nibbled through my computer cable, lost me my broadband dingle-dongle once and pulled out and scarpered off with the SIM-chip one other time.

So possessed was I by this naughty goblin who used to say to my best hammy "Pandable, ramble!" and he'd prance on his enormous 12" diameter rat-wheel and scuttle away from dusk till dawn every single night, that zombie-like I wandered in a trance to the Mongolian-Chinese takeaway.

Poor Pandable, my very best hammy lived to three-and-a-half ~ that's past 100 in hamster years. Early one morn when I had insomnia but Pandable was wideawake and healthily pinging like billy-o on his enormous wheel, I hid him in my pocket, took him out for a ramble amongst the dandelions in the unmown lawn of our old back garden. The dandelion-and-clover exotica was as tall as Pandable himself and his poppy panda-eyes were wide with amazement as he rambled carefully through the dense jungle foliage of our lawn. When the time came for him to go back to his nest he was most displeased. Back in his tank, he angrily shuffled his nest back and forth for three hours as if to say "I don't want to live in this cracked old aquarium any longer. I want to live in the garden, like natural hammies do in Turkey." What Pandable didn't understand of course was that in Syria and Turkey, where golden hamsters originate from, the tubby rodents are predated by owls and foxes and wild cats and other birds of prey and are endangered species.
There are many more golden hammies of the species mesocricetus auratus in captivity than anywhere in the wild. As long as they have a nice BIG home (not a tiny one more suited to dwarf hamsters that many are lumbered with) and a proper big wheel that is NOT selfishly stopped up at night to stop the irritating rattling and squeaking, a hammy will be quite happy. Female hammies are apt to escape as they come on heat every four days. In golden hamsters, it's the female of the species who goes on the trek for a mate, hence the tendency of females, who are slightly bigger than the males to be exceedingly good escape artists, despite their tubby appearance and outwardly docile manner. Hamsters are extremely persistent at "worrying" the bars in their useless cages. Any structural weakness will be located and worked upon until escape is achieved. Another method that works wonderfully on the type of cage where bars are clipped over a plastic base is to angrily nibble at the bars all night ~ which they only do when bored for lack of toys of a selfishly stopped up wheel. Eventually their nibbling pays dividends when the accumulated vibrations cause the entire top of the cage suddenly to ping off, and the intelligent tubby wastes no time in pinging to freedom,often to construct a burrow at the top of the stairs in one of your favourite houseplants.

Squeaky or rattly hamster wheels can easily be remedied with a drop of cooking oil. Not only does this silence the irritating night-long commotion, it also makes the wheel run far more smoothly, giving you a happy pet who's less likely to escape, burrow in your bonsai pots or set up a nice nest at the back of your sofa, the swines! A hamster should never be deprived of a wheel, except under veterinary advice where, for instance, running on one might aggravate an acute injury preventing healing. Young mothers sometimes run on their wheels to the neglect of their pups. Hammies love wheels!

How I got onto hamsters I've no idea, except that they ARE my favourite small animals. I relate to hammies as we share many characteristics. We both like our sleep and are bleary at best, enraged at worst, to be prematurely woken. Hamsters appear to be docile but ask any vet which small animal they dislike treating most and "hamsters" crop up time and again. Hamsters are NOT docile. When they lose their rag they do bite, but not normally without warning. When I used to wake up Pandable during the day with tasty titbits of Safeways chicken pie with petits pois, Pandable would gnash his teeth ~ literally chattering them as we might do when very cold ~ had I been stupid enough to try and touch him in his nest he no doubt would have bitten me HARD. A golden hamster can bite through a stick of chalk with ease. Occasionally when I woke him up he struck out poisonous-snake style, leaping at the shadow of my hand. For all he knew I was a hawk come to gobble him up for breakfast. Pandable didn't have a hammy-house; he had an enormous nest of print-free newspaper strips cut from the sides. These he would chew to his own satisfaction constructing the most enormous bed I've ever seen for an animal so tiny. Another characteristic Pandable and I shared. I have at least five or six quilts and about seven pillows and another five or so cushions. Ideally, when I'm organized, I construct an Arabian-nights-style nest with all this bedding on the go at once. Just like a giant hamster. If anyone dares knock on the door during a daytime snooze of mine fair enough I don't bite them, but I am very offhand indeed and my landlord's henchmen are usually intimidated into coming back later.

Now what got me onto Pandable bar the excuse to post up lots of hammy photos with this post?... O yeah ~ that naughty goblin's back, causing havoc in my life once more.

I didn't score any heroin at all yesterday, would you believe it! Out I went in search of the best Chinese takeaway I knew. This one also does Mongolian food and I was really in the mood for a mysterious Mongolian chicken curry. Guess what? That evil goblin had seen to it that the Mongolians had shut up shop! I was so furious I rang my heroin dealer without a moment's thought. Some idiot answered, the dealer's "cousin" as they like to call their partners in grime. Who am I? Where did I last meet him? Just round the corner yesterday and the day before you idiot (of course I never call my dealers idiots. Idiotic people tell me I should. This is all well and good if you want no dealers left. The particular person who keeps telling me to do this has multiple tales of being ripped off, whereas I don't. So who's doing something right, who's doing something wrong? I don't think it's me in the wrong. When you talk to dealers you have to be direct, to the point and not take any crap off them. Give those bastards an inch and they'll take a mile next time. You don't have to be rude and you certainly never tell one to **** off (at least I never do) no matter how bad you think you've been treated. Heroin is an addictive drug. You never know when you might need that particular dealer again in an emergency. Compared to the way certain individuals I knew got treated ~ one was sold an empty wrapper as crack, yet came back a second time to score! ~ I was always treated fairly and reasonably. I always paid the full price when I had money. It's people who think they're being clever, routinely handing £7.50 for a £10 bag who complain the service they receive is terrible and the bags tiny. You get what you pay for. When the bags were generous I always paid the full asking price (though you get discount: e.g. perhaps 2x£10 for £15 or 3 for £25. Again you're tending to get what you pay for, the 3 bags for £25 will tend to be more generous. The stingiest dealers will do 2x£20 or 4x£10 for £35. They should also do 5x£10 or 2x£20B+£10 crack for £40. 3x£20s are £50 in drugs mathematics. 4x£20s are £70 or £65 if you're lucky. 5x£20s should always be £80. 6x£20s should always be £100. You don't negotiate these prices, they're bog standard. Anyone charging more should be "shotting" genuinely enormous bags weighing 0.6, 0.7g and you should still get three of these for £55. I only had problems with dealers in the end when I wasn't such a good customer and the number of kids, who didn't know their trade had multiplied. Many were transparently out to get as much as they could as quick as they could, not comprehending that heroin is a longterm business. That's why it's such a good business to be in as a dealer. To be a good dealer you need to treat your customers with respect. Making less profit on bigger bags of good gear will make you more in the longer term as your punters will keep on and on coming back. The "alphabet" of Bs, Cs, Ds, Hs, Js and Ts ~ horrible little kids (19 year olds probably with no qualifications, no college, no job. They don't even know the job of heroin dealing. Say "China White" and they think you're stupid. "Coke comes from South America" one informed me. I rolled my eyes in despair and skulked off. When someone's that stupid I don't bother putting them right. Let them go on being ignorant. If they don't know their trade they have no respect from me. More than half the dealers I know I do not deal with as they fall into that Fast Buck Ignoramus category. It wasn't like this a few years ago. The handful of dealers I kept on my shortlist were with a single exception people I'd known for 5 to 10 years. It always amazes me that someone will whizz past on a mountain bike offering "candy". He can't even specify what type of "candy" is on offer, he wants me to say first so he can say "o yeah I go that" ... as if I don't know a ripoff when I see one. I never ever deal with an unknown (somebody none of my friends can vouch for) without a free sample bag up front. But even when these aren't ripoff merchants they're too stingy to make an investment that costs them a mere £5, which is what a £10 bag costs the dealer. If you treat a good B-punter well you can make hundreds of pounds a month not just from them but from all their friends as well. It was this deteriorating business culture, not to mention the Great Heroin Drought of 2010/2011, not to mention that I was truly and utterly FED UP of the entire thing that finally made me stop. How on earth I was idiot to start again I cannot explain.

As I said, I didn't score yesterday. I did ring the dealer in fury when I realized the Mongolian Chinese was shut, but the "cousin" who answered either didn't know me or affected not to. He wanted me to come ten minutes out of my way, which I did. But he unwittingly did me a huge favour. The road he specified had a Chinese takeaway I had yet to sample. I pinged indoors, grabbing a menu then phoning back saying where I was. He said "Come to the far end of the road." This I did. But then he started asking who I was again. He also claimed not to have the same B which had been good as gear goes these days, but that the new one was "better". Such words would inspire confidence ~ from a dealer I could trust ~ but this snottynosed-sounding kid inspired no such confidence. I pulled the takeaway menu out of my pocket. I had £20 in one hand ~ heroin costs £20 a shot these days. I used to hit up between £6.66 worth (yes highly symbolic, that's a third of £20) and £10. Now it has to be the entire £20 bag in one, else I'm wasting veins on something I can barely feel anyhow. And this guy's gear was described by Mr Public School as "nine out of ten". If that's a nine, I dread to think what a six or a seven might be!

Anyway I glanced over this menu, slavering at the thought of Chicken Curry Mix Vegetable Fry Rice and made a snap decision I'd never in my life done before. I switched off my phone and pinged up the road back to the Chinese where £6.20 bought me something I realized I was craving far more than any heroin. Then I trotted off back home and had a lovely meal with home-made tropical alcopops to boot.

My drinking's slowly reducing itself too, but I'm NOT obsessively counting cans, bottles, units. OK I know I'm drinking generally 3xhalf-litre cans of white cyder at 7.5% ABV. This is more than I ought to be drinking but with drugs out of the picture what's left. As I said before, and I wasn't pulling a "poor me" I was merely being factual. Heroin always held me together into one coherent person. Before heroin I was being told by my counsellor and my GP that I "needed more help than they could give me" that is the help of a psychiatrist. My previous experiences with psychiatrists had been disastrous. When he prescribed Haloperidol I was told the pills "might cause some muscle stiffness". Next morning as I was ambling up the road to my counselling appointment I suddenly became unable to walk. I made it across the road to a pharmacy where I explained what I'd been prescribed. The pharmacist rang an ambulance at once. I was carted into Accident and Emergency writhing in agony with "a severe dystonic reaction" (in other words, parkinsonian symptoms) and given intavenous procyclidine, an anti-parkinson's drug and a stern note to the psychiatrist reprehending him never again to prescribe such noxious substances. The psychiatrist addressed me with a blank look (no apology) and wrote out a script for something with fewer "extrapyramidal side-effects". For a long while before the opiate habit got me, I realized I felt like a jigsaw puzzle with a piece missing. Sometimes the missing piece reappeared only for another to go astray. I could never put my finger on what was happening. This seemed to be a problem; because of it, I was never able to get my life together.

Without heroin I become incoherent once more. Regular readers will remember my posting on this topic some days ago. I got a comment from an Anonymous suggesting (as I saw it) that a little too much self-pitying navel-gazing was going on. But this is to miss my very point. There's little if any point in the kind of solipsistic self-analysis of which I felt accused if "you", whoever "you" are, will never add up as a complete person. I don't mind this. It doesn't hurt as such. But it does cause a lot of issues coping with life on life's terms. What an irony that heroin, widely labelled the most destructive of all drugs, actually kept me together so well that in my long and involved psych assessment with the nurse I barely mentioned this, believing it had been a youthful phase I'd simply grown out of. How wrong I was!

If you want to criticize me, you want to read my actual words. Where do I once claim unhappiness or suffering? What I'm saying is that without gear I'm fractured. I don't add up. I feel like a jigsaw with different pieces missing every day. I don't feel terrible, except when I'm depressed and I've been depressed for a few days but mildly enough to act my way out of the blank meaninglessness of it all. If that sounds self-dramatizing then you don't know depression. Figures vary but it's believed only one person in twenty ever becomes clinically depressed to a moderate or severe degree, so if you're one of the 95% who never experience this please don't judge me, you have no idea how it feels to be so incapacitated you can barely move your body, let alone think clearly, make rational decisions or lead any kind of meaningful life. I've been lucky, these severe spells have been mercifully brief. And I'm grateful to them for removing the desire to use, the desire to commit suicide (nearly all depressed people feel suicidal, and those who don't tend to obsess about death). Depression is a dreadful state to be in. I'm not claiming to be at the extremes. My principal problem as I see it now is one of ongoing heroin addiction.

Yes I did score. At 4:30am I telephoned my best three dealers in descending order of preference. Mr Idiot man ignored my call. Mr Orange Juice Gear With Black Bits On Top was fast asleep, Mr formerly the most generous dealer on the block, knocking out 0.6, 0.7, 0.8g for £20 pre-drought met me at 5am at the bottom of his road.
£15 changed hands for 0.4g of brown. I cooked the entire lot up and fixed it all at once, miraculously locating an active vein in my right arm. So I've used yet again, but I'm still wide awake. All the way there I was obsessing about whether or not to ask for "one and one" that is one gear, one crack because I used to love crack so very much and as I say if I can destabilize my mind I know from experience I won't want heroin any more. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Just thinking over what I put makes me feel very sad. That I'd be willing to jeapordize my sanity. Sanity, which is something to be prized. Just for the sake of escaping this terrible addiction that has eaten me alive all these years. So yeah, maybe I am self-pitying. But if I don't pity myself, who else will. If I don't pity myself, don't respect myself, don't love myself enough, I'll never break free of this destructive cycle that has become the only way of life I know. Only I can help myself. And that's the problem. I just don't know how to do that.

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Meanwhile it's 8:58. I've been tapping this for an hour and three quarters. I hope I'm making sense. Please no judgemental comments I'm not up to handling them today.
I need constructive advice. I want to know what I can do. Can anybody help me help myself. Yes I know it's all down to me that's what's so frightening. My life is like a truck ride with a three year old child at the wheels.

But I'm a 38 year old man. In not too long I'll be 39. That 3-year-old is only an aspect of me. An "avatar" as they might like to say these days. It's up to me to take back control, to do what I have to do. That's what I've longed for, for such a long time.

To be able to know that for once in my life I am Doing The Right Thing. So there you have it. That's what I want. I just wish I knew how to get it...

Illustrated: Mongolian lady outside her yurt; pet tubby Syrian hamster; highly social, pingponball-sized roborovski hamsters rambling together on wheel; Syrian hamster in "wild" (ie probably somebody's back garden!); getting caned in Malaysia doesn't mean taking loads of really good gear it means being beaten on the bum with a soggy broom handle ~ they should bring this to the UK for dealers who sell rubbishy heroin; yummy Chinese food; mobile phone; depression ~ in in the eye of the sufferer; toking on a crack bottle (exactly the same type I used to use); prison ~ way out required.

AUSTEN POWERS: HARD KNOCK LIFE
Anthem to my existence in all its absurdity...


 
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