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)

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!

Mood Switch

I HAD A BEAUTIFUL MOOD SWITCH about 2 and a half hours ago (17:30 hrs). Suddenly from crying over the word schizoaffective and feeling shitty, without any warning, I felt like I'd had a fat line of best charlie* and was ping bling BLIING yeah! Up. Not really really up but a bit hypomanic.

Which I now know I really was when I thought I might be but wasn't sure and got totally lost in a pile of diagnostic tosh. I think this dr is right. He's a consultant psychiatrist who has seen me 4 or 5 times with no pretence or bullshit at all on my part especially the past 3 or 4 times (feels like 4; only recall 3) when I had have/was having a mental breakdown. And as he himself said differential diagnosis (ie what it is if it's not schizoaffective disorder rapid cycling bipolar type is type 1 bipolar, rapid cycle. No question at all about that.

Mania means far FAR more than just being in a good mood. It means being really quick and more to the point having loads of energy, especially mental energy. The symptoms of bipolar are like biorhythms; they go up and down but not all in sync which is how weird crossover states happen (like having loads of mental but no physical energy or being manic and in a shitty mood) manic also means irritable and volatile. Mania is NOT delirious happiness and bipolar doesn't mean switching between happy and sad. [Whoever it was said that wants shooting between the eyes!] It means switching between high and low energy. Fast and slow more than high and low. Extreme mania is frankly terrifying and nonsensical. That is what I was putting up with a few weeks ago when all the rave music appeared.

My main problem apart from living in utter chaos is that my memory has gone very poor, on antipsychotics as well as off, so I can't blame the pills (unfortunately). I don't know their side effects and don't want to. I'm not quite as obsessional and neurotic as I might appear to be. I don't cry out for help often until past the point of saving. Y'all need to bear in mind that in reading my blog you're reading my own journal, my sounding board to myself, so I say things here I wouldn't bang on about in real life, probably to anyone.

I told Valium Marilyn I was "bipolar" because I know she knows what that means. "Yeah but what do doctors know?" was her response and I agreed with her. I'm bipolar as in 2 poles, I accept that. All else I refuse to dwell on any more than you would. I have to go now, EastEnders is two thirds gone already ...


22:54 please someone comment something. tell me what the weather is like on the other side of the world, or indeed in London if you're here. is it freezing cold? i think no, Valium Marilyn thinks yes, I tell her "you're ill darling, it's fine" in fact I was wearing fewer clothes as spring is springing up up UP high HIGHER and HIGHER, lovely yummy high!

0222 i have just reluctantlz popped my antipsychotics; i took 1.5 instead of 2 because 2 gives me side effects, I'm going to crawl the dose up to 2. I know I shouldn't do this but the person prescribing them isn't having to take them so I'm doing all I can. I don't want to take any frankly as I know I'd be going pretty full-on without them as it is I'm only mildish manic but I feel fantastic when I go with it, like I'm conducting music, bashing a tennis ball back and forth in technicolor hyperspace... mmmmm:


*(Charlie is cocaine.)

02:27 THIS SOUNDS pretty slow music compared to the HARDCORE RAVE i've had bangin away in my head but still it brings back the day mid-late 80s:~~~~~~~

Hyper-Real

SCHIZOAFFECTIVE DISORDER. That's me. Differential diagnosis: bipolar disorder. He said: do you open your mail? And looked at me knowingly. Well I would if something was coming from you. So he dictated the mail in front of me. That's how I know the phrase "differential diagnosis" it means if I'm not schiz-bipolar I'm just bipolar.

See I told you I didn't all add up. It explains why I keep wanting to laugh when something is "DEADLY SERIOUS" and why I enjoy walking through graveyards in the dark. Actually it doesn't explain that one. Someone once said that one about Madonna: "she was the sort of person who would take a short-cut through a cemetary at midnight" and I once lived in a house backing on to a cemetary. So I took midnight short cuts all the time. Thinking of Madonna (True Blue baby I love you) some of the time.

Sorry I can't make this more serious it just explains.
Explains.
An awful awful awful lot.



... AND NOW FOR A MUSICAL BREAKDOWN
if this doesn't drive you crackers, nothing will

A Flight of Blue Tits

IT'S 10 to midnight. I slept a few hours and woke up, finally, with a bit of calm! The following was written five hours earlier:

LET ME TRY and give a less winky-dink expression of today's goings-on than that bunch of crap you see one post below.

I went to my appointment today. Tomorrow I have one at the Psychiatrist rather than the Nutter Club. Unfortunately they crash but I had scheduling problems due to a computer error and I must take the time offered.

Naomi [the dual diagnosis lady] phoned me just now and pointed out he is a Consultant and so timewise finds himself practically meeting appointments pretty much when he is and isn't allowed to use the loo. It gets that bad!

If I were a doctor I'd be a Consultant Neurologist (never a psychiatrist: too headfucking that one. People with schizophrenia and bipolar ranting at me half the day and then the other 50% pf patients not wanting to speak. No thanks. Neurology patients usually can speak pretty fluently unless they're comatose in which case the checks and charts do the talking for them.

Now my own head is babbling away. I have Racing Thoughts or a Flight of Ideas. Like little tubbie birdies thrumming from one bird table to another. Now they're in the birdbath. Splish splash splosh. And they're blue tits. My favourite British Garden Birdies. Ask another British person if you don't believe about Blue Tits, They're beautiful..

OK back to midnight: my flight of ideas is safely in its nest boxes, has refrained from chirping and is looking forward to perching upside down tomorrow morning on the feeder.

I think what was wrong earlier was a long day and me just wanting to be home, crossed with the necessity to do endless little things that just got in the way when I was tired and wanted to unwind and the upshot was manic paranoia from which it takes hours to calm down. Naomi was very helpful. She just happened to phone right in the middle. I wasn't "going off on one" in a big way. No ranting. No talking nonsense. She knows how thin the line is between appearing to cope and not coping at all. That's why I like her.

She told me to focus on myself at tomorrow's doctor appointment and not my surrounding issues because other professionals are dealing with those.

All I would need say re today, if that came up, would be "I felt paranoid on the bus, like people were talking about me, so I got off earlier than I would have".

If I were a regular smoker of cannabis or crack I wouldn't be surprised to feel the way I do, but I gave up both. Cannabis went years ago, crack went two years ago (with a handful of lapses). My drugs workers at the time assured me my problems with paranoia and depression (that were only ever eluded to, nobody ever asked about them in any detail, so I never told in any detail) they assured me these problems would vanish in a puff of cocaine smoke. And yet they haven't. Shortly after giving up I realized a common cold had brought a strange return of paranoia and ibbly-bibbly weirdness. And that was a common cold! About 2 years ago.

Well crack has well and truly gone. The last time I used heroin it did nothing for me. Cannabis is a non-issue (never touch it). Uppers I don't go near. Hallucinogens or psychedelics I gave up entirely a decade ago. These had never been a big huge deal though they made a big huge impression on me whenever they were taken. So all these drugs have gone and I am doing all the Right Things I ought to be doing.

Surely I shall see some Fruits of my Labours soon..?

TITS IN THE BATH!
Bluetit playtime in Amsterdam!






Illustrated: blue tits and a Ancient Egyptian space alien ...


THIS is an A1 description of "racing thoughts"...

Halfhourthinkyjinkingpost....

I JUST THOUGHT I was posting but I was thiniing an a half dream. Dreamoing for half an hour. I'm tired and pissed off. All day, since midday it has been this thing and that thing a.. grabbing at me, at my attention span whe I feel ragged and frayed as it is. I'm Pamela Martha Fockered-up. Meet the Fockers is galloping round my head like a many-legged express train. Now I have to dash to the methadone chemist before they close at 18:30 hrs. I'm walking: riding the bus was such a headvucker with people talking about, sounding like they were trying not to sound like they were talking about and etc etc etc... all about ME when ALL I WANTED WAS TO BE IGNORED. TO CURL UP AND GO TO SLEEP.

PLEASE!

PS I did have a dr's appointment tomorrow then I didn't. It was messed up but not by me; I miss Nutter Club but see a Consultant Psychiatrist so no harm on that score...hy

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

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....

Lots of talking

I WAS SURE I posted something else but whatever I said got lost. My memory is poor these days. Chemist says I missed a methadone pick-up Monday but I'm not sure I did. I'm pretty hot at methadone and making sure I have enough. I need to be as I'm fully considering dropping the State Controlled Prescription and merely buying methadone on the strreet. Which is my option for when they start messing my head even more than presently.

Earlier today I was in the bad mood I've been in for three days. I crashed down. So this afternoon I took heroin therapy and feel far better for it. Frankly I don't care about myself or my life or whether anything is good or bad. Gear is the same as suicide so I'm self-medicating with slow suicide and it works. Doesn't stop me feeling manic and/or over the top, doesn't stop me being depressed and/or mood swinging. Stops the worst of it though. Which implies if I'm in withdrawal as y'all want to tell me I'm still withdrawing when "high" enough on gear to be in near-unconsciousness. So shove that in your expert pipes and toke it.

Baino can you please explain something what do you mean the dr says I'm psychotic? But I'm not? How so? I don't get this you're really confusing me. You think I'm exaggerating? Then you're wasting your time here if I write a ficiton blog it would be WAY less sad thatn this one come on. So what do you think is real? I don't get it. As I said I'm not a psychotic what really happens is psychic, that's how I hear other people's thoughts. Telepathy. If you can't hear the reason is simple YOU'RE DEAF.

The shrinko is the only one I trust and even him I think he is trying to kill me when I go to an NA meeting. So I trust no-one. I wouldn't post anything if you knew who I was so THAT, ANNA GRACE IS WHY I'M "HIDING BEHIND MY BLOG" as you put it
when you try and push me gently into behaviour I'm not comfortable with. You might want people to look at you; I don't need my neighbours reading my blog. That might be a buzz for you; to me it's a buzz-killer. I want to be read, not stared at. Leave a comment Anna I leave them for you and you won't even leave a single one when I specifically ask you.

Baino, Anna, Gattina, please answer in comments I cannot do email it's a total headfucker. Unless it really is confidential please everyone use COMMENTS. Comments I can do; email I just do not do. I just do not do it; ask my family. I get your point Gattina: your blog is a shiny happy blog where you don't want my heroin-talk so I'll email that from hammynutter@lycos.com. Please anyone who emails, no matter what the subject LEAVE A COMMENT SAYING YOU EMAILED or I won't be able to find it. There are no rules chez moi that anyone needs to comment on the post they answer under. If you want to tell me anything, relevant or not to anything else, just slap it under today's load of Gledwood-drivel and I'll get it. Don't email me unless you really do need to use email. OK?

I am going to ask this Consultant Psychiatrist yes/no am I in detox on methadone? Yes or no; tell me. Methadone is a substitution therapy and should leave you in no withdrawals. I certainly don't withdraw physically so how can I "withdrawl mentally" without craving? I only want heroin in depression. Depression I had for DECADES before I ever tried heroin. Question number 2 will rear its head: that being so, why on earth are you giving it to me KNOWING it turns me into a psychdedelic shaman who's not taking psychedelics? And can you please make the psychedelia stronger? Thankyouverymuch!

I can't go on I'm too sleepy to focus. Things I cannot say are seeping out of my mind so I'm leaving it here. Nutter Club report comes later.



MADONNA: HUNG UP
time goes by so slowly for those who wait; no need to hesitate...

Drugs Required

I THINK I NEED MORE HEROIN. Surely it's better to be sleeping on the A, S and D keys, producing nonsense, than tapping in adda-gaggas because I'm fully awake and going into Shamanic Heaven. If I could stay in Shamanic Heaven I'd willingly stay there but I always come down down down so why go up. Only other therapy that comes to mind is Glass Therapy but it gets sharp bits all over the floor which I then tread on and that ain't the point. Accidentally cutting an artery, that's the point.

Some bastard is insisting on coming round tomorrow and I just want to go to bed. I need some drugs to push me under. I hate sleeping without pills and I don't see why I should do it. I'm avoiding risperidone on principal it's antipsychotic and I never was psychotic.

Mediums and prophets hear voices, they ain't mad and neither am I. I'm dropping all quasi-medical terminology from now on as it seems to cause gross confusion and make you all think I believe I'm ill. I only think I'm ill when I am actually ill. Which hasn't happened for weeks.

I was watching the Aviator yet another film about somebody the world considered mad. He does what I do, says the same stuff over and over. Nothing wrong with that. I only do it when I'm thinking. Or not thinking.

I wish I could sleep. I wish barbiturates were prescribed. I could do with 30x Seconal 100s. You can take these by the handful if you want deep sleep and you'll sleep into your grave. Only way of suicide I know of involving [benzo] sleeping pills involves a rough sea. Drop the pills while you're at the rocks. Wear multiple layers of clothing to weigh yourself down. Wait long enough that you have trouble moving. Use all your might to get into the choppy waters. It won't feel cold. You will feel nothing ever again. This is advice to self. You wanna kill yourself? Fuck off and go elsewhere this blog is about my life and my death, not yours.

Really I wish heroin were free of charge or at maximum 50p a G H4, then I could take Enough. I'm not talking about a pathetic 300mg a day diamorphine script I'm talking many times that. They know methadone is causing all these problems of mine which is why they prescribe it.

Truth has to be very simple. I'm NOT IN DETOX. Opiate detox makes you sweaty, hot and cold with eyes like saucers. I have none of these symptoms and I've never heard of anybody detox from early December into mid February.

So either: methadone is the root of all my instability
Or: that's just how I am

One of the two. If the first is true then WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY DOING PRESCRIBING SOMETHING THAT PUTS MULTIPLE PEOPLE IN MY HEAD AND THEN WHIRLS THEM ALL UP IN A TORNADO?

Ie they are TRYING TO SEND ME MAD and I'm dropping this methadone script and scoring on the street. At least then the government aren't controlling me.

It's all a con. Everything in life is one big giant con. Don't be taken in or you're even sadder and more lost than I am.

Illustration: top: the cyclone or tornado ~ ask anyone who's been to The Top and they'll tell you about this; black pepper/strawberry icecream ~ these are for Melody


MAMAS AND PAPAS: CREEQUE ALLEY
no point sitting about in a sour mood might as well put on something decent



THIS is how I feel when depressed, look under the second column: hypersomnia etc
http://www.angelfire.com/home/bphoenix1/uni.html

what's up: monday morn

I SLEPT LIKE A BABY last night I don't remember how long maybe 6 or 8 hours i don't recall what time i went to bed (maybe around 4am) I got up after 10. Next thing I knew the stupid alarm was going off. All I wanted was access to my own money from that ridiculous Second Class Citizen Card (ie not a shiny one with Visa Wings you pay money INto because you're rich; one you take Govt money OUT OF because you're poor that rubbishy post office card I had to get because I withdrew £700 I didn't have from my former bank account. I had a real nice heroin/crack binge on that £700 it has to be said. Unlike America you won't get arrested for that over here. In fact I'm considering suing THEM for negligence. They allowed me to overdraw. No fraud was involved. I only went into supermarkets, bought cheapest sparkling wine and asked for £50 a day in cashback (cashpoints wouldn't give this money, neither would over-the-bank-counter) once I realized this was a ready sauce of unending cash I spend away. Shit only hit the fan quite a while later and now they're one of some number of people trying to sue me over these debts. I'm not exactly losing sleep over it. Why do you think I enjoy being crazy so much? Nothing to come back TO.

Well this nonbipolar thing is still going nicely when I get walking I hear lovely voices saying "fuck up" "call a doctor" "oo that's mental" etc. This does have something to do with having watched Angelina Joelie being Mentalist Chic in Girl Interrupted this morning. Those voices don't upset me. Takes far more than THAT to get me upset (no heroin used to do it big time). The drs think I have a real healthy attiude by considering "auditory hallucinations" (ie Reality Plus) as "free entertainment" (which it is) the best one happened yesterday after Valium Marilyn who wasn't half banging on about her problems poor woman anyway I heard my own voice doubled and out of sync in my own head. It was really poetic. [Hearing 2 of me thinking. That was cool.] And the cars on the street start doing this thing where they either speak random words (not so much nowadays as it's piss weak nowadays) but they also sound really whoosh-oosh-oooohhh!! rather than just boring like cars normally do. A bit like a car sounds after a nightspent at a particularly funky hardcore rave.

So I'm sleeping for ages. Oh yeah! My bowel problems! I knew y'all would want to hear this. I feel like I've swallowed a giant jellyfish whole and it's blocked me up. Terrible inconvenience. How will I ever shit again? I'm eating a breakfast cereal wtih cocolate hazelnut inside called Kraves. The kind of stuff us Brits used to look down at Americans years ago over "how CAN you eat marshmallow for BREAKFAST"? Mcdonalds have it all wrong the number of times I've been refused Big Macs before 10:30 or whatever ridiculously late hour a HAMBURGER JOINT actually starts serving up HAMBURGERS I hesitate to recall.

Well I must go I feel fine now. I was all dull, drab, dysphoric etc a couple of minutes ago. I wanted to cry earlier. I had Better Not be coming down. If I am I can just feel it, I'm going to feel really SHIT. Well best not consider that option. Also Naomi will really love it if I'm down next Nutter Club she'll think it serves me right for having had a Personality last week. Well I'm off have fun!

ps i'm watching the aviator or did i say that? very slow moving but quite good. i want voices talking about aeroplanes and hollywood movies, not boring psychiatric crap. i hate psychiatry why did this have to happen to me? only good thing about psychiatry is the other patients they're really funny

oh yeah i had some nutter links but they are somewhere else, here's one that proves a desperate person is capable of speaking plain english (do nurses really believe you have to get to the jib-jib-jib phase before you need help? oh yeah they call that "acting" so just ignore 'em. that's what i do. except when you wanna go outside in which case it's first name terms and lots of flirting. best nurses are always female so be male or a lesbian if you want to go outside

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100402182556AAQgrJZ

can't recall why this came up but it wasn't what i was looking for. why do they close answers down so fast? i'd have said try sulpiride

Bipolar?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nutter Club Entertainment

I SAW NAOMI the kindly American Nutter Club lady again today ... it's Thursday, NUTTER CLUB DAY!!

Only one other nutter turned up. I really like this nutter. She was so ill she looked like she was about to fall over and faint. This was side effects from a medication she's taking for a physical problem, not her bipolar meds.

So she was feeling ill. Naomi could see I was amping with energy so I had to go second. Then I did 90% of the talking, calling the drug service an ineptly run dump and slagging off the nurse I partiularly hate, who isn't the one who wanted to label me on the "anxious-avoidant personality disorder" and "dependent personality disorder" axis. Dependent in this context means somebody who is a real white mouse of a person who kind of obeys everything some stronger character thinks they should say and do. Which is yeah so much like me. I really hang my self-esteem on other people. Honestly!

[She came up with this bucketload of shit because I was depressed during all 3 interviews and because she thinks too much. Most of her theories are really intriguing and perceptive but she does go over the top. She's a WAY better nurse than Judgemental Bitch Features who I really loathe.]

As for anxious avoidant I may have anxiety, but if I do it doesn't come with the worrying, obsessively turning over negative thoughts to do with things that won't happen style of thinking. My way of coping is to smack anything negative out of my head. And I don't need the drug smack to do that. To give her credit she did say I'd "satisfied" the diagnostic criteria for mania during my yummy cold turkey detox. But as I EXPLAINED TO HER there's a little proviso in italics under that one saying "not initiated or maintained by an organic aetiological factor" ie you're not manic if you're in heroin withdrawal.

I am going a bit nuts on these DVDs I'm buying. I got another four last night and three today. I FOUND YOUNG VICTORIA. It's Scorsese-directed and A1 though my poor attention span had me losing the plot within 15 minutes or so. The only film I can really tolerate is Mamma Mia because I like the tunes. I got Chicago which is DIRE and I have to say Renee Zellwegger getting fucked by some random man in scene one does NOT make for a certificate 12 in my opinion. I wouldn't want my 12 year old kid watching that.

I got a 3-pack for "only" £7 of Dr Zhivago, Ben Hur and Gone With The Wind. It's Gone With The Wind I hate out of that lot, the other 2 are really cool, especially Ben Hur. Dr Zhivago is more like filmic wallpaper. Anyone who truly has the attention span for that really has my respect. The music is fantastic.

Today I got something called Role Models which is about someone who goes on an Energy Drinks bender (comedy) and a twin-pack American Dreamz (X Factor piss-take) and Intolerable Cruelty (both comedy) and Case 39, which I misread as Case 69 and thought it was about an orgy but it's "supernatural thriller" but disappointingly only certificate 15 ie probably not scary at all. I like STRONG SUPERNATURAL HORROR. Only kind of action film I can tolerate. Ghosts and ghouls! Action films just have me staring at the "action" forgetting what I'm doing, what's going on and on a DVD I'd press eject. They don't excite or impress me.

Apart from GOOD costume drama and GOOD musicals what I really like is COMEDY. Laughter, as they say is the best medicine. Bounty Hunter with Jennifer Anniston was good. Though why on earth it came in a bright pink case I haven't a clue. Hopefully it put lots of people off buying it so I could have it. That's my theory. I love Jennifer Anniston. I'm looking for Bruce Almighty because I like the bit where he makes her boobs bigger.

Well that's today. If you wanna hear more about nutter club there isn't much except me being banged on at by Naomi for not taking my medication (I'm not going to lie). She did aske me why I originally wanted it. NOT TO BE DEPRESSED was the main reason. And going so incredibly fast and hyper high I couldn't even think in English. If I start going that fast I'll take it again and it works QUICK so no worries there. If I crash badly I'm going in the nuthouse. I'm not sitting at home staring into space. Last time the aerial fell off the TV and I didn't notice for 2 days.

Well that's me I'm off. Take care everyone ;-) :-)



dunno exactly what this video is, but if it's trance it's good
o it's a bit slow, ho-hum, tunes are ok though
actually now i've heard a bit some of the tunes aren't bad
LISTEN TO IT



ok sorry about that chillout music this is a bit better
GATECRASHER was a northern club where grown men put sticky stars on their faces
all in the name of trance
my trance was hard hippietastic Return To The Source trance
this is what's called Eurotrance, but it's still OK



OK THIS IS RETURN TO THE SOURCE
proper Goa trance
the parties I went to were way more bangin than this but it's a good start
bear in mind a good dj would cut out the "musical chronic fatigue syndrome" beginning and get straight to the "mother ship is landing" proper psychotrance bits
there's a good bit of tune about 3 mins 50 into it: THAT is banging trance!



20:38 I'm watching that Club 69 "supernatural horror" thing in the dark to try and make it more scary. It stars Renee fucking Zelwegger but hopefully she'll be demonically possessed or something. She's really fucking annoying that woman I won't go into why it's something she said in an interview that made me think "you uptight selfish cow". She's very good as Bridget Jones it has to be said. OK it's been going 5 mins and not a ghoul to be seen...

20:52 lights back on; can't see punctuation marks on computer keyboard
no way am i watching a film without surfing the net at the same time, i do not have the focus to give anything my undivided attention these days

Mentally Ill

I MIGHT AS WELL CUT STRAIGHT TO THE CHASE: I AM MENTALLY ILL. Naomi, the Dual Diagnosis lady thinks I’m getting too hyper. My Key Worker seems to think this too. Naomi went and spoke to a psychiatrist for me to find out what I’m to do about these meds that disagree with me. Answer: do as I suggested and take all 4mgs risperidone at night.

Thing is I’ve not taken any for 2 days and felt wonderful this morning. Speeding on my own neurotransmitters (and NO SPEED) and going on a DVD shopping spree. I now have 28 films on 27 discs. Meet the Parents and Meet the Fuckers, which I got for £5 is a double movie.

I also got the Incredible Journey 1 and 2, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which is on now, Bounty Hunter starring Jennifer Anniston (love Jennifer Anniston); Gladiator; Cleopatra which I nearly had an argument over at the till over how boring it was. I said it’s moving wallpaper: you put it on silent and listen to music, eat Chinese takeaway and smoke cigarettes nobody WATCHES Cleopatra. I put it on for a bit but had to keep fast forwarding when Elizabeth Taylor was off screen that lady has some beautiful Bulgari jewellery by the way ~ thumbnail sized emeralds; The Queen (Helen Mirren); The Last King of Scotland, which I saw last night and is brilliant; Bucket List which isn’t a rude misogynistic sexual gibe at worn out women it means “a list of things to do before you kick the bucket” starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman; The Good The Bad and The Ugly which is by FAR my favourite western (I’m not into westerns unless they star Audy Murphy); Wall Street 2 disc version (what on earth is on disc 2 I’ve no idea); Silver City which is some spoof about politics (£2 from a charity shop); and The Devil’s Arithmetic which was £1 and is about a New York Jewish girl from the 21st century transported back into the holocaust. I’ll have to be in the mood for that one. Well that’s the main stuff. O yeah and Breakfast At Tiffany’s has soundtrack in German!

Pinky, my schizophrenic friend phoned me today. She thinks I sound really hyper and says I ought to be in hospital. Hospital shmospital. No way! And I’m not taking my meds for at least another week. I want some free Natural full-on Ecstasy high. I LOVE being high.

I asked Naomi whether she thought I had substance-induced mood disorder and she said no, because that’s directly phased in with a substance like crack and loses steam pretty rapidly when the crack is dropped (or whatever: nearly always an upper or a withdrawal state and I’m not on uppers and not withdrawing and she knows my heroin/methadone situation). My illness waxes and wanes and is currently getting stronger. I am going back into a 48-hour day. No sleep at all last night, I was buzzing too much to be bothered sleeping and did recline in bed in a position I’d usually sleep in. No sleep came so ten minutes later (waste no time, that’s my philiosophy!) I was up and pottering about. By early morning I felt pretty high. Mid morning I felt wonderful. I’m tired and a bit ragged now but still hyped up and it feels brilliant to be high not on drugs. Like I’m finally coming home to a Perfect State of Being. I don’t care whether it’s called mentally ill or not. I did point out that hypomania is NOT an illness, but neither Naomi nor my Worker seemed convinced. I was rabbitting so much they had to just tell me to stop talking and start talking about their own boring matters which I’ve forgotten anyway. Also I called the Mental Health Nurse a c**t which made both of them laugh uproariously then have to compose themselves and be all professional.

I also googled substance induced mood disorder and substance induced b-----r and was shocked to find nothing matching me at all. And I checked the American Journal of Psychiatry and everything. “Substance induced” should not be confused with the so-called “kindling” phenomenon, where antidepressants and illicit drugs intensify mood episodes, possibly triggering bipolarity and making the illness more severe. After “kindling” you get mood swings anyhow whether or not you go on taking drugs. Substance induced means DIRECTLY induced by a substance or substance withdrawal. I checked carefully and what Naomi said seems true. Unfortunately. Because if this is so I’m really going to have trouble convincing this psychiatrist I’m not mental.

So this means I have to find ingenious ways to wriggle out of what I knew was wrong with me anyhow. It has ALL the major symptoms of a certain condition with 2 phases. In one you get depressed, in the other you get hyper. A third state exists where you have aspects of both at the same time. I’m not naming it as I don’t want to curse my happiness. This condition is labelled a “severe mental illness” which made me blow my top and rant loudly about the Mental Health C**t who suggested I might have a personality disorder an an anxious-avoidant one at that! This certain condition which I decline to name which I might well have is pretty much DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE to anxious avoidant personality disorder, though avoidant behaviour is common in the depressed phase. This disorder is associated with artists, business tycoons and high achievers and it is NOT schizophrenia. It is a mood disorder. And if you can’t work out what I mean look up bipolar.

I still have no official diagnosis. If I do get diagnosed as a pie-bowler I shall be intensely upset I can tell you that for nothing. Because that will mean I’m a manic-depressive junkie. I mean what greater Loser title can you get? And if I do have that one I’ll probably be on psych meds for LIFE. The fact that I go UP not down off meds is yet another sign that this nasty thing is probably me.

That is all I want to say on the subject. Until I hear more news I’m going to try and steer off this issue because it doesn’t make me happy. It makes me feel very upset and angry because I suspected I had this disorder more than ten years ago and nobody listened. The people who said I acted like I had it (on selected occasions) had ALL seen it first-hand and knew the behaviour. Behaviour I was displaying by being hyped up, impatient, irritable and euphoric. As years went by these symptoms were initially squashed by heroin, then they started emerging again. Weird symptoms like a racing brain accompanied by a very nice buzzing feeling, buzzing so much I remember on one occasion about three years ago having to restrain myself from yelling obscenities out the window into the street. I just felt really really hyped up that day. And I thought I was depressed!

Well I’m going now I refuse to muse on this issue but I’m warning y’all this is what everyone seems to think is wrong with me. Mental health professionals, mental health sufferers ~ and me. And they’re not picking up the idea from me, they’re TELLING me, you see. I have been scrupulously avoiding using any vocabulary associated with this condition, yet they still seem to recognize it in me.

I won’t despair until the Consultant Headshrinker (yeah I have a consultant psychiatrist, not a trainee one) tells me my life is over. Until then I’m thoroughly enjoying yet another free high!

Take care everyone and don’t worry about me. I’m not worried. You shouldn’t be either.

L8Rs xx

PS sorry if this doesn't flow nicely. I'm not reading back over stuff I don't want to know about. I have to put this down for the record. Naomi's sayso will be confirmed or overturned in due course but only my Consultant can do that. My Consultant is on leave. I have an appointment in two weeks' time ... perhaps I'll know more then ...

PPS Nutter Club tomorrow. I hope we talk about little fluffy clouds and other nice things. I'm not in the mood for ANY MORE talk about ANYONE being mentally ill. It's starting to do my head in

Risperidone Problem

NAOMI, the Dual Diagnosis lady, who isn't medical (so I wasn't asking medical advice) rang me back about my risperidone problem. I am on 4mg daily. 4mg is half the usual maximum dose. The usual starting dose is 2mg according to the leaflet, but the dr. probably gave more as I was getting symptoms that were severe enough to be losing it pretty completely. I don't lose it every minute of every day even when I'm ill. Everything with me is episodic, variable and changeable, like tides of the sea. A hurricane doesn't last forever, neither do my mood swings. So you need to understand this if you think I'm calling myself "mad" then seem sane. This is the crux of the problem!

Anyway I was put on risperidone 2x 2mg pills at night for the first week (when they are strong enough to make you feel almost concussed, not inherently nice at all, but I was pretty manic so they made me sleep at night and slowed my body down daytimes. They cut out voices though I still hear the murmurs. They stop me pacing, dancing and acting hyper most of the time, even when my mind races and rushes. They also probably slow that down, though they were prescribed on the tail end of a mood swing and the dr. knew that.

From week 2 onwards they're to be taken 2mg by day, 2mg by night. It's the daytime one I had problems with. It gives what you might call drowsiness but it's not sleepiness (it feel way better with Valium on top and I don't want to be scoring Valium on a street corner because of antipsychotic side effects). So I didn't take it yesterday or today.

I said to Naomi I was going to take it nights only (ie 4mg at once) until my dr appointment on Feb 24th. I though this was the most responsible course of action.

I CAN make emergency appointments but don't want to be one of these neurotic complainers going through every single medication until I find one that satisfies my hypochondria. This ISN'T hypochondria. It's not a listed side effect. It feels like the brain-fog and photophobia (lights glare at me in a nasty way) from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and THAT is not something I would relive for anyone.

Another issue is if I do go cuckoo again I WILL go in hospital. Considering those nurses' bizarre idea of misbehaviour I can foresee if I'm a bit "manic" I could easily get into a situation where I get wrestled down and needled. (Not that there's not something secretly funky about that, but it's not really what I want. Y'know...?)

I NEED TO KNOW AN ANTIPSYCHOTIC THAT CAN BE GIVEN IN EMERGENCY HIGH DAYTIME DOSES THAT AGREES WITH ME.

If I left it until I did get needled in hospital, my complaints will be interpreted as insubordination. So I NEED to cross this side-effects bridge NOW.

Naomi has the ear of 3 psychiatrists who work in my area and will bring up my issue with one of them tomorrow. I see her at Nutter Club Thursday anyhow. But I have to sort this problem out. If you went as off the planet as I did NOT ON DRUGS you'd want something you could rely on to bring you down. Being "high" on a mood swing is not all hearts and flowers. It involves being extremely agitated, very volatile, unable to follow simple conversations (sometimes) and being incomprehensible to others (at times). I have to sort myself out. I absolutely have to.

I got a very pertinent comment about my search for a diagnosis yesterday pointing out that maybe I ought to be thinking on nicer things. Problem is I HAVE to answer to the government who are paying me money. They ask for a diagnosis. And my problems have gone extreme enough 1. to put me off heroin and drugs (the high, when it really gets going is WAY BETTER THAN ANY DRUG) and 2. I absolutely have to take responsibility for myself. If I don't, and follow my mood-induced whims I really could get in extreme trouble. I could do anything from chucking my possessions out the window and setting them on fire to... stuff I don't even want to think about.

So you see I'm dealing with what has turned into a serious problem here. And it has to be dealt with properly.

I have to ping out now. Take care everyone. I'm TRYING to take care of myself!

Voices to Choices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No more. No more. No more.




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

Supported housing!

Psychological Fly-Eyes

I KEEP GETTING MOOD SWINGS. I thought I was depressed earlier. I scored Valium, popped one blue one (10mg) and went to bed. Slept most of the afternoon. My risperidone is giving horrible side-effects you could describe as drowsiness except I can't sleep and Valium makes me feel way better. Alcohol does not. I'm telling the doc-doc.

From now on, until he tells me otherwise on my appointment on the 24th I'm taking both 2mg pills at midnight. Hopefully he'll change me to something else. Isn't quetiapine any good? Reading between the lines, and bearing in mind that the negative reports about quetiapine come from prison. American prison, which sounds crap as far as drugs go.

Not like British jail where gear is pretty widely used. In American jails of my grandparents' generation NUTMEGS were used as drugs. Nutmegs contain an MDA-like trippy E type substance. Apart from the nausea, vomting and diarrhoea it sounds like a really good trip, man. I mean if nutmegs are attractive in prison, quetiapine must be super-attractive. Reading between the lines I assume this means it doesn't give the bashed on the head with a frying pan feeling. People in jail were accused of drug-seeking behaviour when an antipsychotic was withdrawn. Quetiapine gives really good sleep. One thing you want in prison is sleep. And these people are accused of drug-seeking for wanting what we all want: a good night's sleep. America is one messed up country. (Of course Britain is not messed up at all (joke)). I know my dr. won't prescribe it. I knew when I came in I was destined whatever move I made to land rapidly in a checkmate situation. This is so obvious I probably didn't even post it. The Worst Is Bound To Happen.

The very nice lady psychiatrist in the Emergency Clinic mentioned LITHIUM which I REALLY DO NOT WANT. I'd do Valproate before lithium. Lithium requires blood-level testing. It makes you feel cold. It is toxic. It causes problems in focus, visual and mental. NOT what I want. Only good thing about lithium from what I hear is it's good with vinegar on fish and chips (tastes of salt).

My friend Mother Hubbs says she was on lithium before she switched to heroin. I noticed heroin was a fantastic mood-stabilizer. First thing I noticed (and this was before I knew Mother Hubbs) was that my previously tide-like moodswings had gone flat. I'd turned from the North Sea into an inland lake.

Now I'm like the Atlantic Ocean. if they do put me on stabilization crap I'd rather be like the Pacific. Still with tides and storms just not as bad. I'd hate to live on a flat line. That's what I hated most about heroin in the early to mid years. I never EVER woke up feeling happy, as I used to in my late 20s. My late 20s were the only time in my life when I got buzzing highs without drugs. Never happened in childhood, never happened as a young young adult. Only as I say in my late 20s.

Then later in my gear-using "career" I realized I felt hyped up without crack and crack was the only stimulant I used. I still felt hyped up after giving it up! Not all the time, episodically. I also got mildly depressed and horribly depressed on different occasions. I'm fed up of fighting my own moods they have become a real huge issue and have got bad enough that I hear voices, get paranoia, look like I've been dragged through a hedge backwards and live in a dump during the worst parts. Now I have to clean up the dump (again). I'm FAR cleaner and more put together washing-wise. I wash my hair 3 times a week now. Before that it was about once every 2 months. Yeah I know it's all sad sad sad I'm not exactly keeping a blog to show y'all how cool I am. This is the truth about drug addiction and "mental health". Mental ill-health more like.

So I'm depressed earlier, feel like I've had a line of speed on one cup of tea later. Had another cup to make the speed a bit more full-on. Caffeine has the effect on me it only has on TV characters. Caffeine doesn't really make people rush about babbling does it. Never did that to me before. Only time I ever got high on tea was when I was on Prozac in my early 20s. Even then I was being told to calm down, and told I was acting "manic". The person who said this had two relatives with bipolar disorder, which kind of did my head in. I scrupulously hid anything "manic" from my doctors for years. Then I fessed up. Was a junkie by this time. Wasn't believed. Not really. Then it got so bad I was literally falling to pieces, going incoherent, acting like I was pretending to be a racing car (I wasn't "pretending to be" anything, I was saying what I was thinking, to myself. Luckily when I did this in the nuthouse I wasn't under assessment. The assessment happened in an interview where I was told I kept changing topics. I don't know about that. What I do remember is trying to answer everything ultra-precisely. So "how long?" to me meant on what precise day and what time did you first feel the way you feel now. I got totally lost in the multiplicity of eventualities inherent in any situation. My thoughts went up like a starburst. Mentally I felt like a fly. Viewing the world through endless angles through compound eyes.

So I'm not up or down or left or right. I'm still all over the place!

Does anyone know anything about old films? Are these any good. I got 'em on impulse for a tenner. Old war films remind me of sleepy Sundays smoking cigarettes and drinking tea. (Or white cyder.)

• The Desert Rats
• A Farewell to Arms
• The Longest Day
• Sink the Bismarck
• Twelve O'Clock High

Twelve O'Clock High is playing.



Illustrated: when I'm "ill" I think in starbursts and think in psychological compound eyes, seeing everything from every conceivable angle all at once. This gives overload, exhilarating overload or irritating overload, depending on the mood of the moment. I'd quite like to be a fly. Or better still a hornet. I'd have quite some fun being a wasp...

EVA CASSIDY: FIELDS OF GOLD



ANDREA BOCELLI, SARAH BRIGHTMAN: TIME TO SAY GOODBYE
At the Dubai Fountain
I've never been to Dubai, but I've been through Bahrain airport and Bahrain through the plane window looked amazing. All water-gardens and glittering glass towers. And their duty-free shop was perfume, alcohol and cigarettes paradise. I went into the squiggly-writing men's toilets which had hosepipes in the cubicles (to blast your arse). All these Yasser-Arafat men breezing in and out in robes. If I were an Arab I'd wear robes too. I hate a lot of western dress.